There’s another reason why we wait around for someone else to be heroic. It’s not exactly that we’re waiting for someone else to do it. It’s more that we think we’re not qualified.
Novelists always have to choose a point of view character. That’s the person through whose eyes the story will be told. It’s one of the first decisions we have to make because it affects everything else in the story. There can only be one; everyone else is a supporting character. There have been times when I’ve had to coax my heroine to speak up or stand up. To be more decisive and less passive. But I’ve never had one say, “No, thanks. I’d rather you let someone else be the heroine. I’ll just step aside.” Because, seriously, who would do that?
Well…lots of times, we would.
Lots of times, we do.
We kind of sit around in our own stories waiting for someone else to make the decisions and take the lead. It’s not that we don’t want to, it’s that we don’t think we should. Why don’t we make a promise to ourselves, right now, that in our stories, we get to play the starring role. Whether that means you need to step into the part that’s waiting for you or whether you need to wrench it back from someone who’s taken it from you, that’s for you to decide. But do. Decide. And then act. Because next week I’ll be talking about how, even when we want to be heroic, we tend to block ourselves from doing that very thing.