WHAT MAKES A GREAT HEROINE?

Does she have to be like Wonder Woman or Katniss Everdeen and save the world?

Hard to relate to those two isn't it?  

Except towards the end I wanted to strangle Katniss for whining so much.

It was like she volunteered for Hell and then spent the rest of her saga complaining about the heat.



1) Take JANE EYRE --

Though she suffers greatly, she always relies on herself to get back on her feet — no wilting damsel in distress here. 

As China Miéville wrote: 

“Charlotte Brontë’s heroine towers over those around her, morally, intellectually and aesthetically:

She’s completely admirable and compelling. 

Never camp, despite her Gothic surroundings, she takes a scalpel to the skin of every day.”



2) HERMIONE GRANGER  --

She has a wonderful arc:

 Hermione starts as an insufferable know-it-all, blossoms into a whip-smart beauty who doesn’t suffer fools (except for lucky Ron), 

and ends up as the glue that holds the whole trio together.

  She’s the only one of the three never to wholly break down in a crisis. 




3) HUA MULAN --

No, not the Disney version but the 6th century heroine of the Chinese poem, The Ballad of Mulan.  

She already knew the skills of a warrior when she assumed the role of her father, 

shone on the battlefield, and without fanfare or request for glory, returned to her home. 


COMING SOON TO PAPERBACK
4) MARLENE DIETRICH --

Her life reads like a script for one of the movies she made ...

But no director or stunt double was there to ease her pains.

As a star, Marlene noticed an assistant director feverish and ill, forced to stay on the set by a tyrannical director ... 

who got a chewing out from the star as she took the ill man to his home.

The assistant director awoke in his bed to the smell of chicken soup and the sound of someone scrubbing his kitchen floor.  

He got up to discover Marlene on her knees scrubbing his floor.  

He then got reprimanded for keeping his floor so badly!

Marlene one evening returned to her hotel suite in Hollywood to find Hermann Göring waiting for her 

to offer her a castle, riches, and titles if she would but return to Germany to make movies exclusively for Hitler.

She chased him out of her suite with a fireplace poker and the next day applied for U.S. citizenship.

When the war broke out, Marlene toured Europe to entertain the troops as close to the front as she could.  

She never went back to Hollywood to make a movie until the war was over though Hitler had placed a death sentence on her head.

Marlene then returned to Hollywood only to be told that she had become too old to be a star.  

A director demanded she be the star of his movie, GOLDEN EARRINGS, and her fame soared once more.  

Three guesses who that director was.

Marlene maintained popular success throughout her unusually long show business career 

by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and personally. 

So, of course, I had to make Marlene my heroine in my own fantasy 

where I am hounded through all my fictional worlds for the murder of the ghost of Ernest Hemingway.

WHAT DO YOU THINK MAKES A GREAT FICTIONAL HEROINE?