Our main characters need to be people our readers can relate to, admire, or even aspire to be like. On the other hand, if we go too far we risk creating a Mary Sue or Marty Stu. Mary and Marty are unrealistically gifted, universally loved, movie star handsome or beautiful, amazingly talented, wonderfully wealthy, unbelievably lucky, the stuff of daydreams. To be believable, even the most relatable character needs to have some personal flaws, some things they aren’t good at, and some bad luck.
Lee Child’s Jack Reacher has freedom, strength, weapons, money, sex, and challenging problems to solve. What more could a reader want?
So what is it that stops him from being a Marty Stu? For one thing, he’s imperfect as a person. He often travels at the expense of others. He takes money from the wallets of people he kills. (They won’t need it anymore.) Sometimes he’s wrong about what the bad guys are going to do, and sometimes they win, at least for a short time.
He has weapons, but nothing ridiculously dramatic, just normal guns and knives.
He has money, but not enough to use it as a magic wand to fix problems. He has just enough to be free of a fixed, forty hour a week job, and thus available to undertake adventures.
He has sexual experiences, but with realistic frequency, and with three-dimensional, capable, adult women, not dozens of random nubile nitwits that somehow providentially come along every chapter.
He’s tall and strong and has the classic blue eyes and blond hair, but his hair is thinning and there’s no mention of the stereotypical cleft chin or chiseled jawline.
He gets involved in many more dangerous situations than most people do. His freedom from a fixed job and his military background help explain that. He’s available and believably skilled, so when his travels put him in the way of adventure, he’s able to pursue it. The reader can see this as reasonably possible, not as absurdly made up.
Jack is a good example of staying just on the right side of the line between fascinating and fantasy.
Lois Crockett
Thank you… this is good.