#same goes for the xfiles honestly

[dean-is-love]

early seasons spn aesthetic really is superior. i regularly forget how fucking amazing it looked and then i see it again and i'm like damn. they don't do dark moody lighting like they used to.

[jedimordsith]

I need some major help. I'm trying to write my own novel with two protags, a male and female lead. My problem is, I'm having difficulty finding a way to make them both relevant. Part of this has to do with plot, but a major factor, the largest factor really, has to do with skill sets. So, I wanted to ask someone who has background writing Mara and Luke. How do you make characters who's 'special skills' derive from the same place still be different enough that both are 'needed'?

Okay, well, first off – congrats on working on a novel! That is ambitious and awesome!  : )

My first thought is that if you’ve got two protagonists, then the issues they’re facing should be big enough that one person by their lonesome can never hope to hack it. So as far as plot goes, double check that your Big Bad (whatever it is) is big enough and bad enough to match (or out match) your good guys.

As far making characters “different enough that both are needed”… I have a lot of thoughts. I’ll see if I can keep them organized.

Backgrounds matter. A simple example here is Luke and Coran. They both become Jedi and are both pilots at some point, but otherwise their experiences are very different.  Luke grew up on an Outer Rim farm, got Jedi training from two different Old Order masters, and served as an NR General at one point. Corran grew up in the higher-end portions of a major Core planet (Corellia) and served in the gffa version of the FBI/CIA. Those divergent experiences give them very different perspectives on how to approach the same tasks (e.g. training the first class of Jedi and looking into Gantoriss’ death in I, Jedi). You could potentially do something similar with your protagonists, giving them different backgrounds that help them approach shared problems from different (but equally vital) angles.  

Personalities play a role. Honestly the trio that comes to mind here is Harry, Ron and Hermione in the Harry Potter series. They’re all in the same year in school, they all have the same kinds of powers and when there’s a problem to solve, they can all be on board about solving it… and get to a solution in three VERY different ways. Consider also Scully and Moulder from xFiles or Clone Wars era Obi-wan and Anakin. Characters can be equivalent in a lot of ways but still notice radically different things in the same situation, or have vastly variant reactions to the same situation – all of which you can use to further your plot!. Which brings us to the next point…

Balance. E.g. the classic good cop/bad cop trope, the All Feels vs. All Brain trope, the Type A Personality vs. Type B Personality trope, and probably a dozen other similar tropes we could name. This is actually one of the things that makes Luke and Mara so much fun to write – they’re perfect foils for one another in so many ways. How can your protagonists balance one another? How can they play off one another in ways that make them greater together than the sum of their parts?

Variations within skill sets are a thing. This is something I, in particular, love to play with. Let’s use Jedi as an example: I believe canon supports the idea that Leia’s natural Force giftings leaned toward people. She was inherently extra in tune with people’s intents, feelings, etc., which is part of why she was such a great diplomat. Cilghal was inherently drawn toward healing. Mara can be read to have a unique gifting in telepathy and/or bonding (canon isn’t explicitly clear, but there’s enough to make a strong case). People can derive skills from the same place, and even had strongly overlapping skill sets, but still have distinct giftings or leanings within those arenas that set them apart.

Don’t forget about limitations and hurdles! Along the way in your novel, one or more of your characters might very rightly be taken down or out, in which case they’ll need their counterpart to help pick up the slack! Injuries, illness, exhaustion, kidnapping, getting lost, being delayed by technical trouble, even ‘boring’ admin kinds of interference can prevent people from being and doing everything themselves. They’ll need their partner’s help! (Also, in most cases, people can only be in one place at a time. Depending on how you structure things, you might need/want the option to have your protags in different places during the same time period to cover all your bases, catch clues, etc.)

That’s all I’ve got, but other authors out there – tell me what I missed!