Courage Different for a Protagonist than Us?

I’m reading through my next novel, my current work in progress. I have one protagonist, surrounded by many other characters. As I read through the story this time, I know what challenges are coming and what courage the protagonist will have to find. It got me thinking about courage and whether it is different for a protagonist in a story versus me.

I’ve heard courage described in many ways, but one way I like to think of it is not as the absence of fear, but the ability to work through fear. I think some of the bravest women and men in history had times when they feared. I bet they each felt their hearts pounding in their chest or their breath catch or the feel of cool sweat streaming down the small of their. But now we think of them as courageous. They didn’t allow their fear to control them.

Just because a person has courage doesn’t mean they will succeed. For my protagonist in my current work in progress, I’ve got an ending written, but it will probably change after this reading. He has courage, but will it be enough?

No matter what goals or challenges we face, we can’t let our fear dampen our courage. We may not find success, but as a protagonist in a story, we will be stronger because we acted with what little courage we had. My challenges are nothing compared to many in the world. I enjoy reading and writing stories as they help me see the wonders of the world and the differences in cultures that could exist or have existed.

Check out some of my books on Amazon.

My fantasy, A Map, a Mage, and a Sacrifice, is set in a world with limited technology, but where sacrifice is a necessary element to magical power. The greater the pain and suffering, the greater the magical power generated. The few mages in power use voluntary sacrifice of the citizens to generate power they use to protect and defend the empire. But their rule may be coming to a close.

Malignance, my third book in my time travel series that began with Resonance and Dissonance, is on Amazon as a kindle and a paperback. That was a fun series to write, and for now, it is completed. I have also placed all three books from that series into one volume titled The Machina of Time.

If you’re looking for a science fiction story, try my book The Promise of Dust, which takes place in a cloud city floating in the atmosphere of Venus. Or Progenitor’s Legacy: Deceit, which takes place many years in the future on a tidally locked world that orbits a red dwarf and has been reached by humanity in their search for the alien progenitors who seeded the galaxy with nano machines.

If a young adult science fiction is more to your liking, check out my series This New Earth, that starts with Demons of a Dead World and Secrets of a Dead World.

If you are looking for a young adult fantasy, check out my book The Threads Unbound.