Main Character Energy

 I have mentioned Not Always Right here before. It is a website where people anonymously report terrible encounters with customers.  I recently noticed a phrase there I want to discuss.  They have hashtags, what librarians would call subject headings: Hotels, Adorable Children, Revolting, Creative Solutions, etc.

The one that caught my eye was Main Character Energy, which they apparently used as early as 2010.   Merriam-Webster defines it as "an informal Internet expression for self-assured bearing or behavior. The phrase is used both to compliment self-confidence as well as criticize its excesses."

I am interested in those excesses, which is how Not Always Right uses it. I see it as the sense that you are the most important person in the room, or even the only one.  

The Not Always Right anecdote that inspired this column involved an older couple who ran into a woman.  Their huge car suffered little damage while the woman was trapped in her subcompact.  While the paramedics were trying to rescue her with the jaws of life the couple demanded they stop to help them find their photo album. It was clearly more important than their victim's life because it had their vacation pictures. 

Fireman: “Ma’am, do you have a concussion?”

Other Driver’s Wife: “What? No?”

Fireman: *Holds up a heavy piece of equipment.* “Want one?”

How does this relate to writing?  Well, as I have said before, every character in your story should want something.  But the way they go about tryi8ng to get it helps distinguish good guys from the not-so-good.

I have said many times that what part of what makes Elmore Leonard so good is that all of his characters think they are the heroes of the story. Especially the ones who ain't.

One of the best examples of MCE  I know is in Donald E. Westlake's novel Drowned Hopes.  In it the luckless thief John Dortmunder gets a visit from his ex-prison cellmate, Tom Jimson, who wants to get the swag from  bank robbery, currently in a flooded valley.  He wants our hero's help in blowing up a dam to do it.  When Dortmunder, objects...

"You see, Al," Tom explained, and gestured at the sweet valley spread out defenseless below them,  "those aren't real people down there. Not like ME. Not even like you."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. If I go hungry three, four days, you know, not one of those people down there is gonna get a bellyache. And when the water comes down on them some night pretty soon, I'M not gonna choke at all. I'm gonna be busy digging up my money."

So Dortmunder (who definitely does NOT exude Main Character Energy) spends the rest of the book trying to find a way to get Tom's money without killing hundreds of people.  Because he's a thief but not a homicidal lunatic.

I remember being surprised at a writer's conference when someone defined evil as selfishness.  Well, yeah.  Exactly.  If I'm the main character, why shouldn't I be selfish?

SO when you are trying to define your characters MCE is one more tool in your workbox.