On Writing: Mentor Characters
Mentor characters are common. We all know this. They’re more common in sci fi and fantasy but not limited to those genres. Everyone could use good advice sometimes! Soo here we’re going to talk about a few tips on writing mentor characters well.
(I mean….this post mostly talks about Avatar. Nobody should be surprised at this point.)
Your mentor should be flawed.
Every character is more interesting and engaging when they’re flawed - the mentor is no exception. The wise old sage who’s perfectly wise and zen and knows everything about everything is boring. You might as well just give your main character a manual and send them on their way. Or just send the mentor to do the protagonist’s job for them.
Gandalf is old, tough and wise, but he has a temper (rip Pippin) and he’s incapable of taking the Ring to Mordor. He’s already tempted by the draw of the Ring’s power; this is a flaw he recognises and it’s why he tells Frodo he can’t take the Ring himself. To some, Gandalf might be an example of the generic old wizard who knows everything (and fair enough) but he’s not perfect, and there’s a reason he can’t complete the quest.
Haymitch from The Hunger Games is an alcoholic; he’s rude and cynical and seems to be fairly unsympathetic towards Katniss and Peeta’s fate. This is because he’s learned not to grow attached to his pupils. They inevitably die in the arena. Haymitch has become the way he is as a result of his trauma; despite his current self, he won his own Games through resourcefulness and determination. He and Katniss have more in common than he would first let on. Underneath his hard exterior are the lessons he teaches Katniss and Peeta.
What does the mentor pass on to the protagonist?
Any generic mentor in a big cloak can teach the protagonist the Lessons of the Magic Thing or something else they need to learn. What’s more interesting is adding a personal element to what the mentor teaches the protagonist; how did they learn these lessons themselves?
In Avatar: TLA, though Iroh does teach Zuko lightning-bending, most of the lessons he teaches him are life lessons. Iroh teaches Zuko that he alone can control his destiny, and that his honour can only come from his own actions and not what his abusive father thinks of him.
Iroh has learned this through his own experiences; he once had his own notions of what honour and power were and his priorities were to help the Fire Nation prosper in the 100 year war, specifically to conquer Ba Sing Se. These things stop being important to him when his son is killed in battle. He returns home a failure, loses out on the throne to his younger brother and is viewed by a lot of people as a silly, lazy old man (sometimes even by Zuko himself). But he’s learned from his experience, and when he returns to conquer Ba Sing Se it’s for the Avatar, not the Fire Nation. Iroh once believed the Lie spread by the Fire Nation, and now he’s trying to teach Zuko the Truth behind the Lie.
Another example is Tony and Peter in the MCU, aka Iron Man and Spider-Man. In Iron Man 3, Tony spends time conflicted over what exactly makes him Iron Man. Who is he without his suit? Eventually he realises that the suit may be important, but Iron Man wouldn’t exist without Tony. In Spider-Man: Homecoming, he teaches this lesson to Peter, albeit harshly, by taking his suit away from him. He learns to live without it and see what truly makes Spider-Man isn’t the suit, but the person inside it.
“If you’re nothing without this suit, then you shouldn’t have it.”
The mentor’s lessons should represent something.
When writing a wise old mentor who knows all the Important Things, they should know (and represent) a thematic Truth of the story. If the protagonist believes a Lie about themselves and/or the world they live in, the mentor has to show them the Truth of the world (and the narrative).
We’re talking about Iroh and Zuko again! The episode “The Avatar and the Fire Lord” explores this idea twice; with Zuko and Iroh and with Aang and Roku. Iroh tells Zuko that he must understand the story of his great-grandfather’s demise to understand his own destiny. Similarly, Roku tells Aang that he must understand how the war started to understand how to end it.
The two lessons are connected to the story of Roku and his closest friend, Fire Lord Sozin, and the themes of morality and balance. Balance is a massive theme in Avatar. Bringing balance to the world is the Avatar’s duty; imbalance means chaos and destruction, while balance means peace and prosperity. Mastering the four elements (and what they represent spiritually) is the key to bringing balance to the nations.
Zuko doesn’t understand the significance of his great-grandfather Sozin’s story, until Iroh tells him that Roku was his great-grandfather as well, and that the conflict of these two men, and the war that followed, are an integral part of him.
“Evil and good are always at war inside you, Zuko. It is your nature, your legacy. […] Because of your legacy, you alone can cleanse the sins of our family and the Fire Nation. Born in you, along with all the strife, is the power to restore balance to the world.”
This represents a big question asked by Avatar; is anyone truly evil or truly good, and what does it mean to balance these elements inside you? Aang asks himself the same question. His friends see Sozin betraying Roku as a sign of Sozin’s evil nature. Aang sees it as a lesson that anyone is capable of great good or great evil. Roku was born in the Fire Nation, just like Sozin, and like Zuko. And it doesn’t define who they are as people.
While obviously your main character’s arc should be the most detailed and most relevant to the story, that doesn’t mean other characters shouldn’t develop and have an arc as well. Your mentor is no exception. When it comes to characters that can more easily fall into stereotypes (a love interest is another example; they definitely need an arc as well) an arc is a perfect way to make them feel more original.
A common arc is the cynical, withdrawn mentor picking their sword (or whatever it is) back up and joining in the fight they’d closed themselves off from, or learning to be happy again thanks to their relationship with the protagonist. It’s basic, but it’s an arc nonetheless.
A specific example of a mentor’s character arc is Tenzin’s in The Legend of Korra. Tenzin is Korra’s airbending master and primary mentor; he’s also the son of the previous Avatar. To top it off, he has the responsibility of mentoring his children as a father and a teacher to the last airbenders of the world. These roles combined put massive pressure on Tenzin and his struggles when it comes to connecting with spirits and the spirit world. His inability to connect to the spirits makes him feel like a failure trapped in Aang’s shadow. Tenzin only overcomes this obstacle when he realises that he is not his father, that he can only be himself, and this brings him the spiritual enlightenment he’d been missing all along. He’s more than a manual for Korra; he’s a character with his own struggles to overcome.
Why do mentors always die?
The reasons are pretty simple; we need the protagonist to make their own choices without a teacher. We need to see how they stand up to whatever their obstacle is without help. We need to see how they implement the lessons they’ve learned from the mentor.
Even with all these valid reasons, the death of the mentor can feel stale and overdone because it’s so common. Adding further plot relevance to the death of the mentor can make it more meaningful. It shouldn’t just be so the protagonist has to make their own way. The mentor doesn’t have to die either. They can simply go off somewhere for a while; Gandalf just fucks off whenever he pleases because Tolkien needed the other characters to manage without him. His death does add higher stakes to the story, though.
Iroh doesn’t die, but his disappearing act is a result of Zuko betraying him. Zuko returns to his sister’s side and Iroh is locked away in prison. This is powerful because Zuko has to deal with the guilt of betraying his uncle, while also learning to make up his own mind about his destiny without Iroh’s help.
Another effective tool in making a mentor’s disappearing act more meaningful is the post-disappearance narrative. After Dumbledore’s death, Harry learns a lot more about him than he knew when he was alive, a lot of which is a little uncomfortable to hear. It’s difficult to process such truths about a man he was sure he knew well, and adds more impact to his absence.
SPOILERS FOR FFH
Similarly in Spider-Man: Far From Home, Peter doesn’t realise how flawed Tony was until after his death. He realises he can’t live up to the image of Iron Man, but not even Tony himself could live up to the heroic image. Happy Hogan tells him as much; that Tony was a mess and couldn’t live up to his own legacy anymore than Peter can.
SPOILERS FOR FFH
So, there you have it! Now go flesh out your manuals~