I spent all of this week talking about the eerie, creepy monsters that lurk in shadows and only come to about waist-height at most.  Yet there is another side of the coin just as there is with the big guys.  Little creatures can be heroes too as you can see from Gizmo.  This also means that monster doesn’t always mean evil and flesh-eating.  So, where does a heroic mini-critter fit into a story?

Anywhere really.  Though they seem to always turn up as comic relief or some type of sidekick.  For example, Snarf from Thundercats, which is apparently in the spellchecker.  Strange.  Anyway, these cute heroes never have the physical strength that one expects from a central hero.  They excel in other areas like cunning, magic, stealth, agility, or some special talent.  This makes it rather strange that they don’t get a more high profile role in their stories.  Though one could assume it’s because we tend to put huge monsters or extremely powerful, human-sized beings in the main villain role.  Gizmo works because he is up against Gremlins that are in his weight class even though they’re a lot more vicious.  Put the little guy against Orcs and you’ll have a hard time getting readers to believe he can win.

This is where we run into the problem of tiny heroes in general.  For some reason, we tend to think that size and strength will always win the fight.  A towering threat losing to a small hero can easily be accused of being unrealistic, which hurts the overall story.  Imagine if ‘David and Goliath’ came out today.  I’m sure many people would complain about the single sling stone being a lucky shot and not definitive of a hero because luck doesn’t count.  Strange how the little guy winning is what we dream of, but it rarely happens within fiction.

Bringing this back to tiny hero monsters, they really do require a shift of focus from what an author may be used to.  Barging in the door for a throw down, drag out fight of epic proportions might not work.  You can give the creature powers to do it like Fizzle in ‘Legends of Windemere’.  Another option is to keep the enemies on the same size scale as the heroes.  Those are all easy ways to retain big fights, but there’s also the option of going in that other direction.  More stealth, chases, and traps than fisticuffs.  Imagine a final battle that is a race between hero and villain through a deadly maze.  Maybe it’s the hero simply surviving and being able to fight another day

I know this goes for all small heroes, so here is something specific for the monsters.  You can make them cute and cuddly, but you need to make them creatures of some kind.  It could be fun to give them something that hints they have the capacity for evil such as Mogwai turning into Gremlins.  This isn’t necessary, but it can help if this monster hero is unable to talk.  Most of them have a strange grasp of human language if they speak any of it at all.  Having people scared of them can work, but it only works if they’re not cute.  That method would have humans mistaking it for a pet or even getting in the way to pet it.  Off the top of my head, I’m thinking of an intergalactic bounty hunter that looks adorable and keeps getting tackled by children who want to hug it.  In fact, I think that’s similar to a Phineas & Ferb episode.

Gizmo is certainly my favorite hero monster.  Anybody think of any other or any ideas on how to use them?