Who is a hero to me? When I was asked this question I thought first of my mother and then of my friend Betty B. Trying to understand what makes these people heros to me is harder to define. I finally came up with the following:

They are Unique, strong, decisive, understanding, and I feel safe with them. Actually I didn't feel my Mother was understanding. She would become unpredictably angry with me for no reason. However, she was an amazingly strong woman and a hero to me. She had been totally blind most of her life and had undergone a huge nu I could fathom, However she overcame a huge amount of trials and tribulations in her life; she hung on and survived. Her Mother died when she was ten. Her Father was blind. She became blind at 20 herself, etc.

My Mother overcame the odds

Betty reached out to me at a very bad time in my life, the year my Mother and my Brother both died. I saw her strength then. She has been a loyal friend all these years. Loyality is heroic. We were in a restaurant and  she said "I think we should meet for dinner every week." I felt less alone, as if she'd thrown a lifeline to me to hold onto.

What did I do differently because of this? We met weekly after that...for over 20 years and she became elevated to the level of family in my mind.

How can the protagonists show us these qualities in the first few pages? This is the challenge we must meet in the first five pages.