or "average" (at least

It gives the most room to expand.

As the story progresses, we observe the change of the protagonist, be it growth in strength or fall to corruption, or getting tangled with powers, or struggling to retain virtues against onslaught of temptations. By starting with someone "generic" you give yourself the most room to expand, to make the change more drastic and more meaningful.

If you start with too many quirks, you run into immediate risk of making your protagonist a mary sue. It takes skill and caution to make a "quirky" (be it powerful, or overly unfortunate, or generally "special") protagonist not become the center of the universe, with the rest of the world revolving around them.

Yes, it's one of the "rules that exist to be broken" - if you have a good plot which requires a "special snowflake" at the very beginning, do it - it may be a reversal of the "growth" story, where a tired god seeks escape into a calm life of a common mortal, or it may be a comedy with an arrogant, handsome, rich and famous hero running face first into a situation only fit for a "commoner", or you may come up with a Machiavellian mind and display its nature through the progress - these are all exceptions, violations of the rule - a rule that says "start with someone very relatable, then put them through a grinder and show what comes out".

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: Should I use hypophoras at the beginning of every paragraphs? Hypophora is a figure of speech in which a writer raises a question and then immediately provides an answer to that question.

: Have the ending in mind and backtrace from there. The events serve one fundamental purpose: reaching the final resolution. Everything else is secondary, hides or reveals motives, caveats and

: How should footnotes be used in non-paginated media? How should footnotes be attached to a text that doesn't form pages? Say, a lengthy text, over 10,000 words as a single webpage but with

: Usage of margin notes vs. footnotes There is a tendency in textbooks to leave ample margins for marginal notes and figures, as well as to leave readers space to include their own annotations.

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