Since Helen, in this story, is the central character, her nature and motivation will be of special importance to the convincingness of the lie. One possible choice, it might seem at first glance, is to make her an innocent victim. Sheltered and coddled, brought up among women, married in her girlhood to mighty Menelaos, she has no real knowledge of her hard-working, hard-fighting kinsmen, their fanatical loyalty to one another, and their puritanical code. Though all these qualities might prove useful to the writer, the decision to make her a victim will be disastrous. No fiction can have real interest if the central character is not an agent struggling for his or her own goals but a victim, subject to the will of others. (Failure to recognize that the central character must act, not simply be acted upon, is the single most common mistake in the fiction of beginners.) We care how things turn out because the character cares—our interest comes from empathy—and though we may know more than the character knows, anticipating dangers the character cannot see, we understand and to some degree sympathize with the character’s desire, approving what the character approves (what the character values), even if we sense that the character’s ideal is impractical or insufficient. Thus though we can see at a glance that Captain Ahab is a madman, we affirm his furious hunger to know the truth, so much so that we find ourselves caught up, like the crew of the Pequod, in his lunatic quest. And thus though we know in our bones that the theory of Raskolnikov is wrong, we share his sense of outrage at the injustice of things and become accessories in his murder of the cynical and cruel old pawnbrokeress. If we’re bored by the debauched focal characters of the Marquis de Sade, on the other hand, the reason is that we find their values and goals repugnant, their world view too stupid (threatening?) to hold our interest.