Are You Writing Serious Fantasy? II

[Darby]

How about a new question: how do you make your protagonist (hero) somebody your reader can relate to, or like, or at least sympathize with?

I make my protangonist someone *I* can relate to, and sympathize with, and I let my audience take care of itself. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]
For some reason, everyone keeps saying my current protagonist is really eccentric, but I like him, so I figure that's all that matters. He really IS a likable guy, and his way of perceiving things makes sense (to me, anyway). There's no relation between Tolkien's work and mine though, although I'd like to work on the geography and history of my novel and give it some more depth (which is something I admire in Tolkien's work).