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Wandering down the bylanes of your plot, you’re content. It is structured neatly, you know exactly what you want out of the book, and you know the end and the beginning. But the characters still loom over your head, threatening to knock the wind out of your literary lungs. After all, any great story is remembered by readers but what makes them go back to the book again is the protagonist.
Well, your search for how to write a protagonist ends here! Let’s start with the basics.
Who is the protagonist?
A protagonist is the main character of a book, someone on whom the entire plot is centered. A protagonist often determines the movement of the plot and its pace. They also need not always be a hero (consider Hamlet: A tortured, indecisive mess of a protagonist!).
Note that the protagonist is not the same as the lead character. The protagonist is the central driving force of the plot while the lead character is the most significant character in the story. A protagonist’s fears, goals, and dreams drive the plot whereas the main characters lend them support. Let us see in what different ways can you structure the perfect protagonist according to your story.
When you create your characters, dive into the deeper, finer details of the character of your protagonist. Since it is their desires and fears that are going to be driving the plot, you need to have them stamped on your brain to avoid further confusion in the story. You could brainstorm the deeper thinking processes that you think your lead character might have with a friend, maybe a psychology major. For example:
Use your secondary characters to full advantage for mining the potential emotions of your protagonist. Secondary characters might be in the position of a lover that the lead lost in an accident which has maybe made them so distant and aloof in the present time. For example:
You could also use the secondary character as a weak point to exploit the protagonist’s flaws. For example, if the sister of the protagonist goes missing, they will do anything, even if it is risking their reputation for her sake. This may damage the near-perfect image of the protagonist and they have to tussle with these two feelings.
A protagonist with a challenge will be as exciting to write and even more exciting for the audience to read. Challenges create an exciting rising and falling action. Interestingly, they help to cement the character of your protagonist. For example, in a financial crisis, if offered a lot of money for a highly illegal job, the protagonist’s decision cements their ethics and if needed re-establishes their character. An example of rising and falling action here might be:
Write down your protagonist’s stakes. What do they have to lose? Why are they pursuing what they are pursuing? The higher the stakes, the greater the conflict. The more complicated the stakes, the more you get to explore your character’s personality and motivations on their journey. One tip from us is that you write down the absolute worst thing that could ever happen to your protagonist so that it looms like a black cloud over their head, always present and threatening. For example:
Accentuate your protagonist’s flaws and quirks through small things. These physical characteristics might sound irrelevant right now, but descriptions make the character stand out. For example, if your character is always anxious, you might give them a small detail of tapping their foot rhythmically every time there is a conflict in the room. This technique of show-not-tell tells more about your character than plainly stating facts about them, and that is the tea.
These tips should get you started on your protagonist and hopefully by extension on your main characters too. You can check out the article on how to write a plot on the Resource Center. You don’t have to build a protagonist according to the whims and fancies of others, but it is important that they remain true to their role in the plot and remain authentic. Take a deep breath and start writing now!
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