Helping your protagonist live up to your readers’ expectations

Your protagonist has a lot on their shoulders in terms of what a reader expects from them.  A protagonist is the main character because they are the person who will be doing either of two things; doing things or having things done to them. In the end, it’s probably going to be both, but for now I’ll focus on the expectation of them acting. If a main character does not act, does not perform actions that moves on the storyline and instead they simply exist as a passive individual then it’s fairly uninteresting to read about their story. Granted, certain characters are passive by their very nature but passiveness when it comes to the plotline and simply having a passive personality are entirely different things. You need to ask yourself, why is this person the protagonist? What makes them so important that the story is tracking their movements when, when it comes down to the nitty gritty, they are simply unable to move things along.

A degree of decisiveness needs to be in place. The reader is expecting them to respond to the things which happen to them or around them; the protagonist needs to seek out answers to questions, look for what’s missing and work out what to do next. These things can be worked into the framework of every personality type. A passive, go with the flow personality is not a hindrance to progressing the storyline and instead can be incorporated into the way that protagonist goes about advancing things. A protagonist who is, by nature, a complete coward may still be unable to help themselves from exploring a mystery further; hating themselves every step of the way. By the time they finally run away it may already be too late and the damage that their curiosity led to has already been done. With characters that are passive, lazy or cowards then you just need to get a little more inventive with the storyline. 

So far, for a protagonist needing to live up to expectations I’ve outlined that they need to make decisions for themselves and also to act upon those decisions. There’s something else that I want to discuss however and that’s taking responsibility of the consequences that may occur. I find this to be an essential component of any good character. I’m sure you’re familiar with that, “and it was all a dream” ending of bad books or bad films and the same, fist pounding, author-slapping reaction applies to a character who does not take responsibility. Again, this sounds like a personality aspect of a character and that I’m ignoring irresponsible characters, but I’m not. A good character who takes responsibility is one who has to deal with the problems they have caused through their decision making or actions they’ve been performing. Maybe they don’t want to, maybe they’ve been avoiding it for a long time, but eventually it will catch up with them. It needs to catch up with them sooner or later; any problems that are caused cannot disappear into the abyss never to be seen again, that’s not how real life works.  Irresponsible characters can be irresponsible in many senses; they don’t take care of their family, they don’t take care of their money or themselves, they don’t go to school and so on but that doesn’t make them entirely stationary. If you have a protagonist who is not only irresponsible but who doesn’t leave the house, doesn’t talk to people, doesn’t think about things and doesn’t care what’s going on around them then you might want to rework the character a little.

Lazy characters, like Hershey, can be spurred into action with the right incentives.

When a story ‘was all a dream’ it has effectively just had all aspects of responsibility and consequence removed from it. This is naturally going to frustrate the reader because, god dammit, characters shouldn’t be able to get away with things like that. Where there should have been a climax or a conclusion of events there is instead a rather miserable fizzling off, leaving the reader just sort of helplessly standing there, wondering what just happened. Consequences of the character’s actions need to actually happen, especially one’s which are being anticipated by the reader for some time. If you are writing a fantasy novel you should be particularly cautious of exercising a ‘magical’ way out of a problem as more often than not that will diminish your book, not enhance it. Certain problems can be solved by a form of magic in a fantasy book but, like in many fantasy universes, there need to be very tight rules and regulations of that magic otherwise it just turns into a free-for-all. Remember, people prefer to read about conflicts, struggle and overcoming these things through hard work and perseverance; emotional or physical. With this in mind it’s unfair to set up a problem and then have it disappear into thin air later on in the book with no consequences. 

A reader expects many things from a good book but their expectations of the protagonist often include these components. Consequences, responsibility, taking action and moving the storyline along are what distinguish the protagonist from other characters in the book. These components are an indication of good quality writing in general; a novel where decisions are meaningless due there being no consequences is likely to be unrealistic and uninspiring.  The protagonist’s personality has no bearing on how much they are pulling their weight when it comes to the storyline and even passive or shy characters can become the decision-maker. Of course, this is not all that makes a good protagonist but that’s for another time, happy writing!

Like so.