“It is wonderful to be the center of attention.”
-Michael Scott, The Office
Stories have impact. Why? Because they affect people in some way. Exactly how do we affect people with our stories? Through our protagonist. But what is a
“It is wonderful to be the center of attention.”
-Michael Scott, The Office
Stories have impact. Why? Because they affect people in some way. Exactly how do we affect people with our stories? Through our protagonist. But what is a protagonist? And how do we create a good one?
People relate to people, so it makes sense that as viewers we need someone else to watch to understand the impact the story is meant to have. It seems simple, right? Just show someone going through something and other people will totally get it. Well, sure, but creating a compelling and effective protagonist that is appropriate for our story is a little more complicated than that.
In this post you will get:
- A review of what is a protagonist and their main functions with insights
- Three major stages to creating effective protagonists, with 29 specific steps and questions to take
- Explanations of how protagonists work in other situations
THE MAIN FUNCTIONS OF PROTAGONISTS
First, here is a quick refresher of what is a protagonist: the basic functions a protagonist fulfills, and some insight on how those functions work:
The protagonist is the focus of the story
Yes, it’s pretty obvious we all understand that the protagonist is meant to be the character we follow. But there is an interesting reason behind it in terms of what is a protagonist: the protagonist is a stand-in for the audience, meaning the protagonist represents the viewer. Not the specific person that the viewer is, but a representation of the viewer. While watching the protagonist, the viewer subconsciously thinks “this is me.” This helps to ground them in the story and make them pay attention to what they watch.
The protagonist goes through the biggest change of any character in the story
If the viewer is to believe that the story was worth telling, then we need to see that the events have some sort of impact on the protagonist. Usually this comes in the form of the protagonist’s character flaw changing throughout the story. In most stories, character flaws evolve from a negative trait to more positive, which means that the protagonist changes for the better. But this doesn’t always have to be the case, sometimes they change for the worse. The main thing is that the protagonist changes in some way. This change is related to the next topic…
The protagonist is usually the character that learns the lesson of the story – aka the theme
Theme can be thought of as a message or lesson or point to the story, and the person best to receive that information and therefore pass it onto the audience is the protagonist. Usually the change in the character flaw leads them to understand something new, and what they learn and how they change indicate the theme. Themes are not usually stated outright, but the audience will glean that the protagonist has Learned something (whether positive or negative) from participating in the story.
The protagonist usually pursues a goal
By making the protagonist pursue a goal, we are helping keep the audience engaged in the story because they’ll want to know the answer to the question “will they get the goal or not?”. While pursuing the goal, the protagonist will make decisions and behave in ways that affect the story and then face the consequences of these decisions and behaviors.
The protagonist usually overcomes the opponent to achieve the resolution in Act 3
There are many ways and variations in which this can happen, but in most stories the protagonist overcomes the opponent or obstacles of the story and creates a resolution in Act 3.
THREE MAJOR STAGES FOR CREATING PROTAGONISTS
While identifying what is a protagonist, we can break down the process of creating the protagonist into three larger stages:
- Initial Decisions and Approach
- Specific Choices to Round Out the Protagonist
- Putting the Protagonist Through the Story
These stages tend to happen for writers whether they realize it or not. Let’s take a look…
Stage 1: Initial Decisions and Approach
These decisions are usually made in the early stages of the screenplay’s development, sometimes before anything is even put to paper. These aspects can be part of the first couple of ideas the writer has for the screenplay.
Choose who the protagonist will be.
Who is the best choice to be the protagonist? Sometimes this can be a tough question, and there are different factors that affect it, especially what the core idea of the screenplay is. Here are some questions that can help with this decision:
Who is the best or worst person to go on the adventure?
If you’ve already come up with your adventure, you can reverse engineer the best or worst person that