Guide Books

I really like McKee’s Story. It’s a great book for getting to the heart of what makes a story actually function. It pairs well with the Writer’s Journey by Vogler, which gives you a great understanding of the classic heroic structure.

I mention this because it’s good to have a guide when you are creating a story. You don’t have to follow every rule or structure element. But it’s a good idea to understand, in general, what makes a good, workmanlike story. Then you can go fair afield and start making it your own.

So, the point of all this was to mention a couple of key things about your protagonist that I notice a lot of work not bothering to do, or not doing well.

Your protagonist is the character (or characters) whose will drives the story forward. (That’s McKee). Now, of course, the villain (who is the shadow of the hero) also has a strong will and is driving events, but the protagonist makes the story happen because of the actions they take, either in response or in opposition. The point being, if your protagonist isn’t the one driving the tale, then they’re not the protagonist of the story. (There is such a thing as a false protagonist, but that’s another story).

Next, your protagonist has to be established, quite early, as sympathetic to the reader or viewer. That means you need a moment, however small, that makes the reader like your protagonist and want to be on their side. I see LOTS of stories that FAIL to do this. Because the writer loves their protagonist, they just assume the audience will as well. This rarely works. It doesn’t matter if the protagonist is a character utterly unlike the reader - if you create the right moment of sympathetic action, the reader will identify with them and be on their side. Once you have the reader sympathetic to the hero, now you can go through all the actions of the plot, including bad decisions, mistakes, reversals, emotional trauma, or what have you - and the reader will go through the journey with the protagonist, siding with them the whole time and desiring their success.

If you fail to do these two things - identify your protagonist, and make them sympathetic - then the worst thing will happen to your story that can happen to the story.

Your reader won’t care. And that’s the death of a story.