How to Write a Main Character Who Drives the Plot

hi guys it's Ellen Rock freelance editor today we're continuing our discussion of protagonist yesterday we talked about goal-oriented protagonists and today we're going to talk about how to create protagonists that drive the plot one of the most common problems that writers have with their protagonists comes down to simply how they're conceptualizing a novel or a story a lot of writers think of a story as if it's a series of events happening to the protagonist but really you want to think about story as a series of events that the protagonist drives forward it's true that lots of things are going to happen to your protagonist and a lot of those things are going to be outside of their control but the protagonist should be the primary driving force behind the story the story shouldn't be possible without the protagonists proactive behavior that's what takes a protagonist from just a side character or a minor character and turns them into the main character when the protagonist isn't being proactive and isn't striving towards a goal it's very likely for the protagonist to start to become sort of a helpless victim and a lot of the time the writer will get this sense that there's not enough drama there's not enough going on in the story and so they'll keep piling on more and more hardship so the character will be hurt and injured and abused and bullied and it will go on and on and all these negative things will happen but because the protagonist isn't taking action towards a goal it never helps the reader to emotionally connect because readers don't really connect to emotions of the character without having an underlying motivation or goal from that character so in other words we like to root for characters to achieve what they want to achieve we need to understand why they want that thing we find it much more difficult to relate to characters or empathize with characters when they're just put in negative situations or negative situations happen to them and they're not doing anything about it or they're not trying to solve the problem it's important to keep in mind that for your protagonist take proactive steps towards a goal doesn't mean that those steps have to be helpful or logical or noble they just need to be anything that the protagonist is actively doing so your protagonist probably is going to take steps that are actually going to make their situation worse instead of better because their flaw and their false belief about how to solve the problem will lead them towards making mistakes and causing themselves more hardship and more issues in the long run so you don't have to worry about the protagonist taking steps that actually work the protagonist just needs to take steps so for instance you might have a scene where the protagonist goes to a particular location because they're trying to achieve something so say the protagonist is going to go to the library to look for a specific book with specific information that they need so in this circumstance your protagonist is being proactive they're going to try to get this book which is a stepping stone towards a larger goal they can be interrupted on the way to the library they can be interrupted once they get to the library the book might not have the information the book might not be there somebody might get angry with them while they're at the library there are lots of ways that you can interfere with the goal so that they don't actually achieve what they want to achieve but the goal still exists so you have a situation where you can interrupt the goal so that it doesn't play out you have situations where the goal of the protagonist is counterproductive and actually gets them into more trouble trouble and makes the situation worse and of course occasionally you will have situations where your protagonist truly does move towards their goal and a helpful and productive way so even though your character will necessarily take helpful or productive steps towards their goal all the time they still need to be able to take those steps and there are circumstances where writers create characters that just don't have the strength necessary to fulfill that roles of protagonists this is especially common with young female characters you might be portrayed as very weak abused or bullied or both and these characters often fall into a trap where they're being victimized or they're being abused in many scenes and it becomes sort of repetitive almost gratuitous and the character isn't taking isn't taking any steps because they're just not quite strong enough and it's not it's not enough to just put a character in the role of protagonist that character needs to have enough personal strength to step into that role and fulfill that role and you create a character that has a very victim mentality or a character that is overly reliant on other people it can be an additional challenge to give that character things that things to do that really move the plot or affect them that also feel natural because if you have a character that just wouldn't take proactive steps you're going to really run into trouble because at that point you're either going to have to force your character to act against their nature which is runs a strong risk of seeming artificial or you're going to need to rethink the character to give them a little bit more strength and a little bit more capability I do want to stress that this doesn't mean you can't write a book about a victim there are lots of really great novels about people who are in different types of victimizing situations and there's nothing wrong with that at all the key is that the character needs to be able to take steps and sometimes this is difficult to conceptualize because we think about steps as being as I mentioned earlier more productive and helpful but the character might be taking steps that don't get them out of the situation that's causing them discomfort or or the abusive scenario so for example you could write a book about a girl a little girl she's being abused and she meets a boy and she decides that she's gonna cover up her bruises with makeup so the boy doesn't find out about it in that situation she's being proactive she's covering up the bruises it's not proactive against what the reader would see as her primary problem which is the abuse but it is proactive for her own goal and her goal maybe just I don't want anybody to find out about this so as long as the goal is there it doesn't barely have to be a goal with so much strength that the character is able to leave the situation or fight back with their bully or their abuser so the key to writing a victim that works isn't necessarily giving that character enough strength to fight back initially but rather to demonstrate why they're not fighting back what their actual goal is and Aiko may be running away it may be hiding that they're being abused or bullied it may be trying to become more impressive so that they won't be bullied anymore just purely because there's so much more impressive or so much more capable than before there are lots of ways that somebody could try to end victimization that's not necessarily directly trying to end the situation so if you're not writing a character that's truly a victim and in the traditional sense so they're not a victim of abuse they're not a victim of bullying you might still be running into this problem sort of indirectly because the character could still have a victim mentality even if they're not in a traditionally victimizing situation so for example you might have a character who spends a lot of time contemplating negative things happened in the past they might brood over negative things that happened to them and as I mentioned earlier it's just that sense that things are happening to them and the character views the world in this way all these things are happening to me and I just don't have any control over it if your character has that type of mentality it's going to be really really difficult to get them to step up into the role of protagonist so hopefully this video helped you to get a better sense of how to create a character that really drives the plot we'll be talking about this again later on and novel boot camp because I'll be breaking down scene structure and the elements of scene so that will really help at that point to see how that will play out on a scene by scene basis tomorrow I'm going to be talking about character flaws which will also help you solve this problem and we'll be talking about how those flaws can lead to the character making bad decisions and how that will overall improve the structure of your novel

Channel: Ellen Brock

Views: 123,813

Keywords: protagonist, main character, characterization, writing, novel, fiction, plot, how to, how to write, writing characters, strong characters, writing advice, writing tips, character tips, characterization tips, novel writing, novel boot camp, ellen brock, editor, editing, novel editing, plotting, how to plot, novel plotting

Id: ndWg5sEeBKg

Length: 8min 45sec (525 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 06 2016