Putting the "Main" in Main Character

In theory, it doesn’t seem hard to establish who your main character is. After all, your main character is the main character because the reader spends the most time with him. If the story is in first person, he’s even the narrator, but at the very least, you probably get his thoughts and perspective, something you wouldn’t from other characters.

Or maybe your main character is the main character because all the stuff happens to her. She’s not just some random waitress who shows up once in the middle scene and has a few witty lines. She is the key to the whole entire plot!

Sorry, but that’s just not enough. I’ve read stories where the main character is not the main character. Sometimes, there’s a gaping hole where the main character should be. Other times, there’s a sidekick who’s practically demanding to be put in the spotlight. Either way, the story won’t work like it’s supposed to without a strong protagonist, the right protagonist. Here’s a checklist to make sure you have one—we’ll call him/her the “MC.”

Why I Love Charlie Brown

“Lunchtime is among the worst times of the day,” Charlie Brown decides, eating alone and commenting on the paint job of his bench. This is after he thinks through the rest of his day and finds several other times that are equally terrible.

That’s the way it goes with poor Charlie Brown. You know that he’s never going to kick the football and his kite will always crash and his baseball team will always lose.

Oddly enough, that’s why we love him. Because he’s such a blockhead, such a loser.

There are times—actually, a good many times—when I am a blockhead and a loser, when I feel like I’m eating a lonely peanut butter sandwich and feeling around in my pocket for a nickel to get some life advice from the local sidewalk psychiatrist who will probably show me all of my faults and tell me to get over it.

We all seem to love Charlie Brown, probably because we all have Charlie Brown moments.

Three Backstory Strategies

I’ve discovered recently that the stuff that happens to a character before the start of the story is critically important, even if the reader never hears about any of it.

That’s right. You don’t need a flashback every other page (or worse, awkwardly staged dialogue intended to give the readers information) to make use of backstory. Backstory makes a character who he is when the story starts.

Think about yourself. Right now, if someone were to make a movie of your life, starting today, there would be some items of backstory they’d need to tell the audience. Who you are, how you got here, significant relationships, anything traumatic that is currently influencing you.

But there are an awful lot of things they wouldn’t feel the need to include. Not every shot from your mom’s photo album would need to be shown. Not every minute of home video would make the cut into the montage. But without those boring, unnecessary things, you wouldn’t be the same you. So they’re important, just not shown.

In Which I Apologize to a Fictional Character

I’ve never been really into the whole anti-hero thing. Recently, I realized that all of the main characters in my stories, while flawed in certain ways, have some things in common: they’re intelligent, they have a strong sense of justice, and they love other people.

Right now, I’m working on a story with a character named Barton.

Barton is a rude, anti-social assassin. Not exactly my typical hero.

He’s not as smart as I am, and he’s also fairly impulsive. This is annoying because I think of all of these great, complicated plans that would solve all of his problems, but I can’t realistically make them happen because Barton wouldn’t do them. (Those of you who don't understand the idea that the characters in some way determine what the author can and can't do...just trust me on this.)

He does not work well with people. In fact, when he can help it, he doesn’t work with people at all. This is annoying because everyone knows that when you have a big challenge to overcome and several people around with different skills, teamwork is the best way to go. Not alienating everyone around you by bossing them around and insulting them. That doesn’t work out so well.

He’s probably the hardest character I’ve ever worked with. And this is annoying because it shows that I am an immature writer who has some work to do. Writing Barton made me see very clearly that I tend to give my protagonists certain traits, keep their weaknesses in areas I’m comfortable with, and make them, well, kind of like me.

I Am Not Captain America

There’s something about The Avengers that works.

When Thor tries to persuade his brother to reconcile and come home, when Captain America blasts Iron Man for his selfishness and arrogance, when Black Widow is willing to do just about anything to save Hawkeye, we cheer. Courage, determination, self-sacrifice…it’s all there, and we love it.

I want to say that it’s because we believe in these things, deep down where it matters, in places where only stories can reach us. And maybe we do.

But we also traipsed along with a band of unruly pirates for four movies, cheering for the very dishonorable Jack Sparrow because, well, he was funny. We rooted for bare-faced revenge when the one after it was Inigo Montoya. And very few of us would describe James Bond as a man of character.

Our cinematic protagonists aren’t always, or even often, very admirable. So I can’t honestly say that fiction will always show our better side by reminding us that we ultimately want good to triumph over evil. It’s just not the way things are.

Sabbath Reflections: Compass Hearts

I didn’t really like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. It probably had a little bit to do with the fact that I was overloaded with gross, half-sea-creature villains growling and sliming all over the place. Mostly, though, it was because there wasn’t anyone I could cheer for.

The scene where all of the main characters are pointing their guns at everyone else, constantly shifting them, sums up the entire movie. No one trusts anyone, there aren’t clear distinctions between good and evil, and betrayal happens about every five minutes.

It reminds me of Jack’s compass, the one that points to whatever he wants most. In this movie, for the first time, he can’t find a heading, other than “Set sail in a general…that way direction.” He doesn’t know what he wants, or what he’s willing to do to get it.

I have the tendency to be like the Pirates of the Caribbean characters. Sometimes I don’t know what I want. Sometimes I’m afraid of what I want. Sometimes my compass seems to point in a hundred different directions, spinning around wildly as I try to ground myself in something, anything, and chart a course.

Playing Settlers with Protagonists

In this post, I am officially breaking every rule of writing to a general audience, including, but not limited to, avoiding insider language, being too specific and technical, and using an illustration that may not be familiar to all of my readers. I acknowledge this and accept any horrible penalties that may be inflicted upon me by the muse and/or some mysterious board of editors who police things like this.

That said, even if you’re not familiar with the board game Settlers of Catan (which you really should be), this quiz can still be helpful. Just ignore the terminology.

We’re going to do an analogy here, so track with me. In Settlers, the goal is to win the game. In your story, the protagonist’s goal is…well, whatever his goal is. As the writer, it helps to know how your protagonist will try to reach that goal, and how he will react to people who stand in the way. These kind of tendencies are the same that can be seen in others while playing strategy games. Thus the analogy.

Take the quiz for your protagonist and deal him a hand (or her, but I use the masculine here because I think he/she gets annoying).

Sabbath Reflections: Woody the Cowboy and Jesus

I learned a lot about writing a good protagonist by watching Pixar’s Toy Story trilogy, which you should go see if you haven’t already. The way Woody develops over the course of the movies led me to a revelation about the nature of heroes: all heroes, not just the ones in corny chick flicks, are motivated by some kind of love.

Obviously, that love looks different depending on the characters and their relationships to others in the movie. It could be a father who loves his son enough to cross and entire ocean to bring him back home (Finding Nemo), or an adorable robot who loves a stranger enough to protect her even when she shows no interest in him in return (Wall-E), or a superhero who loves truth and justice and the generic citizenry of the world enough to risk his life multiple times to save people (The Incredibles).