AUGUST, 2019
WHO IS DRIVING YOUR STORY?
MAKE SURE THE PROPER PROTAGONIST
IS AT THE WHEEL
By: Alice Orr
You have gifted
yourself with the
Idea from Heaven.
In the past several of
these articles, you’ve
learned to create a
story idea that is po-
tentially
strong
enough to hook your readers as a captive
audience for the length of your entire
book. Your idea engine is tuned up and
ready to roll. Now, you must designate
your driver very carefully...
A protagonist, main character, must
be strong enough to set the hook deeper
still. She is the center of your story
around which all the rest revolves, from
the first page to the last. She must be a
person of substance, complex enough to
command and hold reader attention from
your dramatic opening to your satisfying
ending.
She is your hero and the most fasci-
nating person in your story. A passive
reactor will not fit this bill. Your hero
must decide to act, and do exactly that,
thus setting the action of the story in mo-
tion. She is the driving principal that
keeps the action moving.
Your main character is the person
with the most at stake in your story situa-
tion. She has the most to lose if things go
badly. Often, in a truly gripping story,
other people could lose big time to. She
must commit herself to preventing that,
and this generosity of spirit makes her
even more heroic, burying the story hook
deeper into your reader’s heart.
Your character needs a happy ending
more desperately than she’s ever needed
anything. The crucial intensity of this
desire, for others as well as herself, ties
the reader more and more inextricably to
your character’s fate, sinking the story
hook deeper yet again.
This is a heavy burden for any char-
acter to support. Is your main character
equal to the challenge? Can she carry the
weight? As this burden mounts with
every chapter, bending her nearly to
breaking point, will she soldier on? If she
does, will your reader believe she is capa-
ble of such strength and endurance?
Could someone else in your story
carry its burden more convincingly? Is
your story most riveting with the main
character you have chosen at its center?
Or not? The success of your story de-
pends on your honest, accurate answer to
this question. No matter how attached
you may be to your character, you must
strive relentlessly toward this crucial
truth.
Is Scarlett O’Hara the proper pro-
tagonist for Margaret Mitchell’s Gone
with the Wind ? She escapes burning
Atlanta, struggles home, finds her mother
dead, her father deranged, Tara in sham-
bles, and not a scrap of food anywhere.
Scarlett staggers to the garden, scratches
a root from the ground, attempts to eat it
and vomits.
This is a black story moment if
there ever was one. She might have col-
lapsed into the dust and given up. In-
stead, she makes this black moment a
turning point of her story. Despite ex-
haustion and despair, she pushes herself
up from the dirt, lifts a grimy fist to
heaven and cries, “As God is my witness,
they’re not going to lick me. As God is
my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.”
Do we believe this behavior from
this character? She’s shown herself to
be shallow, uncaring, vain, and selfish.
Such traits are not considered character
strengths, but she is also stubborn, re-
lentless, and afire with determination. I,
for one, don’t doubt for an instant she
has the grit to drag herself upright and
vow to God that nothing will ever deter
her again.
Continued on Page 17
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