Why Your Protagonist Is Boring Despite Having a Goal
Adding Action and Raising the Stakes Won’t Fix It; Here’s What Will
One of the trickier problems I come across in my professional fiction editing is a protagonist who seems to have everything a good main character needs.
A clear goal? Check. Motivations that make sense? Double check. The stakes are high, and the author has imposed plenty of obstacles to surmount.
Yet reading the story feels like watching somebody else play a video game.
The hero travels the land, overcomes enemies, gains wisdom, and eventually confronts the villain. It all unfolds more or less as the author intended.
Maybe a scene or two even elicits a legitimate thrill. But the hero himself never catches the reader’s interest.
Early readers will usually suggest making the hero’s backstory traumatic, giving him some odd personality quirk, or tacking on inner conflict.
Well-meant as they may be, those suggestions just distract from the underlying problem:
The protagonist goes through the whole novel reacting to the plot without making decisions that fundamentally change the course of events.
A PROTAGONIST CAN BE ACTIVE YET LACK AGENCY
Think about a fantasy novel in which a young soldier’s village is destroyed by an invading army serving an ancient evil. He vows revenge and falls in with a plucky resistance group. Our soldier takes part in a series of battles until the rebel leader orders an attack on the villain’s fortress itself.
On paper, that’s an active protagonist.
But look closer at how the story actually takes shape.
First, our hero’s village is destroyed by a force beyond his control. He’s recruited by the rebels because his skills are of use to them. Then he fights on their orders.
At every stage, someone else decides what happens next.
The hero responds with competence, but the major plot points would still happen regardless of whether he made the same choices, the exact opposite choices, or none at all.
In fact, his main achievement is surviving until the ending.
It should go without saying, but some do need to hear it: An active character takes action. Character agency means taking actions that influence the story’s direction.
That’s the difference between a hero readers find interesting and one who’s just along for the ride.
WHY MORE CONFLICT WON’T FIX THE PROBLEM
Let’s suppose a beta reader renders the dreaded verdict that “The middle drags.”
The common response would be to add another, even tougher battle. Then go back and make the mentor’s training more brutal to justify the hero’s win. Toss in a rival soldier for good measure, and hand the rebels a defeat that runs up the death toll.
Without a doubt, the hero would face more danger.
But he’d still have no real influence over the events playing out around him.
Adding obstacles might punch up individual chapters, but they won’t necessarily make the protagonist more compelling.
How would a professional editor address the problem? By tracing the causal chain connecting those plot points. Which choices does the protagonist make, and why? What happens as a result?
If the answers are “The ones the plot and other characters dictate,” “because the author needs him to,” and “what the author wants to happen next,” no number of added action sequences will save the book.
GIVE YOUR HERO A CHOICE WITH A PRICE TAG
Let’s get back to our young soldier.
Instead of having the resistance recruit him, suppose he learns on his own that its commander plans to sacrifice the surviving villagers to gain a battlefield advantage.
Our hero can follow orders and pursue his revenge or betray the resistance to save the people he’s vowed to protect.
The price of one choice is complicity in the atrocity that destroyed his village. The cost of the other could be losing his powerful new allies.
Notice what changed: Now the hero’s choice determines the next plot development instead of getting carried along within it. And readers will have a reason to care about the protagonist’s actions.
Because such a choice reveals his character more effectively than an extra chapter explaining his childhood trauma.
Remember: Character is most clearly revealed when competing desires force a decision.
FOUR-QUESTION SCENE EVALUATION
None of this is to say you need to rewrite your book from scratch.
Instead, start by analyzing three to five key scenes; especially ones in which the protagonist gains information, faces a challenge, or suffers a setback. Evaluate each according to the following questions: