Continuing on with my series about how to write a book, it’s time to talk about the character that your book centers around: your protagonist. Your protagonist is the main character who is trying to survive or stop whatever the villian is doing. It’s very important to know how to write this character, otherwise your readers are going to be rooting for the villian.
Just like the villian, there are four types of protagonist: Dynamic, Static, Round, and Flat. Dynamic characters change with the circumstances, Static characters don’t really change much throughout the series, Round characters change from within, and Flat characters are basically NPCs who are there to push the plot foward by providing information or tangible goods. You do not want your main protagonist (or any of your protagonists, really) to fall into the Flat category. If they do, your book is going to be a slog to get through since the character will have nothing for the reader to relate to. Just like with the villian, you want readers to relate to the hero(es) in some way. That’s why I suggest using a Dynamic, Static or Round character for your main protagonist and the other heroes.
An example of a poorly written protagonist would be Magnus from the Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard series. For those of you who haven’t read my review the links are right here:
Throughout the series, Magnus is a very flat character. He is a stereotype of a homeless, socialist teenager and his character is annoying to read. You can form no connection with him because no one reading the series can relate to anything he’s saying or relate to what he’s like. He never changes in the series and you hate him as much at the end of the story as at the start. The other characters are like that as well, all being stereotypes depending on what minority they belong to and are never changing.
This is not what you want your hero to be like.
An example of a well written protagonist would be Percy Jackson from the Percy Jackson and the Olympians and Heroes of Olympus series (I use this example partially to show how Rick Riordan wrote a good main protagonist and a bad one). He’s sarcastic, but his sarcasm is in better taste than Magnus’s and is actually funny. He’s brave, noble, and loyal to his friends even to a fault. Though we can’t relate to being demigods or fighting monsters halfway around the world on a magical ship, we can relate to be loyal to friends and trying to have some of the qualities that Percy has throughout the series. He’s actually likeable and does things that are unexpected sometimes. He seems like the type of person you’d want to hang around with. On top of that, he’s a round character who changes and matures as he ages in the series.
That’s what you want your protagonist to be like.
Now that you’ve figured out if your protagonist is Round, Dynamic, Static or (hopefully not) Flat, you need to figure out your protagonists backstory. Maybe you want to give them a happy backstory (such as they had a stable family life, got what they wanted all the time, but now need to grow and mature because something bad is happening) or you could do the reverse and give them a tragic backstory (the protagonist is an orphan who must fend for his/herself, lost a parent, was hurt somehow, etc. and must grow and heal from that).
Where did they live? What are their mostives? There must be stories within a story, and your character’s background is one of those smaller stories. When writing the character’s background, you have to answer the who, the what, the why, the when, and the how. As you do this, put yourself in the character’s shoes and think about how these things would affect their personalities and attitudes as the book progresses. If it’s a series that takes place over several years, think about how their past circumstances would affect them as they mature. This is especially a good way of doing things if your character is fighting something from within.
Thridly, since you now have a backstory for the protagonist, you need to make them seem real. Give them character traits that people can either relate to or that will pull at the heart strings of the reader. However, one of the things that you can do (not saying you should in all cases, this is only if you feel you could pull this off) is make your protagonist unlikeable in some aspects. People in real life often don’t do the right, moral thing all the time. We are by no means perfect little angels all the time. This is a fact that many authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien, George R. R. Martin, C. S. Lewis, have acknowledged. However, the problem with making some protagonists unlikeable admidst their good traits is that if you overdo the unlikeable aspects of the character, you’ll end up making the character so horrible that no one will root for them. Galadriel from Rings of Power or She-Hulk from the Marvel show by the same name are two examples of protagonists who are so unlikeable that the person watching them is automatically going to like the villian better in the hopes that the horrible protagonist is eliminated.
On the other hand, a protagonist who has a lot of flaws but is still likeable would be Turin Turambar from The Children of Hurin. He has a lot of faults and makes many mistakes throughout the tale, but the reader still wants to root for him because he’s still trying to do the right thing and we want him to have a happy ending after all he’s gone through. His flaws make him more 3-D, but don’t take away from his character.
At this point you should have a pretty good idea of how to write a flushed out main protagonist, but there’s one more thing that needs to be done. No main protagonist is complete without a sidekick or two…or three…or four…. The sidekick(s) are also known as secondary characters, though they can become a main protagonist using the formula I’ve already given you. Secondary characters are usually similar to the main character in how they are written, but are somewhat less flushed out depending on what their role is. You can have several secondary characters, but the more you have, the more storylines you’ll need to fit into the main story in a coherent way. While this can be done, it can be somewhat difficult for beginners. I would also warn against putting in more than five or six secondary characters per main character. We don’t need to learn all the ins-and-outs of the messenger’s life if he only appears for a page or two. If you want to put in more sidekicks, then I would suggest putting in teritary characters, which are even less flushed out than the secondary characters, but are still somewhat interesting. After that, however, you stray into the realm of background characters, who barely play a role. You can always make a tertiary character a secondary character or vice versa depending on what you’re writing (say you’re writing a series and a character dies or just doesn’t play much of a role in one book so you bring in someone else to fill that role). Always remember, though: when writing any character, make them somewhat relatable and give the reader a reason to like them to one extent or another.
Until next time,
M.J.
The Tanuki Corner 
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