What is a Protagonist?
Lesson from "Story" by Robert McKee
Protagonist - The main character in a story.
Generally, the protagonist is a single character.
A story, however, could be driven by two or more characters (Thelma & Luise, The Seven Samurai).
For two or more characters to form a Plural-Protagonist, two conditions must be met:
All individuals in the group share the same desire
In the struggle to achieve this desire, they mutually suffer and benefit
Within a Plural-Protagonist, motivation, action, and consequence are shared.
A story may also be Multiprotagonist, where the characters pursue separate and individual desire, suffering and benefiting independently (Pulp Fiction, The Breakfast Club).
Multiprotagonist stories becomes Multiplot stories. Rather than driving the telling through the focused desire of a protagonist (either single or plural), these works weave a number of smaller stories, each with its own protagonist, to create a dynamic portrait of a specific society.
Anything that can be given a free will and the capacity to desire, take action, and suffer the consequences can be a protagonist.
Qualities of a Protagonist:
All protagonists have certain hallmark qualities, and the first is willpower.
A protagonist is a willful character.
A story cannot be told about a protagonist who doesn’t want anything, who cannot make decisions, whose actions effect no change at any level.
The protagonist has a conscious desire.
The protagonist has a need or goal, an object of desire, and knows it.
If you pulled your protagonist aside and asked “what do you want” he would have an answer: “I’d like X today, Y next week, but in the end I want Z.”
The protagonist’s object of desire may be external: the destruction of the shark in Jaws, or internal, like maturity in Big.
In either case, the protagonist knows what he wants, and for many characters a simple, clear, conscious desire is sufficient.
The protagonist may also have a self-contradictory unconscious desire.
The most memorable, fascinating characters tend to have not only a conscious but an unconscious desire.
What he believes he wants is the antithesis of what he actually but unwittingly wants.
Although these complex characters are unaware of their subconscious needs, the audience senses it, perceiving in them an inner contradiction. What would be the point of giving a character a subconscious desire if it happens to be the very thing he knowingly seeks?
The protagonist has the capacities to pursue the Object of Desire convincingly.
The protagonist’s characterization must be appropriate. He needs a believable, combination of qualities in the right balance to pursue his desires.
The protagonist must have at least a chance to attain his desire.
A protagonist who’s literally hopeless, who hasn’t even the minimal capacity to achieve his desire, cannot interest us.
The protagonist has the will and capacity to pursue the object of his conscious (and/or unconscious) desire to the end of the line, to the human limit established by setting and genre.
A story must build to a final action beyond which the audience cannot imagine another.
The audience wants to be taken to the limit, to where all questions are answered, all emotions satisfied— the end of the line.
This doesn’t mean that your story can’t have a sequel; your protagonist may have more tales to tell. It means that each story must find closure for itself.
This was a lesson from Story by Robert McKee.
If you want to pick up your own copy of the book, click here.
Or explore the C.S.M. Fiction archive.
Very succinct. Thank you.