How To Create A Compelling Protagonist

Protagonist, late 17th century: from Greek prōtagōnistēs, from prōtos ‘first in importance’ plus agōnistēs ‘actor’.

Creating a compelling protagonist is one of the most crucial aspects of long-form storytelling. A protagonist is your book’s “first actor” —the character whose journey, growth, and internal conflict will engage readers and give meaning to your plot. Whether your story is a quiet literary novel or an action-packed thriller, your reader’s connection to your protagonist can make or break it. How do you make them as strong as possible?

Start with the Right Protagonist for your Concept

Use your concept to build a solid foundation for the character. This begins with asking yourself the basic questions about what kind of protagonist you need and what drives them. There is a game here, between having the right traits for such a character in such a story, but not being boring and predictable: how do you make them surprising and interesting? Think Elizabeth in Pride And Prejudice: she is completely the sort of likeable young woman Austen should write about, and yet she is spiky, can be difficult, wont to take offence. But we also root for her.

Or Start With The Protagonist

Maybe you’re starting with the character. Maybe you have a character who lives in your head. So work out a story that best matches them. What kind of journey will test them? What kind of lessons must they learn, about bravery, or love, or family, or their ambitions? And what do they not know yet, about any of those same subjects?

Go Deeper Into Their Personality

What are your protagonist’s defining characteristics? Are they brave, introspective, flawed, or naive? Working out – and working up - your protagonist's core traits early on gives you a starting point from which to develop their personality. Even characters who seem complicated or multi-faceted should have an essential nature that you can describe in a couple of sentences. What are their desires? What are their values? Are they optimistic or cynical? Are they funny or thoughtful? Or all of those things? Make them surprising. Give them resources (courage, ambition, knowledge) that will help them or give them the space to acquire those resources. Make them complex. Make them flawed. Let good characters do bad things occasionally. Make the reader understand why.

Send Them On A Quest!

The most important part of long-form character writing is that your protagonist must have a quest. In a novel, this is essential. That quest should be clear and be important to them – and the reader. A compelling protagonist has something they want—something that drives them across 300-odd pages. The quest should have an external goal: saving the world, finding love, solving a crime. But it should also have an internal goal: the character has to identify some kind of lack inside their own selves, and seek to overcome it.

Go Deeper Into Their Psychology

So all this means you must also go deeper into your protagonist’s psychology. Why are they like this? What is the deep nature of their being? In a commercial historical novel, it might be enough that your protagonist is a sweet young woman solving a mystery. But how much greater would it be if she had a complex psychology, which you had worked out precisely? Is she impulsive, and why? Does she crave love or community, and why? Make her feel things deeply and want things. What does she think she wants, and what does she really want? This is what she will learn on her internal quest. Think about yourself and your friend’s own psychologies. Think of how real people work.

Create a Backstory

This means you will have to work out a backstory – even if you don’t tell the reader all of it. Our past shapes who we are in the present, and understanding a character’s history helps you craft their psychology, actions, wants and reactions. Formative experiences can explain why your protagonist behaves the way they do and inform the choices they make. It can also be used for unresolved trauma: amazing for your protagonist’s psychology, desires – and mistakes.

Be careful about not telling us anything more than we absolutely have to know. A common mistake is telling too much backstory. The irony is that if you have done the above steps, you won’t need to do this. Your reader will understand. Only add backstory (in any detail) when your character or plot really needs it.

Give Your Protagonist a Flaw

Above, I said to have a good character to a bad thing. This is one of the best quick fixes for protagonist characterisation. Give them a flaw that both hampers their efforts – a bad temper, an unwillingness to bend – and makes us understand their psychology – tell us why they are like this. One of the most important elements of a compelling protagonist is their flaw. Flaws make us make mistakes. Flaws and mistakes create tension and plot opportunities. Perfect characters are boring. A flawed or damaged protagonist feels human, needs to change, and can evoke empathy – and even better, recognition – from a reader.

Use Tropes And Avoid Clichés

Tropes are a form of visual or verbal shorthand that allows us to understand something; it is usually a recognisable pattern of some sort. In character development, tropes can be useful. For example, a crime novel will usually require some kind of detective. Genre novels in particular use tropes a great deal and you should not ignore this. However, your protagonist should feel unique, not a rehash of what has been done before. Make your protagonist surprising, unexpected and real. Avoid making them too idealized. A compelling protagonist has desires specific to them, not just a collection of traits familiar from your area of the market. What makes your protagonist different from others in the same genre, but also a recognisable part of it? What makes them interesting, distinctive, or unique?

Your Protagonist Must Grow, Change And Transform.

All novels are arcs of transformation of characters through conflict. Read those words again: they are perhaps the most important any new novelist can learn. All novels are arcs of transformation of characters through conflict. Your protagonist should wrestle with their flaws, resist changing, accept changing and then change. This should beat out over the course of the novel, ending at the climax and resolution. A compelling character arc involves a protagonist confronting and overcoming their flaws. The resolution of their inner conflict matches the resolution of the quest’s external conflict. Making these connect will make the outcomes feel earned, not forced.

Use Relationships With Other Characters To Build Your Protagonist

Relationships deepen your protagonist’s character and transformation by showing their wants, desires, actions and needs. It also promotes narrative change. A young boy forms a deep connection with an elderly mentor who teaches him magic. Rivals become allies. They meet the love of their lives. Use relationships with secondary characters to build the protagonist, and characterise them around any gaps or requirements of the story. Ask: How do these relationships shape the protagonist’s actions or beliefs? How do the other characters challenge or support your protagonist’s journey? Create secondary characters who complement or contrast with your protagonist, so that the latter can learn or fight back. Turn these personalities and their interconnection into a kind of dance that only completes as the novel resolves.

Let Them Make Active Choices That Change The Story

Your protagonist’s choices and actions should drive the story. Even if they struggle with indecision or face defeats, their actions must have meaningful consequences. Agency is what makes a protagonist feel like a real person who matters in their own story – which is what people (readers) want for their own lives. If your protagonist does not significantly impact the story, if the story could exist without them, if there is no real story without their direct intervention, think again. Retool your book to change that.

Have Conflict – Inside And Out

Your protagonist and other characters should have conflict. Conflict is at the core of long-form writing: it is a powerful tool for showing the reader who your protagonist is, the challenges they face and how they overcome those challenges. Relationship conflict can drive your protagonist to make choices that reveal who they are. The conflict can be moving, tragic, funny, dangerous, intellectual, or all of these!

A compelling protagonist also has internal conflict, within themselves. That private, inside struggle—a battle between what the character wants and what they need—can elevate how much the story matters. The protagonist can share this with other characters, indeed probably has to at some stage (with a mentor, with a lover) but keep some of it for the reader only, as you communicate your protagonist’s private thoughts. Your reader will love having secret access to a protagonist’s mind, and know what they keep from others.

How To Write A Novel Chapter By Chapter available here: https://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Novel-Chapter-Outlining-ebook/dp/B0DJ8TMVWL?ref_=ast_author_mpb

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