Post #193 November 18 2019

“Story Basics: Proactive vs Reactive”

The next point to consider in our story lab overview of storytelling basics is this: make your protagonist proactive not reactive.  The website Storysci.com has this to say:

The more proactive your protagonist is, the more invested in him/her your audience will be. They will want what (s)he wants. A protagonist is proactive when (s)he is the one to take charge and initiate events that advance the plot. The opposite of this is a reactive protagonist who responds to events forced on him/her by the plot. A reactive protagonist will not only make the audience feel like something is missing in your story, but they will fail to build a personal connection with the protagonist as well.

This point speaks to the believability of your protagonist.  Readers want to engage with your hero, in some way.  It’s easier to do this when conflict develops as a result of your hero trying to achieve his or her goals.   Remember what we said about conflict last time: conflict is the natural result of one character’s desires intersecting an obstacle. Conflict increases proportionally to the amount that each side pushes back.

In other words, your hero should have a goal or goals to achieve and actively do something to try and achieve them.  Nobody wants to read about a wimp who just lets life happen to them and does nothing to achieve anything or prevent bad things from occurring.  Conflict occurs when your hero acts this way and is prevented from achieving his goals.  That which prevents him from achieving his goals could be his own nature, another character, fate, society, the law or mischievous gods atop Mount Olympus.  But it is in the striving and failing (at least initially) that your hero becomes real to the reader, because we’ve all been through this.

Clearly, this point speaks to how well you know your hero.  How well have you thought out his nature?  Is he an introvert?  Is he a gung-ho Type A personality who is forever making messes that others have to clean up?  Is he just careless, scatterbrained?  Hopelessly romantic?  Whoever your hero is, understand his personality well enough and his goals well enough, to put him in situations where he is trying to achieve those goals but often falls short.  And when he does fall short, what does he do then?  Cry a river?  Buckle down and work harder?  Try another tactic?  Whatever you choose, make sure your hero is actively working to move forward but is all too often stymied in his efforts.

Your reader wants to feel or see or know that they could have been there in your hero’s shoes.  It could have happened to them.  How do you achieve this?  The technique starts with understanding your hero intimately.  Write down his likes and dislikes.  I often spent time describing in a character bio what their early life was like.  Joe Blow was the third son of a plumber and spent many hours helping his Dad cleaning up spills and flooded basements and he could solder a pipe elbow at the age of eight.  Maybe Joe is good with his hands and wants to do something manual.  He wants to open his own business but he doesn’t have a good head for numbers or business operations.  What does he do?   Maybe he tries his luck at running a business but fails miserably and goes deep into debt.  Now what?  Does he become bitter?  Does he become homicidal and kill someone, then spend half a life running from the law?  There are all kinds of possibilities.  But just make sure you show Joe trying to actually do things, either setting up his business, staying up late trying to puzzle out double-entry bookkeeping or trying to keep one step ahead of the collection agencies and the police.  And to think all this came about in part because Joe helped his Dad solder pipe joints and clean up flooded basements.  I spend time developing early-life background for many of my characters because I feel that this is such a formative time for what we become later.

The Word Shed will take a two-week hiatus for the Thanksgiving Holiday, so there won’t be posts for November 25 or December 2.  In the next post on December 9, we’ll continue our story lab with Story Basics Point #4: have a central core to your story.

Have a great and blessed holiday and I’ll see you then.

Phil B.