Have you ever had this thought while reading a book or watching a movie: “A lot of things are happening, but I’m just bored,” or “I’m not sure I care what happens to this character”?
Me too. The culprit may not be obvious, but these thoughts can be the result of a passive protagonist. Protagonists that are inactive can cause a lot of issues in a story.
This article dives into the problems passive protagonists can create and explains how to fix them.
What Is a Passive Protagonist?
A passive protagonist (also called an inactive protagonist) is a protagonist who doesn’t play an active role in their story. If the story is a car, a passive protagonist is in the passenger seat not the driver’s seat.
In other words, a story has a passive protagonist when the events of the plot happen to the protagonist instead of the protagonist causing the plot to happen. Inactive protagonists react instead of act. They do things because the plot requires it or because another character tells/forces them to, not because they want to or decide to.
In contrast, an active protagonist influences the world around them along with being influenced by the world. They play an active role in the story by driving the plot forward. They make decisions. Most of all, they take action!
A Note on Action
Sometimes when we talk about action in writing, we’re talking about fight scenes or scenes with lots of physical elements. While that can be one way a protagonist might take action, that isn’t what I mean when I’m talking about action in this article.
Action in this sense simply means the protagonist does something. This can be applying for a job, entering a contest, taking a trip, etc. Action can come through dialogue too like asking someone on a date, confronting someone about a mistake they made, or confessing a secret.
Why You Should Avoid Passive Protagonists
As mentioned above, inactive protagonists cause issues in stories that readers are keen to notice.
Here are some of the problems they can trigger:
- The protagonist is overshadowed by the plot or other characters
- The story feels boring or too easy
- The audience doesn’t care about the protagonist
- The story is unsatisfying
No one wants any of these things in a story. So how do you fix your inactive protagonist?
How to Create an Active Protagonist
Here are some ways to take your protagonist from passive to active.
Character Goals
Not only do character goals make your characters more convincing, but they also help make your protagonist active. Everyone wants something. And your protagonist is no different.
In fact, they should have multiple goals (big and small), though their goals might change over the course of the story.
In Act 1, they might be focused on smaller goals because something holds them back from going after the big thing they want. They might be afraid to go after it, or their circumstances might not allow them to.
This plays into their internal conflict. In Act 1, the protagonist is dissatisfied with their life. They think their goal will make them happy (it won’t), but their internal conflict holds them back from being truly happy.
That’s where the catalyst (or inciting incident) comes in. The catalyst is something that happens to the protagonist. But after this event, the protagonist should take action. The inciting incident, aptly named, is what sets the rest of the story into motion—what sets the protagonist into motion.
In Acts 2 and 3, we should see the protagonist chasing goals (whether it’s the thing they always wanted or something else). Indeed, you can think of the plot as a series of goals, big and small. In each chapter and scene, the protagonist should have a goal, and the exciting part is whether or not they achieve these goals.
Example
In the movie Up, Carl and Ellie always wanted to travel to Paradise Falls (goal), but they could never save enough money. Life took over, and they never got to go. After Ellie dies, Carl is heartbroken and feels like he can’t go without Ellie.
Until the inciting incident that is. When Carl receives a court order to move to an assisted living facility, he realizes that he can either spend the rest of his days in a home never following his dream or he can go. He goes (action!), and the rest of the movie happens because of that action.
He pursues that goal for much of the movie as he steers his house through a storm and pulls it across the wilderness to get it to the top of the falls, even choosing that goal over saving Kevin from Muntz.
But the action doesn’t stop there. Carl accomplishes his goal of getting to the top of the falls, but his goals change when he realizes he doesn’t want to be there all by himself. He sees Russel going after Kevin, and his new goal becomes rescuing them from Muntz.
See how Carl is constantly pursuing a goal from right after the catalyst to the end of the movie. He shapes the story and becomes an active protagonist by pursuing his goals.
Stakes
Going right along with goals, we have stakes. Stakes give the protagonist a concrete reason for going after their goals.
Stakes are the consequences of your protagonist’s actions (or inactions). They can be external or internal. What’s at stake is what will happen if your character does or doesn’t act.
Consequences are so important. Too often I read stories from newer writers where something big happens, and the story just moves on without the big thing having any impact, which is unrealistic and incredibly frustrating because readers then wonder, “What was the point?”
To determine the stakes of your story, you can ask, “What will happen if my character doesn’t go after their goals?”
If you have a protagonist who’s hesitant to act, stakes are a great way to get them moving.
Examples
In the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie, the protagonist, Mike, must take a job as the night guard at a creepy, abandoned pizzeria because if he doesn’t, social services will take custody of his little sister and send her to live with their terrible aunt. He has a concrete reason to act.
In The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Coriolanus Snow must help his tribute win the Hunger Games because he hopes winning will allow him to win the Plinth Prize scholarship—a scholarship he needs to continue his education and restore his family’s position at the top of the social and political class in the Capitol. If he doesn’t, his family will be ruined.
Choices and Character-Driven Plots
Character-driven stories are naturally compelling. In order to have a character-driven plot, the protagonist and other characters need to make choices that cause the events of the story. Instead of things happening to them, the characters make things happen.
When your protagonist is making choices, they are acting, and therefore, they become an active protagonist. Their choices should (at least in their mind) get them closer to their goal.
Sometimes it’s hard to let your character take over the plot like this, especially if you’ve outlined it to go one way, and the character decides to take it another way. But I urge you to explore the character’s way. See where their choices take you and let the consequences of those choices play out. You may end up liking it.
Example
In the movie Megamind, after the catalyst in which Metro Man, Megamind’s archnemesis, is defeated, Megamind decides to take over Metro City and go on a crime spree. As a result, he becomes depressed without a hero to fight.
So, he decides to blow up the Metro Man Museum to try to forget about his archnemesis. While there, he runs into Roxanne and disguises himself as Bernard. Something Roxanne says gives him the idea to make a hero to challenge himself.
He decides to make the hero and perfects a formula with Metro Man’s DNA. However, during a fight, he accidentally injects Hal Stewart with the formula. Megamind disguises himself as Hal’s space dad and offers to train him and Hal accepts.
Megamind also decides to date Roxanne while disguised as Bernard, which leads to him and Minion having a falling out.
I could go on with the decisions Megamind makes, but I think you get the point. In each of these plot points, Megamind chooses something and then we see the consequences or result of that choice. Things aren’t just happening to Megamind. While the other characters have some influence over the plot, it’s Megamind who drives the story by trying to date Roxanne in disguise and create his own archnemesis.
The bottom line when it comes to active characters is that they need to have goals. The story’s stakes should inspire them to go after those goals. And they need to make choices that they think will get them closer to their goals and that drive the plot forward. Characters that do this will go from passive protagonists to active protagonists.
Share in the comments who your favorite active protagonist is.
Happy writing!
