The Perfect Protagonist

Oh boy, what an extensive topic! Are we being general, or covering all the different personalities in depth? One thing I can tell you regardless of personality, though. The perfect protagonist… is the one who is by no means perfect. (That was supposed to be funny— you were supposed to laugh).
One of my all time favorite books is Howard Pyle’s ‘Men of Iron’, and I love it almost solely for Myles Falworth, the main character. There is something about him that is just so fresh and filled with joy and a contagious zest for life. He’s wonderfully and un-apologetically manly— despite the fact that he gets himself into all sorts of trouble with his willful temper and his hasty tongue and his prideful stubbornness.
One thing I love doing, though, in my own writing, is varying the personalities of my characters. That’s Henty’s fault, actually— I was so sick of reading about people all the same that I decided there was no way on earth I would ever write like that. I don’t have a single protagonist who is the same as the last one, I am very glad to say.
I have an eleven book fantasy series I am writing, and each one has a different main character. (Wait… did I just say that already?)
Each character has a different personality— different strengths, different weaknesses, different loves, different hates, different eye colors— okay, there’s only so far I can go with that one, and it doesn’t matter as much, really…
Anyway, all that to say if you’re doing a series (assuming the series isn’t all about one main character) you should vary the protagonists personalities. It will give each book its own unique flavor. Yummy. No one likes eating a full seven (or eleven, as the case may be) course meal of nothing but roast beef.
What does that have to do with perfect protagonists? Well… nothing, really, except a word on how you should distribute them.
So are we being general, or in depth? And should we do really long posts, or lots of really short ones? If we can help it?

Bones? I don’t eat bones.

Depth is perfectly agreeable to me!So… okay. Wow, how do we start? Umm… let’s start with an extremely dominant character. Let’s say this guy has very strong opinions, can be stubborn (usually is stubborn) doesn’t always like other people’s opinions… is… yeah. Dominant.
To make the reader love him, we need to show that his heart is in the right place. We need to show him channeling his dominance into a worthy cause… like maybe fighting this humongous court case for the right to eat an eleven course dinner of prime rib. That… was a joke.
So in pursuing whatever his dream is, he will most likely trample on other people’s opinions and suggestions because he thinks he’s in charge. Not that he thinks he’s better than everyone else, but that he thinks… um… he’s smarter than everyone else. So here we have a good way to illustrate him. His heart’s in the right place— but he’s a bull in a china shop about pursuing it. And that could be a good thing— maybe he gets a lot done that way, because people are scared stiff to contradict him. I know I would be.
To make the reader see that this character is human, we need his dominance to be overstated. And thus, the bull in the china shop.
To make the reader sympathize with him, he needs to have something that he wants but cannot obtain. Let’s say that the chief lawyer in the opposition (assuming we go with the Movement to Allow Eleven Courses of Prime Rib) is dead set against our dominant character. And this selfsame lawyer has a daughter… you see where this is going. So our dominant character (let’s call him Manfred) loves the daughter of his opponent, and will never obtain permission to court her because her father hates him because of the court case they are fighting against each other. Now Manfred has to decide which means more to him— his girl, or his fight for the Movement to Allow Eleven Courses of Prime Rib. Oh boy. Tough choices. Manfred has been gearing up for this fight ever since he was a toddler and his mom made him eat spinach. It’s a part of him— a deep and personal spot in his heart.
So there we have conflict. The reader will root for him. (Or the evil opponent, depending on whether or not your villain was charming). 😉
Now it’s your turn. See if you can find anything I missed in what makes a reader love a character, or have any thoughts on how we could make Manfred more likeable.

And please don’t die laughing. Please.

Right— there you go. I had a dominant character on paper. You took him to the next level. You found what I didn’t put in my… ahem… lecture above. I had the hard side of him. You brought out the focus more on his soft spot. Ugh. How painful it is to have a soft spot. I have several. Sorry, but prime rib is not one of them.
I like the idea of him helping Melissa’s father win the court case because Prime Rib was not worth losing his love over. Good twist.
Now that we know that Manfred can be sweet and tender as well has hard and bull-headed, we need to think of some emotional blow that will make the reader weep for him. Maybe he tells Melissa he loves her, and confesses to her that he purposely lost the court case because, as important as it was to him, it wasn’t more important than she was. He offers her his love— everything he is. He is a stubborn, opinionated, proud man brought to his knees before the woman he loves, begging her as he never could have brought himself to beg anyone else for the one thing he will not have of any other woman. And she rejects him. Why? Because she believed in the court case he was fighting, and now is terribly angry at him for purposely losing it. His sacrifice means nothing to her. His precious gift is set at naught by the very person he wounded himself to please.
And Manfred’s heart is broken. Hopefully the reader’s heart is broken as well. Now we need to take the reader’s new found emotional attachment to Manfred and exploit it to the fullest. Manfred goes away and gets himself elected to the Senate, where he pushes for an amendment to the Constitution insuring the right to Eleven Courses of Prime Rib. But he is not fighting now for Prime Rib. He is fighting for Melissa. He couldn’t care less about the Prime Rib. All he wants is his love back.
Melissa is touched by his devotion, and comes to D.C. to await the news as to how his amendment went over— whether or not it passed. She is present on the balcony, looking down on the Senate floor, when the amendment is rejected. She witnesses Manfred’s heartbreak at the news, and begins to wonder whether Prime Rib is worth losing someone who was so devoted to her, and so ready to fight against all odds to amend his mistakes. She knows that Manfred will stop at nothing until he passes the amendment— even if he has to resort to a filibuster. She doesn’t want him to kill himself fighting for something that isn’t worth it. So she tells him that Prime Rib isn’t worth it. She had rather be married happily than be able to have the children of an unhappy marriage entitled to Eleven Courses of Prime Rib.

So we led the reader through Manfred’s heartbreak with him, and showed them that though he is so strong and stubborn, he can still be deeply wounded. And the deeper the wound, the more joyous the healing.
*sniffsniff* Now I’m getting emotional. Does anyone have a tissue, please?

I’m pretty miffed at Melissa for rejecting Manfred, so I’m going to say he finds another girl who will appreciate him.
One thing we forgot to give Manfred was something or someone he’s afraid of. Everyone is afraid of something. Maybe he’s afraid of failure— and yet he allowed his opponent to win the case and sacrificed himself in that way all the more for his love. Ugh. Now I officially despise Melissa.
Now it’s your turn. You introduce a personality different than Manfred, and we’ll build him/her up together.

“Ok, ok let’s see now what do I have in my little box of useless tidbits? Alright, so let’s take a girl with a very independent spirit. She lives on a farm with her family and she’s as free as the wind that blows across the land. What happens with this girl?”

She meets a handsome Prince, and he slights her, and then she goes free as the wind, BECAUSE STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS BRING HOPE APPARENTLY.

Um…weak female character whom the prince sweeps off her feet?

A happy medium? Very well.

The lady becomes a witch, and lives happily ever after.

Boom.