Why do we need a strong headed Protagonist?

Who is a Protagonist? Or more aptly, who are we referring to as a Protagonist over here?

>> A protagonist here is one of the main characters of your story. He/She/It is ideally the character whose journey you want to narrate through the means of your story. Now, a story can have more than one protagonist but it is not advisable. Having multiple protagonists might confuse the readers or you may miss out on developing one story arc.

What do we mean by having one Protagonist?

>> As mentioned above, a story can have more than one main character, who are all crucial to the story. However, it is highly advised that invest more into one character. As an author when you invest into a character, the audience connects with it. For instance, while all characters are going through a turmoil, the readers want to know how one specific character reacts to his/her/its life situations.

Usually the protagonist (in the post’s context), is the most unusual character i.e. he/she/it has interesting responses or/and he/she/it has the most interesting character arc.

For instance, I am working on a story about a child growing with an obsession. The story is being narrated by his mother. While this story is about the child and focuses deeply on his growth and development, it is the mother whom I would term as the Protagonist. As her son grows, she grows with him. There are constant references to the changes in her life as the changes came into her son’s life. When her son is upset, she is miserable. When her son achieves something, she is beyond joy.

The term – Strong Headed

Having cleared that, let us now understand the idea of a ‘strong headed’ Protagonist.

By ‘strong headed’, we mean that the character should have clear thoughts or opinions about certain things. Even if the character is a confused or a befuddled one, he/she/it should be clearly shown as such. They should also stick to their thoughts and opinions.

If the protagonist is going to be in situations and submit to others opinions or insights, the character will stop being interesting. It will be shadowed and overpowered.

An exception to this is where we have the Protagonist as someone who always lives in someone else’s shadows. This is an interesting premise in itself. However, it is also a tricky one to write. We can not always just say that my protagonist did this because the character asked him to. This will make all the text very bland. An interesting suggestion for such a situation is to write why the protagonist relates to the character and his/her/its take on every opinion of the other character. It could be that the other character does not like veggies and eats them as soon as they are served, so he can enjoy the rest of his/her/its meal. Our Protagonist perceives this differently. He/She/It thinks that the character loves veggies and serves them more. Or that the character eats veggies, so let me eat them too.

Here again make sure that the way the Protagonist thinks – serves more veggies or eats more veggies – is what is important. We may or may not want to give why the character is eating veggies. Also, the protagonist’s take on things should be consistent. If he/she/it enjoys copying the character, he/she/it must do that in other situations as well.

What could we do with a strong headed Protagonist?

There are plenty of things we can do with a strong headed Protagonist.

• We could simply put them in a testing situation and see how they fare.
• We could put them in a testing situation and see their believes getting shattered. Here mostly they fail.
• We could put them in a testing situation and see them move ahead using their believes and ace the situation.
• We could put them in a testing situation and see them become stronger by modifying their believes as per the situation. Here even when their old believes did not work, they are strong in themselves and hence, adapt.

While all of the above are possible situations for a story, the first two are more suited for simple situations or scenes. The third and the fourth can also be turned into full novels.

In either of the cases, we will get a strong and interesting narrative. It will be like sitting inside the Protagonist’s head and hearing his/her/its thoughts as he/she/it hears them.