A question of character...

What is the main conflict in the story? Can you write the whole thing without eventually taking sides with one character? With whom will the reader identify? (I know that by the time I'm well into a story, some characters turn evil and others I hadn't initially planned to make good end up good.)

I say, just write your story and see how it comes out!

I'm curious to see the response to that question. I have two POV characters who I would think readers might feel equally sympathetic to, although I see only one of them as the protagonist (he has the most growing to do), I worry that the other might be viewed as the prot.

Noah Lukeman (The First Five Pages) says the identity of the protagonist should be clear to the reader.

I think that I Am Charlotte Simmons, by Tom Wolfe, is a good example of what you're talking about. He uses multiple viewpoint characters, and all of them are pretty flawed. They do inconsiderate and dishonest things to each other, to other people, and to themselves. It's a long book, and it centers on Charlotte more than it does the other three (four?), which is important. It makes the book about her, even though it's about the others as well. For the most part, I think it's a pretty successful example of storytelling, although sometimes I feel like Wolfe doesn't respect his characters at all. But that's really a whole other issue. So, yes, I certainly think it can be done.

Come to think of it, Matthew Kneale pulled it off in English Passengers. Peevay is a protagonist, but so is Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley.

Barbara Kingsolver has mulitple first person POV characters in The Poisonwood Bible, but only one of them is the prot.

But I don't kid myself that I'm fit to polish the keyboards of either of those writers.

weatherfield said:

I think that I Am Charlotte Simmons, by Tom Wolfe, is a good example of what you're talking about. He uses multiple viewpoint characters, and all of them are pretty flawed. They do inconsiderate and dishonest things to each other, to other people, and to themselves. It's a long book, and it centers on Charlotte more than it does the other three (four?), which is important. It makes the book about her, even though it's about the others as well. For the most part, I think it's a pretty successful example of storytelling, although sometimes I feel like Wolfe doesn't respect his characters at all. But that's really a whole other issue. So, yes, I certainly think it can be done.

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Good example.

In fact, all of Wolfe is like this. For my money, he's the best POV-switcher since William Faulkner.

Genre works -- and I have no idea if the OP's novel is in some genre -- do it much less frequently. Not that that means anything, but it will (trust me) be something that is discussed with both your agent and your publisher. I'm just assuming here, but I would say if you are offered representation there will be an attempt to highlight one of your characters to make her/him the "(anti-)hero"; the other characters will revolve around that one.

At least this is what happened to me, and I think in the end it worked.

I suspect, Austin, that you're defining "protagonist" and "antagonist" too rigidly. It doesn't just mean that you have the White Hats versus the Black Hats. It can be much more fluid than that. I expect you still have a protag and an antag.

And who cares? Write the story as best you can, as honestly as you can. That's enough.

Devil Ledbetter said:

...Noah Lukeman (The First Five Pages) says the identity of the protagonist should be clear to the reader...

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He doesn't know every reader, does he? I prefer people who could be either/or. It's more realistic that way. No one person is 100% evil or 100% good - if so, they'd be caricatures.

Personality is more fluid than 'I are good' or 'I are bad'.

scarletpeaches said:

He doesn't know every reader, does he? I prefer people who could be either/or. It's more realistic that way. No one person is 100% evil or 100% good - if so, they'd be caricatures.

Personality is more fluid than 'I are good' or 'I are bad'.

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Exactly so. And if we're going to quote people to make points, then, Stephen King pointed out that there are no perfect heroes, no classic evil villains, no whores with hearts of gold. And it's true.

We're all jes' folk. It's better that way.

If your bad guy doesn't work outside of the very moment of the story which you're writing, then perhaps he doesn't work at all. While it's true, I can't necessarily see Sauruman going to buy toilet paper, I can imagine Randal Flagg. Or Annie Wilkes. Or a half a dozen other names I can throw out there.

The gray areas are better. If you have someone with a black hat on and you point at them and shout "THIS IS THE BAD GUY," then you're sort of cheating the reader, aren't you?

scarletpeaches said:

He doesn't know every reader, does he? I prefer people who could be either/or. It's more realistic that way. No one person is 100% evil or 100% good - if so, they'd be caricatures.

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Also, if you write the "bad-guy" as bad, you'll either have a 2D character or pantomime villain.

If you write from the POV of the antagonist, THAT CAHARACTER believes they are right. IF you are true to THAT character.

In the most recent Batman movie, Ras al Ghul believes what he and the League of Shadows do is for the good of mankind. He really sees himself as the good guy. He recognizes that what he does, how he achieves his goals, is outside the norm of society. Even recognizes that society would view him as a criminal, but within his own idealogy, he is simply more aware of the world than others. Drastic times require drastic measures.

He sees Batman as a weak fool. Someone who could be of great service to mankind if only he follwed the lead of the LoS.

When Batman stands up openly against him, Ras sees Bats as the enemy, clear and simple. Batman becomes HIS antagonist Someone who stands between him and his goal to save mankind from itself.

Depending on the complexity you wanted to work in, you could legitimately make Ras al Ghul a hero. He sees corruption and greed and evil. He has the power to thwart that and uses that power. How is he any different from Batman in that respect?

That's a movie, so in prose you have much greater room for subtlty and nuance.

Like PeeDee says, just write it the best you can, let some folks have a read, and if they all come back with the same issue (that they don't know who the hero is) you have a problem. If not, you don't.

Austin Wimberly said:

In my WIP, my characters do not fall into the classic Protagonist/Antagonist roles. Each character is both a Protagonist and an Antagonist - sometimes they are their own Antagonist. Is this a problem? Is it possible to have a story without clearly defined Protagonist vs. Antagonist roles?

Also, how many characters are too many? Right now, I have five players that take turns playing the Protagonist. Must there be one and only one Prot? Anybody ever pulled it off with more than one Prot?

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It's completely possible that the group of characters is functioning as the protagonist, depending on how they're written.

It's also possible that this group of characters could be opposed only by themselves and their worse natures; their desire might be to achieve the Story Goal (thus making them protagonists) but by turns they could be sabotaging themselves and one another (thus making them antagonists.)

That said, it sounds tough to pull off. But interesting if it -is- pulled off...

Austin Wimberly said:

In my WIP, my characters do not fall into the classic Protagonist/Antagonist roles. Each character is both a Protagonist and an Antagonist - sometimes they are their own Antagonist

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There's no such thing as the classic protag/antag role.

The MC may be the protagonist. And they may have an antagonist (i.e the bad guy). But to the bad guy, the MC is also an antagonist. They're simply two characters with opposing dispositions, leading to conflict. They antagonise each other.

"sometimes they are their own Antagonist" is just the old "man vs self" complex. It's an acceptable form of creating conflict - in fact, most novels demand a certain amount of it to be considered successful. Internal conflict is what develops emotion and empathy.

scarletpeaches said:

He doesn't know every reader, does he? I prefer people who could be either/or. It's more realistic that way. No one person is 100% evil or 100% good - if so, they'd be caricatures.

Personality is more fluid than 'I are good' or 'I are bad'.

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I think there's a confusion here between "protagonist = good guy" and "antagonist = bad guy"

The way I see it, the Protag is the one who makes the story happen by trying to achieve their goals (which may be as simple as maintaining the course of their lives, or as outrageous as destroying the world). The Antag is the one who tries to stop the Protag by either directly opposing those goals or having goals of their own that would, if achieved, subsume the Protag's goals.

:: shrug :: By that definition, a story without an Antag (not a bad guy, mind) is well-nigh pointless; without opposition (even if it's just internal sabotage, or The Universe collaborating against the Protag), there's no story to tell.

Yup. It's all about conflict. Not so much Protagonist v. Antagonist, but two people with opposing desires clashing. Which one wins out?

George R.R. Martin is one of the best, in my opinion, of having multiple protagonists. Some of the good guys are jerks. Some of the bad guys have sympathetic sides. They are all neither completely good nor completely bad.

jdparadise said:

...makes the story happen by trying to achieve their goals (which may be as simple as maintaining the course of their lives, or as outrageous as destroying the world)...

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PeeDee said:

If you have someone with a black hat on and you point at them and shout "THIS IS THE BAD GUY," then you're sort of cheating the reader, aren't you?

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jdparadise, meet General Disarray.

scarletpeaches said:

jdparadise, meet General Disarray.

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I have to admit, this comment has gone and lost me good...

South Park. Butters tried to take over the world under this 'Superhero' guise and PeeDee said he wanted to be General Disarray, and destroy the world by spraying aerosol cans into the atmosphere.

scarletpeaches said:

Yup. It's all about conflict. Not so much Protagonist v. Antagonist, but two people with opposing desires clashing. Which one wins out?

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Well, I'm glad to hear that, because my novel doesn't have bad guy. No murderers and no evil aliens either. Just flawed people dealing with life.

It sounds interesting to me!!

Devil Ledbetter said:

Well, I'm glad to hear that, because my novel doesn't have bad guy. No murderers and no evil aliens either. Just flawed people dealing with life.

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Can't you fit just -one- teeny little alien in there? Maybe just zipping by in a convertible?

If you can't work an alien in (c'mon, just a little one hanging from the Christmas tree?), at least remember these words, bequeathed me by an old friend who really understood the Way Things Work. I swear, the guy's a genius. When he speaks, you must listen. He passed along to me, and I give to you, four unforgettable words:

Everything's better with monkeys.

scarletpeaches said:

South Park. Butters tried to take over the world under this 'Superhero' guise and PeeDee said he wanted to be General Disarray, and destroy the world by spraying aerosol cans into the atmosphere.

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I either need to read this board more, or less...

PeeDee said:

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I stand corrected. Who did Butters play, then? Don't you want to be him, rather than the sidekick?

jdparadise said:

Everything's better with monkeys.

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Now that you mention it, the first draft did have a Christmas ornament depicting an ape lovingly nursing her young. But I didn't think anybody else would get it.