Speaker 1: Your protagonist is the most important character in your story. It is the character that your reader is going to map onto, to empathize with, and track through your entire story. We want to make sure that we create a protagonist that your reader cares about and that your reader wants to know what happens next. If you mess this up, your reader is not going to be able to get into your book because they're not going to care what happens to your protagonist or your protagonist is going to come across as not believable and again, they won't care what happens to them. This is way more important than developing your setting, than figuring out the other characters in your story, than trying to figure out your magic system for your story. Figuring out your protagonist can often be the doorway into figuring out your whole story. So we want to make sure that we get this right. So in this video, I'm going to give you our seven-part checklist on how we develop a well-rounded, believable protagonist that your reader is going to care about. My name is Tim Grawl. I've been working with writers for over 15 years, and I'm the CEO and publisher at StoryGrid. All of the training in this video and everything that we do is based on the 30 plus years of writing and editing experience from our creator and founder, Sean Coyne. So let's just jump in to our seven-part checklist. Number one, the identity. Who is your protagonist? And you've got to think about this from every single angle. Who are they socio and economically? How old are they? What do they look like? Who are their friends? Who are their families? What is their job? What was their childhood like? Where did they grow up? Where do they live now and why? What do they do for fun? What are their hobbies? You have to give them a full identity so you understand who they are. All of the details are really important. Even though all of the details probably won't go into the final version of your book, you need to have them in your head so that it isn't just a character that you've created. It feels like a real person. So just make sure that you think through all of the different things that identify who your character is and what their life looks like. The second thing we need to figure out is what is the transformation that they make from the beginning to the end of your story? Stories are about change, which means your protagonist has to change by the end of your story. So what is that change? Who are they at the beginning versus who they are at the end? I want to come at this from two different perspectives. So the first is externally. What has changed in their life externally? Has their job changed? Have they changed physically in some way? Have they gotten sicker or healthier? What are their relationships like from the beginning to the end? What is their marriages like? Their relationships with their kids like? How has the things externally for them changed from the beginning to the end of your story? The second thing we have to look at is how have they changed internally? How have they changed as a person? How has their morality changed? Their worldview changed? What they think is true and false changed? How they see the people around them? How have they changed from the beginning to the end of your book internally as well? So this transformation is what we're going to be tracking through the story, but you have to have in your mind what that transformation is both externally and internally for your protagonist. Okay, so we've got the first two big pieces in. We know who our protagonist is. We have their identity. And we know the transformation they're going to make from the beginning to the end of our story. So now let's start breaking that down. And the first thing we're going to look at is the want, need, and desire of your character. So the first part of that is what is the conscious want of your character at the beginning of the story? So if I walked up to your character at the beginning of the story, what is it that they want? This needs to be something very, very clear. Something that they could articulate. Something that they want. Do they want a new job? Do they want a new relationship? Do they want to find a new love of their life? What is it that they want? This is what's going to drive most of the conflict in the beginning of your story is that your protagonist is going to be pursuing what they want and not able to get it. So we have to have that conscious want locked in for the beginning of your story, which leads us to their unconscious need. What is it that they actually need? So this is something your protagonist is unaware of at the beginning of your story and it maps on to that transformation that they're going to make. What is it that they need? What is their unconscious need? So they have the want, which is going to be different from what they actually need. So they may really want a new job, but what they need to see is that their kids are the most important thing. Another way to look at this is what are they missing or not understanding at the beginning of the story that they're going to have to understand at the end? That is their unconscious need, which then leads us to part three of this one, which is the eternal desire. The eternal desire is what your protagonist wants to be, who they want to be at this kind of archetypical level. Do they want to be a great father? Do they want to be a savior of the human race? Do they want to be seen as a wise and well-known mage? We all have the wants and desires that we are going after on a day-to-day basis, but when we look at this, who we want to be in our life and who do we want to be seen as, this is a much more bigger perspective. So when I look at your protagonist, who are they aspiring to be? What type of person do they want to be? And that is going to be the eternal desire that's driving everything that they're going after. So now we know who our protagonist is. We know the transformation they're gonna make, and we have an understanding of their wants, needs, and desires. So now we can start looking at, well, how does our protagonist deal with problems? And that's where we look at order and chaos. Our protagonist needs to lean to either order or chaos. Now I did a whole video on order and chaos. That's down in the description under here. But the basic idea is that we need your character at the beginning of the story, especially when they are stressed out, which direction do they go? Do they try to control their world? Or do they try to create chaos? And so just understanding that when we put your protagonist under stress, we know which way they're gonna go. They're either gonna try to create more order in their world, or they're going to create more chaos. So you have to understand where on that order and chaos spectrum, your protagonist is sitting at the beginning of the story. And that leads us to the fifth thing. What are your protagonist's strengths and weaknesses? What are they really, really good at? And what are they really, really bad at? What is their superpower? Now that doesn't mean they have to be a superhero with an actual superpower, but what are they really, really good at? A character like Sherlock Holmes, he's really good at finding connections between details that nobody else can find and by even seeing details that nobody else notices. So that would be one of his superpowers. But then one of his weaknesses is interaction with other people. So when we're thinking about your protagonist, you have to identify what are their strengths and what are their weaknesses. They need to be really, really good at some things and really, really bad at other things. And those things that they're really, really good at, those are the things they tend to go towards when under stress. So when they're feeling conflict or tension, they move towards the things they're good at and away from the weaknesses. So we've been looking at the interior of your protagonist at their wants, needs, and desires, order and chaos, their strengths and weaknesses. Now let's look at the world around them. Let's look at their status. Now your protagonist is gonna be part of different groups in their life. It may be employees, co-workers, it may be their family, clubs, guilds. They're part of different groups in their life and we need to know where they're at on the hierarchy inside of those groups. So for instance, you may have a protagonist who is the boss at work. So he's at the very top of the hierarchy, but you put him around his extended family and he's the guy that everybody makes fun of. So he's down low on the hierarchy. So you wanna make sure your protagonist is at the highs and lows in different hierarchies in their life. They can't be the lowest everywhere. They have to be mixed up. And so when we look at all of the different groups that your protagonist is a part of, where are they in the hierarchy of those groups? If I took a look at the bar where they're hanging out with their friends or family dinner or lunch or the break room at work, where would I see them falling in the different hierarchy of these groups? Watching your protagonist interact with other people in their life is one of the most important ways we show our reader who they are. So we wanna make sure we understand where they are in the hierarchies of all the different groups that they run in. Now, the final thing that we're gonna look at when we're looking at your protagonist is what is the inciting incident of your story? The inciting incident is the ball of chaos that comes into your protagonist's life at the beginning and knocks them off balance. And so we want to see what is that thing that's going to come into their normal life and knock them off of balance. So in Pride and Prejudice, it's the rich bachelor moving into the neighborhood and knocking Elizabeth Bennet's life off balance. In The Martian, it's Mark Watney getting left behind on Mars. In the Sherlock Holmes novels, it's the new case coming into Sherlock Holmes' life. So we have to have an idea of what your protagonist's normal life looks like at the beginning of the story. That's his identity and his status groups and all of those things. And then we gotta figure out what's coming in that's gonna knock his life off balance. So those are the seven things that you've gotta figure out about your protagonist before you even write your story. You have to figure out their identity. Who are they? You have to look at the transformation they're gonna make from the beginning to the end of their story, both internally and externally. Then you have to look at their want, need, and desire. From there, we have to look at how do they deal with problems? Do they lean towards order or chaos? And then we look at their strengths and their weaknesses. What are they really, really good at? And what are they really, really bad at? Next, we look at the life around them, all the different groups that they're a part of. And we think about where they live in the hierarchy of all the different groups that are showing up around them in their world. And then finally, we figure out the inciting incident. What is the ball of chaos that comes into their life and knocks them off balance at the beginning of your story? Here's what's really cool about spending the time figuring out who your protagonist is. It becomes a window into all the other areas of your story. By looking through your protagonist, you're gonna be able to figure out what genre of story you're telling, which means what value is at stake, the obligatory moments you're gonna need, the conventions you're gonna need, which will then help you determine the full arc of your story. By looking at order and chaos and all the different groups they're running in, you're gonna be able to tell which other characters that you need in your story. So it's gonna help you develop the whole cast of characters just by looking at your protagonist. And then based on all the decisions you've made on your protagonist, you can start mapping out what forces of antagonism you need in your story to push your protagonist towards the transformation that they need to make. By doing all the work to figure out who your protagonist is, how they deal with problems, the transformation they need to make, and what is going to incite them at the beginning of your story, it's going to be the doorway into figuring out so many other things about your story. And you're going to do the work to make sure you're creating a character that your reader will empathize with, care about, and want to know what happens next all the way to the end of your story. Now, of course, figuring out your protagonist isn't the only thing that goes into writing a great book, which is why we've created so many training videos and I continue to put them up here on our YouTube channel. So make sure you subscribe and hit that bell so you get notified of all the future videos I come out with. Also, make sure you go to storygrid.com. We got tons of great resources there. Make sure you sign up for the email newsletter. That's where we can let you know everything that's happening in the StoryGrid universe. But as always, thanks for being a writer. Thanks for being a part of our community here at StoryGrid. And I'll see you next time.