hi! I hope you can help me, if not I totally get it. I have a plot, villains, setting, characters, but the only thing I don’t have is a protagonist. I try to think of them but I get absolutely nothing. How do I get this main character to come to be?
Hey Anon, sounds like you have most of a vehicle, but your engine is missing. Let’s try to remedy that, shall we?
First and foremost, your Protag has to be the right make and model. If your character(s) don’t fit, they’ll be a poor engine for what might otherwise be a fine vehicle. But don’t fret: Protags are a dime a dozen, you just have to pick one that suits both you and your plot.
Analogies aside, your protagonist should fit both the genre and the theme of your story. This is definitely not a hard rule, but one best followed until you’re comfortable with subverting genre. So an epic fantasy’s protag should be epic (though not necessarily at the start), and your Harlequin romance protag should be lusty and thrusty (Again, there should be room for growth).
The protag should also have flaws. Now writing up a list of things they are bad at can work, but consider instead that every strength they have can fail or be used against them. Compassion/love can lead to nasty hostage situations, courage/brashness can lead to injury or death (not necessarily the protag’s). Look to your own strengths and weaknesses, and those of others you know or of characters you like and dissect them. Write up a pair of columns and fill them with the positive and negative traits, if necessary.
And lastly, the protag should be relatable in some way. Even goody-two-shoes can fall in love with an arse of a protag if they find something in common. Likes and dislikes, personal history, interactions with others, fears, dreams. These are the most important bits to figure out for any character, as it is what drives them, but if you don’t know these things yet, it’s fine to figure it out on a later draft. By the time you write the story and the protagonist’s role in it, you will for sure 100% definitely figure out a few things about them you didn’t know before.
You can easily find character sheets/questionnaires online if you want some inspiration for their personality and habits. This may work best for you, to help flesh out the character or give you ideas for a basis to work from. Or you can simply pick your favourite characters from a few books or shows etc. and figure out what you like about them. If you see some similarities between them, those will likely be traits to instil in your character.
Just remember, the first draft is NOT for the public eye. Unless you’re writing fanfic or other fics that you want to write and post immediately (Even still you should revise at least once), you can just write the protag as though they were an existing character. “Frodo travels through a hilly countryside to save a princess from a dragon” is a good start. By the time you’re done your draft, you’ll likely have made choices Frodo wouldn’t have, or the things that happened to “Frodo” will make him turn out different from Tolkien’s Frodo. Then you just slap a new name on the character and work on the details in your revisions.
Thanks for the ask, Anon. Best of luck to you, and Happy Writing!