Sexy Resource Pron: Non-Cardboard Protagnists

your first task: figure out which one is compelling and which one is an empty vessel

You want to write a story! With a character! A character who rides an alligator and wears a chapeau while battling robots while looking sexy. And goddammit you want that sexy alligator riding robot slayer to be well written. Compelling even! No one dimensional, sulky high school girls with no personalities here! Dimensions! Plains! Depth! Literary geometry!

You have come to the right place.

As always this is entirely subjective and only a small portion of what’s available online. This is all a mixture of things I've learned from others and things I figured out myself that work for my own process. Also I’m sure someone else did this way better/less snarky/more thorough/professional than me, so take all this with a shot of tequila grain of salt.

What The Hell Is A Protagonist?

make fun of the demigod's jewelry, i dare you

   Just to cover all the bases, here we are talking about the main character. Protagonist is a greek word which means “One who plays the first part”. In most works this is the person we want the audience to connect with and root for. Often times hero and protagonist are used interchangeably, however not all protagonists are heroes. What I'll be attempting to teach in the next couple of weeks is how to create both protagonists and antagonists that have verisimilitude, or the semblance of being true or lifelike.

Fact: If you use verisimilitude in everyday story conversation people will assume you're super smart and not that you spend the bulk of your writing career in your underwear watching Netflix and staring blankly at your word processor.

See? Already. Knowledge. Power.

Types Of Protagonists: Pick You Poison

   There are a lot of subsets your protagonist can fall into. However for the sake of brevity we’re going to just cover the main three. These can be split into many more different categories, but again, time. Your attention capacity. My attention capacity. More ground to cover.

Beer The Hero: You see the hero a lot in comics. He’s the good guy, the boy scout, the one who’ll save the day. He truly believes in the battle of good versus evil. Superman is instantly recognizable as the hero, however not all heroes have to be brawny. Intelligence in any field could give them the upper hand, or simply being a crafty bastard. These guys and gals are courageous and selfless, though that doesn’t mean they don’t have their share of personal problems.

i was going to use han as the rogue, but it's been confirmed 

by his maker he didn't shoot first

Whiskey shots The Anti-hero: The guy or gal who doesn’t want to be the hero. Often what’s considered the ‘classic’ anti-hero is the thief, rogue, rebel, the Mal Reynolds. Although some times they are the bumbling everyman who ends up with a sentient alien car (Shia Labeouf playing orange Shia Labeouf with explosions by Michael Bay). You can also have the vigilante who takes matters into their own hands as the anti- hero ala Batman. Usually these guys fall into the underdog category, and many of the older, weathered ones are cynical as hell. While prone to breaking the rules they do however have some sort of moral code and will rise to the occasion when need be. Do to the underdog/counter culture aspects of our society these guys have become immensely popular over the years.

Tequila after a couple of beers The Villain: Villains can be the protagonist, however the writer has to develop the villain in a way that the audience sympathizes with them. Villains are often used in comedies as protagonists. In this genre they either have a heel turn moment where they suddenly become good (Megamind), or succeed in a way that may show their accomplishments weren’t entirely fulfilling (Dr. Horrible). Villains as protagonists can also be used in drama (Wanted), though it’s to a lesser extent and can really blur the line between Protagonist and Antagonist. 

Tropes:  The Bones Of the Character

patriotic space jesus

   Tropes in this case come from the time sucking black hole of genius, TV Tropes (enter at your own risk). Tropes are devices and conventions used in writing that as a writer you can rely on your audience’s mind to pick up on. For characters these can be basic personality traits and conventions we can use as the base of our character. The trick here is to use them in a way that gives them a certain personality and possibly even a look but doesn’t entirely define them and make turn them into a giant cliché. Smaller details we’ll be talking about later will help us to avoid this. Maybe they’re the naïve young upstart, or the smart mouthed wild card, or the cynical war hero. It’s good to know what they are essentially boiled down to their raw elements. This also becomes helpful when you need to describe or pitch your character in your story. When someone describes to you Wolverine for the first time they don’t get into all the details about how he fought in various wars, ran off to Japan, fathered a child but his wife was killed and he left but the kid survived unbeknownst to him then all of this other weird bullshit went down. Beyond metal claws and healing factor they’ll tell you he’s a badass loner with a chip on his shoulder. Boom. There. 

Back Story: Not Everyone Is A Disney Character Who’s Parents Are Dead

lackey voiced by david cross: optional

   Back stories are important. While you don’t necessarily have to tell your audience that Joey Blogs is an asshat because he always got what he wanted and all dumb shit he got away with in high school was because his father had a ‘boys will be boys’ attitude, you as a writer should know it in some capacity. You don’t need to know every single  detail about their life down to the hospital they were born in, but it’s good to at least know some basic information like if they had a good childhood or not or if they moved around because their parents were in the army. For a hero it’s good to know where they got their sense of morality, for an anti-hero it’s good to know why they’re cynical or where they base their morals, and for a villains it’s good to know what made them join the dark side other than the excellent cookies. 

   Let it be known that not all heroes have to have an idyllic upbringing on a farm, nor do villains have to have a particularly shitty childhood. Draw from your life if you want, or do a little research. We’ll touch on that later.

Casting Call: Who The Hell Do They Look Like

what do diana agron and 90's seth green have in common? 

they're both in my scripts.

   You don't have to freak out and think about what they wear down to the brand, or the number of pouches on their costume (it's not the 90s anymore, so show some goddamn pouch restraint). Just a basic description will do. "He's a skinny nerd with big glasses and he dresses like he has no sense of fashion." works fine. Gathering reference photos for your illustrator if you're writing a comic will help with translating the character's look. A lot of people find it helpful to cast a certain actor or actress as their character, which can help visually as reference as well as 'performance' wise as certain people tend to play certain characters in movies. I find this really helpful myself, and I usually have a giant folder full of pictures for each script. Also when I write out a character description sheet or a script, I'll make sure to list the actor or the actress and perhaps a movie they were in as how the character looks and acts.

Wants: We All Have Them, Including Your Character

    As well all know, everybody wants something. Whether it’s rescuing the girl, White Castle, wanting to be kept the fuck alone in your swamp, getting the bounty lifted off their head or reaping the rewards of buried Mayan treasure, your character wants something. You need to know what that is, and how it propels them through the story. Do they strike out to get what they want willingly or begrudgingly? It will help drive their conflict.

Conflict: Everyone Being Happy Is A Boring Ass Story

   This is where a lot of characters can fumble. If they have no conflict, if they can just breeze through the story with little trials or opposition, your audience can get bored because the journey is just too easy.  No tension, no weight to the situation, no satisfaction. While conflict doesn’t have to be a literally life and death situation. It should be tantamount to that though. As I said above, what a character wants should also be integrated into their conflicts in some way (i.e. Tony Stark REALLY wants to drink however Pepper Pots won’t talk to him if he starts drinking again! Oh, and there’s a giant robot he must save the world from and he can’t do it wasted).

   There are three types of conflict you can put your poor protagonist through.

• Man vs. Man (Batman vs. Joker): Pitting them against a person. 
• Man vs. Nature (Batman vs. Corruption): Pitting them against an outside force. It could be the elements, it could be human nature, it could be rampaging nanobots. 
• Man vs. Self (Batman vs. Survivor Guilt): Against themselves in some way. Issues, mental scars, a part of their self  that they struggle with confronting.

"goddamit do i want pizza, or chinese?"

   An excellent story employs all three seamlessly. A good story will have it’s protagonist go through at least both; an outer conflict as well as an inner conflict. This means your guy is going up against another force that’s greater than him; be it demons, a guy who steals cakes, nature or a fifty foot zombie squirrel. While at the same time he’s also battling his own inner issues. If you really want to show your skill as a writer, have your outer conflict to reflect the inner conflict. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a good example of this. The B-Horror genre the show is based on allows the stories to use the Monster Of The Week as a reflection of the Inner Teen Problem Of The Week. It’s not always so easy though, so if you can’t get the outer to reflect the inner, don’y sweat it. You will get better with practice.

Stalk... Erm.... Research People (yeah research, that sounds better)

    In order to create many different types of characters beyond one protagonist that sounds and looks and has all your issues, you need to observe people. If you don’t, one of two things tends to happen. They A) sound just like you, or B) sound like six year old reading for a detergent commercial. In order to learn about the different nuances in speech, personality, interaction and even body language, you need to start people watching.

discreetly

   Watching people, studying them, can be done anywhere. Personally when I lived in San Francisco I liked working at a coffee chop located in a very tourist-centric area of SF with giant headphones on. I will intentionally sit myself in a spot where I can watch the counter and the door and do my work there so I can observe all of these people from all walks of life and various nations. I can turn on music to block out all the noise, but if I wan to eavesdrop a little and maybe study someone’s accent or how they’re talking, I can mute my music and no one’s the wiser.

   It’s understandable if you’re not comfortable with that level of people watching. But go to the mall, or to a tourist hot spot, a farmer’s market or even a concert. Buy a churro or a bag of local carrots and just look at the people around you. You can even go to a party or a friend's house and watch people you know. How do they talk? How do they move? how do they interact with others? How are they dressed? Do they have anything or do anything that makes them stand out from the rest?  

Acting: Take Class And Feel Incredibly Uncomfortable

   I did this, and I was awkward an felt extremely vulnerable at times. However, it was also truckload of puppies levels of fun and I learned many things I still use to this day in my writing. Even a basic acting class will teach you about how different personalities move, carry themselves, act and even talk. It’ll give you a wider range of skills and personalities you can apply to your work. You're acting through your character when you write them, so literally doing some acting will help you understand how to inhabit a character and avoid the problem of your character acting just like you.

Study: The Good Stuff & The Utter Crap

"multiple universes? the fuck?"

    You’re going to hear this repeated a lot by me (this and stalking people). But seriously, watch a movie or a TV show you like and watch it over and over. Find a book or a comic you like and read it over and over. Figure out what makes their characters so compelling. Also don’t be afraid to read bad stuff. You’ll learn what not to do from bad work, you'll figure out why it's not working, and it will make you more self aware of your own writing flaws. You will also begin to realize your own tastes.

Where I Give A Download That Allows You To Cheat 

   Go to the very first Resource Pron. You're welcome.

Bring It All Together

   So I've thrown a lot of information at you. You know their type, have a trope, have some back story, you know what they look like, know what they want, what their conflicts are, you've studied different personalities, read your favorite comic over and over to learn what makes a character intriguing, read some crappy comics to learn what not to do and filled out some paperwork. Elements like symbolism, consistency, and dialog aside (we'll be touching on these in later weeks), you should have enough info to form a well thought out, fake life form. 

Give yourselves a pat on the back! Go forth! Apply this knowledge!  Tell me what you think in the replies!

disclaimer: do not try to fly