Protagonist Story

I like to break things down to their simplest form. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I like to learn and teach! Who knows. But because my brain works this way, I have been trying to understand the science of writing a great story. Yet, without being weighed down by too many details.

In my discovery, first I broke down the word protagonist. Which up until two days ago, I was spelling wrong. Haha. I guessed the word had Greek roots and found out I wasn't wrong. Which explains why I couldn't spell it, it's all Greek to me! Okay, not hilarious.

I learned in this word search, that to understand the meaning was to understand everything about great story writing. Apparently, in ancient Greece the term defines an actor who plays the main role in a drama, traditionally a HEROIC figure.

That told me a lot, right there. A hero. Someone who faces the impossible, squares off with it, and finds a way to beat it. Voila! Everything you need to know about your leading story character, or protagonist.

Why a hero? Think about a hero. How do they become one? Usually because they face a fight, a struggle, a hurdle. That is referred to as the climax of the story...part of the arc of a story. It's that highest place of conflict where the protagonist figures out who they want to be. They define themselves, then walk out their decision.

As a writer, your responsibility is to successfully write your character's journey up the hill to the climax and then bring them back down the hill in their new form. Who they turned out to be on that hill. That struggle, that arduous climb, that transformation is what keeps your reader invested and hooked to the end. Hope this helps as you write the next bestselling novel. Write on, writers.