Fixing the One-Dimensional Protagonist
Is your main character too bland? 10 mental traps authors fall into, and exercises to help get back out.
Annie Mydla, Managing Editor
In November, I'm deep into writing feedback for North Street Book Prize entrants. Among other things, this means meeting a lot of empty-feeling main characters over and over again. Here are a few of the usual suspects:
A tough, masculine man who's smarter than most. He's always fair to others, even though he's the victim of a lot of unfairness.
A smart, sexy woman who's not like the other girls.
A down-to-earth, sweet, misunderstood woman who has often come out the worse in love. Her innocence is what makes her attractive to the male romantic lead.
An intelligent, somewhat jaded man who has little patience for normals, but passionate excitement for his chosen field. He has all the time in the world for special individuals who recognize the specialness of his field (and him).
A plucky boy or girl who's wise beyond their years—far wiser than all the other children and adults around them.
A man, woman, boy, or girl drawn straight from the mid-1900s world of Leave It to Beaver.
A fantasy, sci-fi, or historical fiction hero or heroine whose main character trait is speaking and thinking with slightly more elevated diction than regular people, and never using contractions.
While each of these types can be the basis for a strong main character, so many of the books we get in North Street stop there, at the "basis" part. They don't define the character past the fundamental traits of the type. Often, the characters are static—they tend to weather the events of the book rather than grow because of them.
It's all but impossible for a book to recover from a bland protagonist. No matter how strong the other narrative elements are, an empty main character will leech a book of all immersivity.
As tempting as it might be to blame dull main characters on bad writing skills or lack of imagination and leave it at that, I've found there are a number of preventable mental traps authors fall into that can lead to blandness. Do any of these ten examples apply to you?
1. The author is overfocused on the plot or other aspects of the storytelling
Early-career authors have a special challenge in that they're learning to juggle a range of storytelling techniques for the first time. They may tend to focus either on what's easiest for them or what stresses them out most. Either way, the overfocus on just one or two elements can lead to an imbalance in the book as a whole. Character development is one aspect that tends to get neglected.
For many authors, the point of focus is plotting. The author is concerned about telling the story in a way that makes sense and is so glad when they do, that they move on to querying or self-publishing without firming up the other storytelling elements. Other dominant priorities can include:
Communicating the moral, religious, philosophical, social ideas at the heart of the manuscript
Conveying feelings about what is happening in the book
Making the worldbuilding unique
Working out a personal conflict or trauma
If you find you've been doing this, no worries. There's still time to beef up your characterizations! Read on for more exercises that could help.
Exercise 1: Make an outline of your main character's development from beginning to end. How are they changing at each major plot point? What are they learning? What are they hating about themselves? Liking about themselves? What do they want?
Exercise 2: Get concrete. Make a list of the character's attributes, then a list of physical items that signify those attributes. Throughout your narrative, show the items to the reader at key times to demonstrate static attributes, growth, or both.
Example: A character is always late to things. A friend gives them a watch to help them be on time. Later, the watch gets destroyed or lost, but the character no longer needs it/immediately gets another one/gets a new one but isn't as successful at following it/mourns the old one for years and can't bring themselves to get another, no matter how many times they're late. How the character responds is a concrete demonstration of their character.
2. The main character is an extension of the author's own voice
In this scenario, the author identifies with the character so closely that it's like the character is an extension of the author themselves. The character's ideas, actions, and speech don't differ from the book's tone, collapsing the difference between the character's attitudes and the book's attitudes. At that point, there's a risk the character will blend in with the rest of the book instead of becoming alive to the reader.
Exercise: Give your character more independence. What do they want to keep secret from you? Where would they much rather diverge from the narrative path you've set out for them? Where don't they agree with your personal beliefs? With the message the book is trying to get across? How might all of these things influence their behavior, speech, and thought over the course of the book?
3. Successful mimicry feels like success, not practice
For many early authors, a key criteria for success is writing a manuscript that feels like "a real book". This can lead to reproducing patterns that they've seen before in plotting, prose style, and characterization. Not a bad thing! In fact, mimicking others' styles is one of the best ways to develop as writers. But in some cases, an author who achieves replication and stays there might end up with a bland main character who really does feel like "just a copy".
Exercise: Give your character a spikier profile, including, but not limited to:
More specific limitations, abilities, likes, and dislikes
Inner contradictions
Irrational and potentially ugly or unlikeable sides to their personality
Different levels of ability in one kind of task versus another
A more distinct and individualistic pattern of growth from the beginning of the narrative to the end
4. "This type of character couldn't be any other way"
Authors can sometimes get trapped in assumptions about age, gender, class, race, and more that keep them from making characters dynamic. For example, Winning Writers editor Jendi Reiter observes that an author who wants to write a strong male protagonist might fail to imagine that he could have complex relationships that change him. The women in his life end up being objects to protect, rather than participants in the hero's journey.
On the flip side might be a female character who's universally loving and fair to everyone and doesn't have any moral blind spots or prejudices. Adherence to these stereotypes about gender could lead to overlooking the kinds of unexpected inner contradictions, weaknesses, and strengths that real people have, leading to flat characters.
The 2023 North Street First Prize winner in Literary Fiction, Lucy May Lennox, chose a privileged man near the top of his society as her main character in Flowers by Night. Tomonosuke is a samurai in 1825 Japan who enjoys a range of social, personal, and sexual freedoms due to his status. But rather than keep Tomonosuke static in this role, Lennox leads him on a journey that culminates in his rejection of the class assumptions he was born into.
Exercise: Journal on the factors in your character's inner life that are keeping them from living up to their potential regarding some kind of value (i.e., humility, integrity, or something else). What assumptions would they have to shed in order to embody those values more fully? What path will lead them to rethink those beliefs?
5. A stand-out character feels like a marketing risk
Commercial aspirations can make authors cautious about every aspect of their writing, including main characters. What if they go too far? What if, instead of relatable-unique, they cross over into just-plain-weird-or-unlikeable-unique? But overcaution isn't necessarily wise.
Jendi comments that sometimes, "[authors] are expecting all readers to crave an idealized protagonist as a kind of wish-fulfillment, pretending they are living the life of a super strong cop or overpoweringly sexy woman. But that's kind of dull for a more sophisticated reader, and it often reinforces stereotypical social roles."
So how to strike a balance? When considering your main character's level of distinctiveness, it might be helpful to reflect on your goals for the book. If you're aiming to self-publish, playing it safe with the character might be okay. But if you're hoping to get the attention of agents, editors, publishers, or contest judges, it could be important to remember that a literary professional is often a different kind of reader. We've seen many books in your genre, and many protagonists like your protagonist—and we want something new! Pushing out of your comfort zone might reward you here.
Exercise: Journal on whether you're planning to issue your book to the public directly or trying to attract the attention of a professional in the industry. If the second option is true, write down at least 10 unique things that professional might be wanting to see in a protagonist but likely don't see enough of. It might be helpful to reflect on the values of contemporary society and the audience you're ultimately trying to reach through that professional. How can you adapt those values to your character in a stand-out way?
6. The character is vivid in the author's mind, but the portrayal hasn't made it onto the page
You just know your character so well—and it feels like everyone else does, too. But some traits or growth points can fail to make it onto the page due to an author's blind spots. This is something all authors do at some point, and it's a main reason beta readers and editors exist.
Exercise: Ask your beta readers to describe the character's core traits and arc of development back to you. Don't prompt them towards any one response. Are you surprised by anything they say? When they've finished, ask them if anything about the character made them reflect on an aspect of their own inner contradictions, and if so, what.
If the answer to either of these questions is no, or you are surprised by any of the answers, you may still have more work to do in putting the fullness of the character down on paper.
7. Change feels bad
In real life, the goal for most of us is often simply to get through challenges without changing. When something bad happens, we just want things to go back to normal! In most books, though, maintaining a character's initial status from cover to cover takes away from narrative tension. The challenges of the plot are simply a storm for the character to weather, and a happy ending is one in which the character hasn't changed. Desirable for real life? Certainly. But in a novel, it can make everything feel slack.
In the 2022 North Street First Prize Literary Fiction winner, the heroine of Wendy Sibbison's Helen in Trouble is a privileged, white sixteen-year-old from an Episcopalian family in the DC suburbs in 1963. When her first relationship leads to an accidental pregnancy, her decision to get an abortion—a plot device that could have been used to symbolize the desire to "get back to normal"—instead launches a sequence of new experiences that change her assumptions on race, class, and her relationship with her own mother.
Exercise: Make an outline of your current plot points. Then "show" it to your character as they exist in your exposition, before the inciting incident. Ask them: if you were faced with this sequence of events, how would you want to grow during the course of it? How would you not want to grow? Who would you want to be on the other side? Who would you not want to be? What would you be willing to sacrifice to become that? What wouldn't you give up at any price?
Then in your next draft, make the narrative do something different to the character than what they told you, and have them react to their arc from the perspectives of the wants and fears they described to you.
8. Sequels are planned, and the author doesn't want to box themselves in
Authors can fall into the trap of thinking that their protagonist needs to stay exactly the same throughout a series. After all, that's what happens in sitcoms, isn't it? Any changes a character might have undergone during the show are cancelled out at the end so we can start fresh next time. But in the best book series, characters do grow and change. Even in genre fiction.
Mark Billingham's Tom Thorne crime series is a good example. In every book, Thorne, a moody Detective Inspector in modern London, learns a little bit more about relationships and grows as a person. Then his new knowledge is challenged in the next book, making him learn and grow even more. This makes Thorne dynamic, and meanwhile, there's still continuity in the series because of Thorne's core traits, the focus on London, and Billingham's other plot, theme, and aesthetic decisions.
One straightforward argument for character growth in every book of a series is that readers first come in contact with the series just through a single book. It's best to make every book as attention-getting as possible, and that means having the main character change by the end. Readers might turn away from the series if the protagonist doesn't pop. That goes double for agents, editors, publishers, and contest judges, who have likely seen many characters similar to yours.
Exercise: Consider your main character. List ten things that would be good for them to know or be able to do, but would be exceptionally hard for them to learn. These things could be information, viewpoints, behavioral styles, beliefs or something else.
When you have your list, compare it to the most important themes of your planned series. Are there any intersections between the hard lessons and your books' themes? Would it be possible to implement incremental growth for your character over the course of the series, in the areas where the intersections occur?
9. This is not the right character for the plot
Sometimes, the author has not asked themselves whether the character they've chosen will create opportunities for exploring the plot from a unique angle. Likewise, maybe they haven't considered whether the premise and plot they've chosen will allow them to explore the main character to their full potential. In this situation, the mismatch between the protagonist and other elements of the story mean that neither can be shown off to their best advantage.
For example, in detective novels, it's important that the detective be given a crime that only they can solve. Sherlock Holmes's power is logical reasoning based on minute pieces of evidence, and Arthur Conan Doyle only gave him crimes that could be solved with that ability. Miss Marple's talent is using social gossip to solve crimes, and Agatha Christie made sure to give her crimes that could be solved through conversations with other characters that felt social, but had an undercurrent only Marple could appreciate.
Imagine if Sherlock Holmes had been given a crime that depended on social nuance, the way Marple's do! That crime might never have been solved, and meanwhile, we wouldn't get to see Holmes's amazing powers of fact-based reasoning in action. He'd appear dull and flat, and the plot would be boring, too.
Exercise: Think about the features of your main character's premise and plot in comparision to their personality, goals, and past. Is this really the challenge that will get the most out of them? And are they the right character to show off the plot and premise to their full advantage? If not, reworking might be needed for one or both sides.
10. Readers/beta readers already like the character, so no changes needed?
"I've shown my book to readers/beta readers already, and they like the character. Why should I go further?"
This is a response I sometimes get from critique clients when I've questioned the dimensionality of their main character. My reply is usually that if they are seeking to self-publish without the intent to enter book contests, their approach is fine as-is. On the other hand, authors looking to get the attention of agents, editors, publishers, or contest judges might want to remember that literary professionals have read hundreds, if not thousands, of books in that genre. We've already met characters similar to, or the same, as yours, and we're keen to meet someone new.
For example, we received dozens of pandemic novels in the 2022 North Street Book Prize. Most of them were eliminated in the first round because we were tired of reading the same plot points, themes, and characters. But First Prize in Genre Fiction went to Robert Chazz Chute's Endemic that year—a pandemic novel! Why? Because his main character was someone we'd never seen in that kind of situation before: a queer, neurodivergent book editor whose reactions throughout her plot arc were complex and unexpected. That made the whole story pop.
Exercise: Pretend you are a contest judge who's read hundreds of books in your genre, with plot points, settings, themes, and characters exactly like yours. What changes could you make to the main character to make all these elements feel fresh, new, and relevant to today's readers?
Categories: Advice for Writers
