Three essential questions about your protagonist

- for Junowrimo or not

If you’ve been doing Junowrimo, you’re now about a third of the way through the month. Now, I know for a lot of writers, the point of Nanowrimo or Junowrimo is to write your way through 50K words without stopping to think. And I’m all for that! It’s one of the best ways to turn off your internal censor, which is one of the absolute most important things for a beginning writer to learn how to do.

But it’s also not going to hurt you to take a breath right about now and make sure you’re clear on a couple of things that will save you endless rewriting.

So here are three absolutely essential questions that will help crystallize your story, and what has to happen next.

-      What does your protagonist WANT?

-      What is their PLAN to get it?

-      Who and what is standing in their way?  (FORCES OF OPPOSITION)

You'd be surprised how many people come to my workshops (some with half-completed books!) who can't answer those deceptively simple questions.

And while most of these writers are usually (eventually) able to identify what their protagonist wants, and who is standing in their way— a lot of these writers have never heard of the idea that the Protagonist needs to have a specific Plan.

So let's talk about the PLAN.

In most cases, understanding your hero/ine's plan will quickly focus what might be a very amorphous idea and save you endless rewriting (or giving up completely). The PLAN really is the key to the drive of your story.

You always hear that “Drama is conflict,” but when you think about it – what the hell does that mean, practically?

It’s actually much more true, and specific, to say that drama is the constant clashing of a protagonist’s PLAN and an antagonist’s, or several antagonists’ PLANS.

In the first act of a story, the hero/ine is introduced, and that hero/ine either has or quickly develops a DESIRE (usually triggered by the INCITING INCIDENT). They might have a PROBLEM that needs to be solved, or someone or something they WANT, or a bad situation that they need to get out of, pronto.

Their reaction to that problem or situation is to formulate a PLAN, even if that plan is vague or even completely subconscious. But somewhere in there, there is a plan, and storytelling is usually easier if you have the protagonist or someone else (maybe you, the author!) state that plan clearly, so the audience or reader knows exactly what the expectation is.

The protagonist’s plan (and the corresponding plan of the antagonist’s) actually drives the entire action of the second act. Stating the plan tells us what the MAIN ACTION of the story will be—and starts a key question working in your reader or audience’s mind: Will the Plan succeed?

So it’s critical to set up the Plan by the end of Act One, or at the very beginning of Act Two, at the latest.

Let’s look at some examples of how plans work.

In Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first sequence (the first 15 minutes of a movie, corresponding to the first 50 pages of a book) is arguably two sequences, first the action sequence in the cave in South America, then the university sequence back in the US, all in a lightning fast 15 minutes.

At the end of this long sequence, Indy has just finished teaching his archeology class when his MENTOR, Marcus, comes to meet him with a couple of government agents who have a job for INDY (the INCITING INCIDENT or CALL TO ADVENTURE). The agents explain that Hitler has become obsessed with collecting occult artifacts from all over the world, and is currently trying to find the legendary Lost Ark of the Covenant, which is rumored to make any army in possession of it invincible in battle.

So there’s the MACGUFFIN*, the object that everyone wants, and the STAKES: if Hitler’s minions (THE ANTAGONISTS) get this Ark before Indy does, the Nazi army will be invincible (STAKES). Those are some stakes!

*MACGUFFIN is a word that Alfred Hitchcock coined to mean “the object that everyone wants.” Not every story has a MacGuffin!

And then Indy explains his PLAN to find the Ark: he’s going to seek out his old mentor, Abner Ravenwood, who was an expert on the Ark and had an ancient Egyptian medallion on which was inscribed the instructions for using the medallion to find the hidden location of the Ark.

Indy explains the PLAN

So after hearing the Plan, we understand what the main ACTION of the story is going to be:

Indy is going to find Abner to get the medallion, then use the medallion to find the Ark before Hitler’s minions can get it.

And even though there are lots of twists along the way (the first being that Abner is dead!), that’s really it: the basic action of the story.

Generally, PLAN and MAIN STORY ACTION are really the same thing – the action of the story is carrying out the specific Plan.

And again, the PLAN and MAIN STORY ACTION are almost always set up – and spelled out – by the end of the first act (the first 30 minutes of a movie, corresponding to the first hundred pages of a book), although the specifics of the Plan may be spelled out right after the Act I Climax at the very beginning of Act II. 

Can it be later? Well, anything’s possible—but the sooner a reader or audience understands the overall thrust of the story action, the sooner they can relax and let the story take them where it’s going to go. So much of storytelling is about you, the author, reassuring your reader or audience that you know what you’re doing, so they can sit back and let you drive.

Try taking a favorite movie or book (or two or three!) and identifying the PLAN and MAIN STORY ACTION. Then to make it crystal clear in your mind, try phrasing them as a STORY QUESTION. Like this:

             - In Sense and Sensibility, the PLAN is for Marianne and Elinor to secure the family’s fortune and their own happiness by marrying well. (How are they going to do that? By the period’s equivalent of dating – which is the PLAN and the STORY ACTION. Yes, dating is a PLAN! The QUESTION is: Will the sisters succeed in marrying well?)

             - In The Proposal, Margaret’s PLAN is to force her assistant Andrew to marry her so she won’t be deported and lose her high-powered editing job. But because the ANTAGONIST, the INS agent, believes they are faking the engagement, Margaret’s plan immediately becomes very specific: She PLANS to learn enough about Andrew over a four-day weekend with his family to pass the INS marriage test so she won’t be deported. So the MAIN ACTION of the story is going to Alaska to meet Andrew’s family and pretending to be married while they learn enough about each other to pass the test. The KEY QUESTION is: Will they be able to successfully fake the marriage?

The Proposal’s PLAN starts with a proposal

             - In Inception, the PLAN is for the team of dream burglars to go into a corporate heir’s dreams to plant the idea of breaking up his father’s corporation. (So the MAIN ACTION is going into the corporate heir’s dream and planting the idea, and the STORY QUESTION is:  Will the team  succeed in planting the idea so the corporate heir breaks up the company?)

The Inception team runs through the PLAN

(As you can see, the STORY QUESTION is easily summed up if you think of phrasing it as: “Will the Plan succeed?”)

So ask yourself:

1.  Do you know what your protagonist's and antagonist's PLANS are? 

2.   At what point in your book does the reader have a clear idea of the protagonist’s PLAN?  

3.   Is the PLAN stated aloud? Can you make it clearer than it is?

And good luck with the rest of Junowrimo!!!

- Alex

Need some help? The Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workshop is now available online, as a self-paced course with all the videos, assignments, movie breakdowns and personalized feedback you need to get that book written this year. In four parts, and you only pay for what you use.

Small group coaching also available in The Writers’ Room.

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