What If You Have Multiple Protagonists by Linda Rodriguez

(This blog was previously published on 9/07/15)

This blog post arises from work I’ve done lately with developmental editing clients and questions I’ve been asked by students of my writing classes. Sometimes when a writer is in the heart of the story, she may find herself with several leading characters and not know which one is her protagonist. She may ask if she can have multiple protagonists because they’re all equally important characters.

 

This doesn’t happen often with writers of cozy, traditional, police-procedural, or private-eye mysteries because the amateur or professional detective is always the protagonist, but when you move into thriller and suspense territory or, especially, further afield into literary novels, women’s fiction, historical novels, family sagas, and science fiction and fantasy novels, you may find yourself looking at several major characters who could all be your protagonists. (Some police procedurals may also wind up in this territory, if they are ensemble books, though usually even those will focus more on one character of the team.)

  

I don’t tell writers that they can never have multiple protagonists, in part because I’m not a fan of telling people there’s only one way to write. I do, however, point out that, unless they are writing a multi-volume historical, family saga, or fantasy series, they probably need to zero in on which character’s story provides the narrative line for their book. In multi-volume historical, family saga, and fantasy series, the full story of the series often spans generations, and the protagonist may change as time passes, and a new generation comes to the fore. These books are a special case, however, and often change protagonist from book to book.

  

I do tell writers that, most often, they need one major protagonist, but they can have several other very important characters who may have character arcs that become major subplots. Think of a Dickens novel, sprawling across hundreds and hundreds of pages, with its teeming multitudes of characters where extensive time may be spent with first this character and his machinations, then this character and her problems, before coming back to this character from the beginning. Dickens, however important some of his secondary characters were in his books—and many were quite important—never forgot who his protagonist was. We learn the stories of many characters in Great Expectations, but the protagonist of that book is always Pip. In Bleak House, we have a long, suspenseful story around Lady Dedlock, but eventually it ties into Esther Summerson’s story, and Dickens never allows us to lose sight of the fact that, among the many other stories within this novel, this book is Esther’s story.

  

I usually ask clients or students a few questions to help them decide among as many as four major characters. Whose story is this book? Which character changes the most by the end of the book?  Which character has to struggle the most against the toughest obstacles and sacrifice the most to reach the ending? Which character will grow the most internally by the end of the book? Whose story would damage the book the most if it wasn’t told?

  

Usually, these questions help the writer to narrow his focus down to the character who is the true protagonist of the book. The protagonist provides the narrative spine of the book. Many important stories may radiate out from it like an animal’s skeleton, but without that spine, the animal can’t move. It’s the same with a novel. Without that narrative spine, it’s dead in the water, flailing around aimlessly.  Of course, in nature, as in writing, there are always exceptions. The jellyfish gets along perfectly well without a traditional spine. There will be books that can shine with multiple protagonists, books that are not multi-volume sagas that span generations, but they are the unusual outliers. If you want to make writing your novel easier and more assured of success, you’ll be wise to settle on one major protagonist, no matter how many very important secondary characters you also have.

  

Have you ever had problems figuring out who’s the protagonist of a book you were writing or reading?

The Education of a Teacher (Including Dirty Books and Pointed Looks) by Susan Van Kirk

An early teaching picture

In March I’ll be leaving my small town in downstate Illinois to go to the Left Coast Crime conference in San Diego. I’m currently a hybrid author with five books and a novella to my name since 2010. This is not what I had planned for my retirement years, and “planned” is the key word. A planner all my life, I morphed into my current situation through a series of unplanned incidents that led me to this mystery-writing retirement gig.

Life often throws surprises at people who are planners. That would be me. My writing is guided by outlines, and my deadlines are accompanied by check-off lists. Me—the planner. Teaching English full time and raising three kids involved in everything—that really turned me into a planner. Survival mode.

Then I turned fifty.

You know how people sometimes talk about watershed moments in history? Well, that was the watershed moment in my life. Fifty was a liberating age. I did something very unplanned. My last child left home for college, and I decided to try something I’d wanted to do for the last 29 years of living with other people—I spent three summers going to graduate school at the University of Illinois. I know that doesn’t sound like such a big deal, but for me it was the first time I’d been on my own in almost three decades. Just a little scary.

That degree allowed me to teach at the college level, and I left my high school teaching job after thirty-four years. I will always love and feel passionate about the teaching I did at both institutions. After ten years at the local college, another deadline was looming: retirement. Unlike many people who aren’t sure what they’ll do in retirement, I knew. That came about because of a series of unplanned events. Did I mention I am a planner?

First, came Cliffs Notes. After I received my master’s degree, I decided to take it for a ride and see if any book companies would hire me to be a consultant. One answered: a little company begun in Nebraska that wrote Cliffs Notes. I hesitated since I’d spent my career telling my students not to use these; but when the Cliffs Notes folks told me what they would pay me, I was astounded. After all, I was used to a schoolteacher’s salary. This would help me pay for my children’s college fees. I’d be able to use my literary knowledge and research books that I loved. But more importantly, this freelance job taught me to use computer software to collaborate with multiple editors. This would turn out to be a valuable learning experience.  

Second, came a college conversation. One of my students told me I should write a story I had told in an education class about why I found teaching such a passionate job. The story involved my high school teaching, a friend who had died in Viet Nam, and a class reunion. I wasn’t a writer. One day I decided to take his advice and put the story down on paper. After I sent it in to Teacher magazine, I received an email in two days saying they wanted to publish my story. I was dumbfounded.

That’s when the magical, unplanned, craziness began. I heard from people all over the country about how this story had affected their lives. Many were teachers, of course. Others were former students—I’d taught about 4,000 by then—who had heard me read the story on the magazine’s website. It was a humbling experience, but a very exciting one also. I was hooked.

And third, I decided to write a creative nonfiction book about my three decades of teaching. This book would contain fifteen stories about students who had gone through my high school classes. Some of those stories are hard to believe, but all are true. They bring laughter, tears, and surprise, but they describe what really happens in a classroom when you teach teenagers, and many of these stories have a universal quality. One involved a book challenge to a Kurt Vonnegut book, and the letter I received from Vonnegut is framed and hanging in my living room. The title of the book is The Education of a Teacher (Including Dirty Books and Pointed Looks). At the time I didn’t know anything about the publishing business, so I self-published it. Over ten years it’s sold thousands of copies.

And that is why I decided to write mysteries when I retired. I’ve spent ten years now learning about the business of publishing, and I am writing the books I love to read: mysteries. My hidden passion for reading, combined with a learned skill—writing—has led me to the perfect retirement job. And a big bonus: my grandchildren give me words to use in each of my mysteries, and some day they’ll even be old enough to read them.