: Re: What can I do if I hate my own protagonist? So I'm writing a fantasy novel, and I have my plot fairly fleshed out, and I have my main players, my world is built, and now I've started to

@Michele605

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I have a similar issue with one of my characters (although not for a novel, but a game). I have two alternatives to the work-arounds of her actually being steal after all.

First a disclaimer though: To a certain extend she will need some "steal" afterall: It cannot be that she is so shy that is becomes ridiculous in the sense of stupid. It cannot be that her shyness leads her to make stupid choices all the time. (From time to time is okay, I guess.) That would make her shyness unredeemable.

Make her interesting in other ways

The way you describe it, it sound that the main issue is not her being shy, but her being uninteresting. Make her interesting in other ways.

For example she could be shy, but really intelligent. Not just intelligent enough to be nerdy, but actually really intelligent. Better even if you are able to actually make her particularly non-nerdy in the typical ways. Throw in some street-smarts as well. For example she would know that she is shy and timid, so she devises strategies against it. Her being timid and intelligent makes her interesting, because she could not use direct approaches to solve her confrontations and conflicts, but the has to use indirect means. Since she is so smart though, it is not biggy for her to devise elaborate plans, that others would not even understand in a matter of seconds. Make her mind that of a military general - not because of her bravery, but of her moves on the chessboard.

Make her an observer character - the one to tell the story

This is a concept I have been thinking about for quite a few months now: Just because she is the character from who's perspective the story is written, she does not need to be the hero that saves the day. She could be more of the character that tells the story. Most of use live our lives (and thus our stories) with greater characters in them and still we are the main characters of our stories. When I talk about greater characters I mean people that are more successful, richer, more powerful, smarter etc. Still we might have interesting points of view to tell the story we live. I would love for someone to try this approach, though I suspect it might be challenging to write a story like that.

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