: Re: Does my protagonist *have* to succeed? I'm thinking about a YA dystopian novel and have planned it quite thoroughly. However, when I look back, the antagonists tend to always be a few steps

@LarsenBagley300

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No, your character does not have to succeed.

Along the same lines as Mark's answer, in which competence and proactivity are concerned, you can also add to your mix the idea of sympathy. Each of these three attributes can be seen on a scale of low to high. For any character in your work, you can adjust how competent they are, how proactive they are, and how sympathetic they are. Here's a website and activity to play with these attributes.

We like to read about characters that grow and change, usually in a positive direction, although becoming darker is interesting too. So, that growth and change may occur in the three areas: competence, proactivity, sympathy. It sounds like your heroes start low on competence but will grow in competence. It sounds like they start off high on the proactivity scale. I don't know if they are sympathetic or not.

Example: A character who is low in all three areas (competence, proactivity, sympathy) will be hard to read about for long, but if the character grows then perhaps the character will become more engaging to read about. A character high in all three areas (think Superman) may also be hard to spend time with ... is flat ... and has little room to grow.

Villains are often highly competent, highly proactive, and unlikeable. (But, arguably so is Sherlock Holmes.) Secondary characters are often likable enough, but not very proactive (they are the side kick). You can move the sliders on your characters to change how they feel.

Note that in the area of competence, a character can have differential competence. You can offset your protagonists' failings with them being wildly competent in some other area of their lives. Maybe they are a whiz in the stock market. Which really helps, because they keep blowing their money in their failed attempt to foil the villain

Personal experience: In a recent revision I made my MC more competent at a sport that has next to nothing to do with his story arc and ultimate dilemma. (He had been reading as too incompetent, and too young, and I needed to change him up a bit.) The athletic change immediately made him seem a little older and also made him more charismatic. It was a weird thing to see, the character I had built, given an athletic ability unrelated to the story (just shown in a few scenes), suddenly being far more likable.

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