: Re: Are reactive protagonists inherently a bad thing? I'm just getting into writing and while reading about it I've found a lot of topics which claim that reactive protagonists are generally frowned

@Mendez196

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This is just about the psychology of what makes a good story. A person is not a hero if they fight because they are forced into the fight. A person did not solve their problem if the solution just happens and they made no decisions leading to the solution of it. They just survived until the problem was resolved naturally.

You can write those kinds of stories, but they tend to not satisfy readers. The only reason instructors, agents and publishers don't like them is because readers don't find those stories satisfying or entertaining.

Typically, the Three Act Structure contains a Setup, a Middle, and a Conclusion.

The Middle is usually divided into two parts for the hero(es), a Reactive phase first (dealing with whatever the problem dealt them) and a Proactive Phase (having learned enough to start planning ahead and making choices to solve the problem).

If you look at this as four parts, each part is roughly equal in length, give or take 10% of the full story length.

Note that the 3AS is NOT an "invention" some professor dictates is the only way to write a story. The 3AS is science, derived from analysis of thousands of successful stories to find out what they have in common, and therefore what makes a story popular. The 3AS and its pacing and nature of the writing in each phase is the result of this distillation.

Of course it is necessarily averages and good stories can deviate from the 3AS in any respect, or perhaps leave some things out. But it does tell you the shape of what readers like the most and consider to be "good stories".

So if you want your work to be liked and considered a good story, then a purely reactive protagonist is, indeed, an inherently bad thing. In a good story, the hero makes a brave choice, risking something important to her (perhaps even her life), to accomplish something that is good, that is worth more to her than the risk of loss. If she doesn't eventually make that choice, then chances are, people will not like the story, will not find it entertaining, will not recommend it, and if they paid for it, may try to get their money back. They read to imagine themselves as the hero, nobody wants to imagine themselves as a passive punching bag.

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