: 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

@Hamaas631

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I would argue, no, a reactive protagonist is not necessarily a "bad" protagonist. For example, take the protagonist from The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.

To summarise...

Covenant is plucked from his terrible life and thrust into a fantastical, alien world. It is in that alien world where he discovers that, due to physical deformities caused by his leprosy, he is an avatar of a historically important figure.

Throughout the series, and especially through the first three novels, Covenant is pushed into situation after situation of which he has little to no control over.

What makes Covenant a compelling protagonist is that all throughout the novels, even though he has seemingly little control over his circumstances, he maintains his agency. Covenant makes good decisions, he makes bad decisions, he commits heinous crimes, and he makes tremendous sacrifices. There is never a moment where Covenant is powerless to act; even if his moment to moment decision making results in inaction. To augment Rasdashan's answer, even though Covenant is always reacting to his environment, he is never passive.

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