: 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

@Goswami879

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From the Writing Excuses podcast episode 13.1: Hero, Protagonist, Main Character

Brandon: Give us a quick definition, then, of main character.
Howard: To me, the main character is the person through whose eyes we are seeing the story.
Brandon: Okay. And protagonist? Quick definition.
Mary: The protagonist is the character who is taking the action to move the story forward.
Brandon: And hero?
Dan: The person who gets to do all the cool stuff.

The protagonist is the character whose decisions shape the story.

If they have no agency to control the direction the story is taken then they're not the protagonist, by definition.

This is not to say that the hero can't be reactive, though. They can be forced to act, as long as they get a choice in which action they are making. They need to have agency. (If you want an example of a character who is reacting to a threat, but still has agency, just watch Die Hard)

When the viewpoint character is being pushed from threat to threat by the villain without ever having a chance to control what happens next, that's when they stop being the protagonist and start filling other roles in the story.

Your protagonist does not need to be the viewpoint character.

Using a secondary character as the viewer perspective of the protagonist is a long literary tradition seen in Sherlock Holmes, The Great Gatsby, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and many, many others.

You do not need one single protagonist.

An ensemble story takes a group of people and uses them collectively to move the story forward. (Oftentimes one or two characters will have more agency than the rest, because writing a story with half a dozen leads is hard, but a true ensemble story does not need that.) They're collectively moving the story forward, so they are the protagonist collectively.

Even when you don't have an ensemble cast, you still don't need one single protagonist. When Frodo is having Gollum guide him do Mordor, he's the protagonist. When he gets poisoned, Sam becomes the protagonist. Once they arrive at Mt. Doom, Frodo becomes the protagonist again (even if Sam doing most of the work). Very briefly at the end, Gollum becomes the protagonist. As long as you the writer knows who the protagonist is at all times, you'll be fine.

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