: Re: Will it be accepted, if there is no ''Main Character" stereotype? There is a character in every story. Special One. It becomes the center of the story. i.e. the Main character. The author

@Nimeshi163

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Protagonists are not a requirement for conveying stories or even making them engaging (though they help with engagement). Take the ancient Chinese epic 'Water Margin' or the more recent (1791 AD) Chinese epic 'Dream of the Red Chamber' which have cast members in the hundreds, with no clear protagonists.

For more modern examples of this, observe the animes 'Durarara' and 'Baccano!' (both from the same author - I'd especially recommend Baccano!, but both knowingly cast off the protagonist trope, Baccano! doing so explicitly from the opening scene; Durarara!! has a character who one might consider the protagonist, but this concept is repeatedly challenged by nearly every episode following a different member of the extensive cast, including antagonistic characters, and each with separate motives and goals, who takes over as narrator for that episode).

These four I mentioned take the form of many "protagonists" who have overlapping/intertwining stories. One can argue certain characters feel more "main-charactery", but just barely, or just to provide a pair of eyes into the world. These are noteworthy for repeatedly switching the focus of who the story is on.

A more western way of doing this is having groups of characters. While one could argue Danny Ocean is the ""protagonist"" of Ocean's Eleven, or that Verbal Kent is the protagonist of The Usual Suspects, because of slightly more focus and screen-time, I'd argue their entire team is collectively the protagonist (contrasted to, say, Lord of the Rings, where Frodo Baggins is clearly the protagonist, despite switching viewpoints with Merry and Pippin, and despite travelling with a large team of interesting individuals, or contrasted against Mission Impossible where Tom Cruise is obviously the protagonist, despite having a supporting team. Chronicles of Narnia (the book series, not the movies) also has the several protagonists where all the (human) team members are of equal focus).

So here we have two separate methods: The Asian method of throwing a huge group of characters' individual intertwining stories, and making none of them the protagonist, and the Western method of making a whole team collectively the protagonist.

A classic Middle-Eastern protagonist subversion is One Thousand and One Nights, which uses a frame story with a protagonist-as-narrator, but telling stories within it focusing on different protagonists of each sub-story.
The Princess Bride (the book version) does similar, having a frame story and primary narrator, but within the story-within-the-story, only has two or three protagonists, who have intertwining plots. The movie does this too, but focuses mostly on one of the protagonists, undermining my point here.

A useful writing tip is, "Every character is the protagonist of their own story", and by keeping that in mind, you can subvert or avert the typical 'single protagonist' trope. This is useful even if writing with a normal protagonist, because it helps you think about and flesh out side-characters if you think of them as protagonists of their own untold story.

It's also sometimes useful to separate out the two often-overlapping-but-not-required-to-be tropes of Hero and Main Character. The Main Character is not always the Hero. Imagine writing a Damsel-in-distress narrative from the perspective of the Damsel, who'd be the main character, even though not the hero. Or writing a typical Hero vs Villain narrative from the perspective of the villain.

You can also have a narrator who's separate from the protagonist, such as in A Series of Unfortunate Events books, where the Narrator (Lemony Snicket, the ostensible author of the book) is a character within the world itself, and the Baudelaire orphans are equal protagonists who have to mutually rely on each other, or try to make-do when one or more of the group is unavailable.

One last movie I'd point out is Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, following six criminals in the aftermath of a heist with none the real focus until virtually the end of the movie.

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