: I feel my protagonist is too "detached" from the main plot. What should I do? Here's a summary of the plot: The main character goes to a mountain to visit his half-sister. He hasn't seen

In short: why does any of this matter to him?

Beyond that it's his sister, what is his personal motivation in the story?

A good ABC for character involvement are Disney films, as they often demonstrate the differences between what a character wants and needs.

Aladdin:

Want - to become rich, have security and marry Jasmine, who he's in love with

Need - to stop pretending to be someone else so he can be with Jasmine as himself

King Triton:

Want - to stop Ariel getting involved with humans and stop her getting hurt

Need - to let Ariel be free to live her own life

In other words, the character's actions often derive from their 'want' - what they believe will make them happy. Eventually they have an epiphany and do something that will genuinely resolve their conflict.

So with the above synopsis: does the hero want to find his siblings to reconnect with them? Why does he want to help the mysterious girl?

What emotional want is he trying to meet by getting actively involved in the story? He'll be a participator if at each step his actions are clearly driven by some personal fulfilment.

And if you like you can turn the want into a need and show what he was really missing the entire time.

[Your mileage may vary depending on the genre of your fiction, but if we care about what the protagonist is doing because he cares about what he's doing, that's a good start]

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Stop making him passive, and make him a hero.

He doesn't "go to visit his sister," he learns about his sister's trouble and affliction, and drops what he is doing to go save her.

He doesn't "meet a girl with no soul," he is walking about waiting for something involving his sister, and sees a girl in the woods, but she runs from him. He investigates, asks about her. People tell him she has no soul, he doesn't believe it. He searches for her, and she needs help. she doesn't tell him why he is there, she resists his company, and he chooses to fix her.

Heroes are proactive. They may by necessity get told what to do, but as often as possible, have them choose, by their own light, to take the risks and accept the harm. Say he is attracted to this girl, she tells him what must be done to save her. He doesn't think anybody else will do it, and he wants to save her.

Now you have a hero's dilemma: He came to save his sister, now he has a love interest to save as well. What does he do? Can he do both?

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Consider that the first story might not be about your main character. He may be exploring a world that's going on, but nothing more really than a camera or narrator of the events that are transpiring. Where does that place him if that's the case and is that ok? I can't answer that; you'll have to as the author.

Before you decide, note having your main character not be your protagonist worked for The Great Gatsby, because Nick is not the protagonist of that book: Gatsby is. However, these books tend to be harder to approach, have a steeper learning curve and defy the basics of what people want out of a story. Still, they can be quite good and if the target audience is receptive, loved even.

I think you need to decide what the story is meant to be. Your character needs to be there for other people, but why does he want to be there? Make it more personal in terms of expressing what he wants and making him pro-active. If the story doesn't call for that, then be content to let the other characters be the protagonist and study what makes stories like that work (there's more than just The Great Gatsby).

Protagonist

The character or entity which acts to achieve a goal.

Antagonist

The character or entity which stands directly in the way of the protagonist achieving its goals.

Hero (which you may not have)

The person or entity who will defeat the villain.

Villain (which you may not have)

The evil entity which must be conquered.

Main Character or POV Character

The vantage point from which the audience views the actions of the other characters.

Why was that important?

Because nowhere in those definitions does it say the protagonist is the hero or that the antagonist is the villain; and if you can internalize that you can see that the main character/pov character doesn't have to be any of those either.

So long as you're giving the reader a good view of the events, tension rises, and you eventually conclude; it is possible to write a story from a different viewpoint which may give you access to more thoughts/ideas/perspectives that are ultimately more effective at whatever you are trying to do. If you use a main character who is not a protagonist, it gives you the option to see the protagonist through a lense that gives more perspective and distance; this allows the reader to question what is going on more as they don't self identify quite as easily with what the protagonist wants.

Examples of norms defiance:

(Jurrasic Park) Villain (Hacker) Antagonist (Rapters) Hero (T-Rex) Protagonists (Human Survivors)
(The Great Gatsby) Villain (None) Hero (None) Protagonist (Protag) Gatsby (Antag) Tom Buchanon
(The Prestige) Villains (Borden & Angier) Antagonists (Borden & Angier) Protag (Borden & Angier) Hero (Possibly None)

The point is that conflict exists somewhere, it is interesting and you can watch it. So, if your main character is disconnected or coming across boring spend less time in their head and more time with him observing and interacting with those who are dealing with the conflict in the moments they are dealing with the conflict. This is hard to do, but possible and clearly rewarding when done right.

OR: If you want to write something simpler, more streamlined, then change your story as described elsewhere or write something else.

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First question: how does the story end? If you know what you're obtaining, that should make the journey easier, as well as give you an idea of what you're doing with the main character.

Second question: What does your main character want, and how is he getting blocked? Reading the synopsis, I don't get a feeling that your MC has a personality, let alone goals, wants, or desires. He comes off as a blank slate that only exists, not someone that's exercising why he existence.

Third question: What factors impel your MC into action? Is the sister dying? Is he scrambling to find a cure? Is he covering up something? What's driving him to do what he's doing?

Without a clear sense of urgency, your MC isn't going to feel like someone to care about, and without a history, your MC will be the literary equivalent of a RPG character doing side quests.

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I get the sense that your protagonist is not important enough to the plot. He is instrumental in the development of the two women, but he isn't doing all that much for himself. As such, the hero is clearly a "point of view" character but I'm not convinced that he is a real protagonist. I can think of two ways to fix this.

The first is to "make a virtue of necessity" and "demote" the hero to the narrator, while making one (or both) of the women the protagonist. Think of Nick Carraway in "The Great Gatsby." The story was more about Gatsby's development than Nick's, but Nick played admirably as a "sidekick."

The second idea is to upgrade your hero. The two women, a sister and potential girlfriend are competing for his attention, and potentially pulling him in different directions, creating a potential conflict. How does he resolve that conflict? If that's what he does in the story, he is really the protagonist.

The protagonist is the most important person in the story. Ultimately his (or her) decisions and feelings are the ones that count most.

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The problem here is there actually is no plot.

There's a vague sibling context, and everything else seems shoehorned around it.

Either we're not being told enough of the plot mechanics to understand it, or the plot doesn't actually exist.

IMHO you have two choices:

forget the plot and develop the characters further
develop the fantastic aspect further, until a plot emerges

Right now you barely have enough for a coherent short story.

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If the character you have written does not seem to care about the plot hook then the chances are you and the reader don't care too much. Spend some time getting into the answer "why should I care?" When you have really gotten that answer clear then the characters will feel like they want to engage when you write them and story will engage the readers.

You say yourself that where the character is deeply rooted in what is going on arround him then the story comes to life. That because when your character is deeply rooted into the story so are you.

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Internal secret. Something about him that kept bothering him.

Emphasize the fact "she looks a lot like a girl he met once when he was a kid." Recurring dreams. Weird events. Memories mismatching reality; flawed deja vu. Hint that he is not a normal person, and make it true in the end. Even if he's essentially a live McGufin to be delivered from point A to point B by other characters of the story, he's bound into the plot. Or write this as two stories, two threads - one external, the mountains, the girl, and another internal, daydreams, dreams, memories, irrational feelings and sourceless knowledge, the two threads converging towards the end.

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Raise the stakes. Give him some urgent reason for doing something or being there. Take something away from him which he has to find, recover, or fix. Add a ticking clock.

Why is he visiting his half-sister now? Maybe their shared parent is
dying? Maybe he's dying?
Why is he going to the mountain? Maybe he's been diagnosed as missing
a soul, or his soul is dying, and something/one on the mountain can
fix that? Maybe he had a dream that he had to give a soul to someone
on the mountain, or he was told a prophecy?
Is there a deadline for getting off the mountain? The earthquake
from Eri's story? Foresters, clear-cutters, a flood, a plague?
What's the "something of utter importance"? Can you tie it to
something earlier in the story? Can you foreshadow something going on
with his wife, husband, child, job, dog, house which only this soulless person can fix?

I'm just riffing, but basically your protagonist is detached because he wandered into the plot. Give him a reason to be there.

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