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How to Develop a Protagonist in your Novel?

Developing the perfect protagonist in your novel is a crucial aspect in writing your book. Before developing a character into protagonist , it is imperative that you know your story line well enough. Here in this article let’s develop and create a protagonist which can be appealing to the mass audience.

#1 Think Protagonist as Real Life Person

Audience love real people. Even if your novel is fiction based, you must opt for a character that will bear a real character. The reason is that audience can relate to real people. It’s as if they know and sense your main character while reading your story. That doesn’t mean you cannot have an unreal/fictional character as your lead. You can definitely create fictional characters. But to hook the reader’s mind more, real world characters works the best as your lead.

#2 Full of emotions

You can infuse lot of emotions in your protagonist to capture readers’ attention. People don’t always like a protagonist who has no emotions. Maybe he/she is not letting the emotions come out but people love characters with emotions. The more your protagonist shows his/her vulnerable side, the audience would love your protagonist more. Whether it’s a vengeance story/apocalypse/dystopian/romantic/thriller,people love to see their protagonist getting scared. Just because he/she is the main character, he/she will come hard on the opponents is not necessarily true. It also depends on your story outline.

#3 Name

Selecting a catchy name is indispensable to define your lead character. You need to do proper research and brainstorm to come across with the perfect name for your lead character. Names can be general, fictitious or historic depending on the way you look into the character. Giving a killer name gives a boost to your story plot. Now if the story is solely driven by the protagonist, then the name selection will be pivotal in determining the success of your story.

#4 Feel as the Protagonist:

Protagonist

As an author, you need to be in shoes of protagonist to derive the character. There is no rocket science here. Basically an author has to portray several characters in writing. It is his /her imagination, conscience, thought process that creates all the characters and finally give life to the story. Imagine you are the protagonist, how would you act in the plotline to make the story more enticing?

#5 Different phases

Main character should undergo in different phase of life in your story. He/she may be broke/rich/poor or whatever his situation, the phases would change subliminally throughout the story. That’s’ how you can keep your readers engaged. Your lead character may question his/her abilities and beliefs even if he/she is a superhero. The lead character must have strong decision making skills yet should be fallacious or futile. They should have a motive in the story. Everything cannot go smooth in your story. The more variation you bring in your main character’s role, the story will be in great demand.

Conclusion :

Building the protagonist is the prerequisite foundation of your story and so is developing other characters. Enlighten your artistic mind and get the best protagonist for your story. Remember it’s your story, you have full freedom to define your main character . But whatever you develop, eventually, you must like your main character before publishing it to the world.

This Post Has 5 Comments

  1. Diana

    This is very helpful! Thank you for sharing your tips🤗

    1. Jamie

      Thank you Diana. Glad to know you find this post helpful.

  2. Jaya Avendel

    A protagonist is like the helm of a ship; it leads the story. I love protagonists that are full of feels and human struggles. I work with two protagonists in my current novel, and it is fun for me to see how each character heads their share of the story in a different way.

  3. Lindsey

    I love this! I have so much fun with my main character and am just reaching a point where I’m trying to put writing first again, so this was really inspirational reading this. Great post

    1. Jamie

      Glad you liked the post Lindsey.

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