protagonist off-limits to the reader. They had mistaken the story for what happens in it. But as we’ve learned, the real story is how what happens affects the protagonist, and what she does as a result.
This means that
everything
in a story gets its emotional weight and meaning based on how it affects the protagonist. If it doesn’t affect her—even if we’re talking birth, death, or the fall of the Roman Empire—it is completely neutral. And guess what? Neutrality bores the reader. If it’s neutral, it’s not only beside the point, it detracts from it.
That’s why in every scene you write, the protagonist must react in a way the reader can see and understand in the moment. This reaction must be specific, personal, and have an effect on whether the protagonist achieves her goal. What it can’t be is dispassionate objective commentary.
Readers intuitively know what neuroscientists have discovered: everything we experience is automatically coated in emotion. Why? It’s our version of a computer’s ones and zeros, and it’s based on a single question:
Will it hurt me, or will it help me?
4 This humble equation underlies every aspect of our rich, elegant, complex, and ever-changing sense of self, and how we experience the world around us. According to Damasio, “No set of conscious images of any kind on any topic ever fails to be accompanied by an obedient choir of emotions and consequent feelings.” 5 If we’re not feeling, we’re not breathing. A neutral protagonist is an automaton.
How to Catapult the Reader into Your Protagonist’s Skin
When your protagonist’s reaction is up close and personal, it catapults us into his skin, where we become “sensate,” feeling what he feels, and there we remain throughout the entire story. This isn’t to say we won’t feel what other characters feel as well. But ultimately, what other characters do, think, and feel will
itself
be measured by its affect on the protagonist. It is the protagonist’s story, after all, so we evaluate everyone and everything else based on how they affect him. Because ultimately what moves a story forward are the protagonist’s actions, reactions, and decisions, rather than the external events that trigger them.
Your protagonist’s reaction can come across in one of three ways:
1. Externally: Fred is late; Sue paces nervously, stubbing her toe. It hurts. She hops on one foot, swearing like a sailor, hoping she didn’t chip the ruby red polish Fred loves so much.
2. Via our intuition: We know Sue’s in love with Fred, so when we discover that the reason he’s late is because he’s with her BFF, Joan, we instantly feel Sue’s upcoming pain, although at the moment she has no idea Fred even knows Joan.
3. Via the protagonist’s internal thought: When Sue introduces Fred to Joan, she instantly senses something is going on between them. Watching them pretend to be strangers, Sue begins to plot the intricate details of their grisly demise.
When the events of the story are filtered through the protagonist’s point of view—allowing us to watch as she makes sense of everything that happens to her—we are seeing it through her eyes. Thus it’s not just that we
see
the things she sees—it’s that we grasp what they
mean
to her. In other words, the reader must be aware of the protagonist’s personal spin on everything that happens.
This is what gives narrative story its unique power. What sets prose apart from plays, movies, and life itself is that it provides direct access to the most alluring and otherwise inaccessible realm imaginable: someone else’s mind. Lest the significance of this be lost, bear in mind that our brain evolved with just that goal—to see into the minds of others in order to intuit their motives, thoughts, and thus, true colors. 6 (We’ll explore this further in chapter 4 .) Even so, in life the key word is
intuit
; movies have the raw power to convey thoughts visually, through
This means that
everything
in a story gets its emotional weight and meaning based on how it affects the protagonist. If it doesn’t affect her—even if we’re talking birth, death, or the fall of the Roman Empire—it is completely neutral. And guess what? Neutrality bores the reader. If it’s neutral, it’s not only beside the point, it detracts from it.
That’s why in every scene you write, the protagonist must react in a way the reader can see and understand in the moment. This reaction must be specific, personal, and have an effect on whether the protagonist achieves her goal. What it can’t be is dispassionate objective commentary.
Readers intuitively know what neuroscientists have discovered: everything we experience is automatically coated in emotion. Why? It’s our version of a computer’s ones and zeros, and it’s based on a single question:
Will it hurt me, or will it help me?
4 This humble equation underlies every aspect of our rich, elegant, complex, and ever-changing sense of self, and how we experience the world around us. According to Damasio, “No set of conscious images of any kind on any topic ever fails to be accompanied by an obedient choir of emotions and consequent feelings.” 5 If we’re not feeling, we’re not breathing. A neutral protagonist is an automaton.
How to Catapult the Reader into Your Protagonist’s Skin
When your protagonist’s reaction is up close and personal, it catapults us into his skin, where we become “sensate,” feeling what he feels, and there we remain throughout the entire story. This isn’t to say we won’t feel what other characters feel as well. But ultimately, what other characters do, think, and feel will
itself
be measured by its affect on the protagonist. It is the protagonist’s story, after all, so we evaluate everyone and everything else based on how they affect him. Because ultimately what moves a story forward are the protagonist’s actions, reactions, and decisions, rather than the external events that trigger them.
Your protagonist’s reaction can come across in one of three ways:
1. Externally: Fred is late; Sue paces nervously, stubbing her toe. It hurts. She hops on one foot, swearing like a sailor, hoping she didn’t chip the ruby red polish Fred loves so much.
2. Via our intuition: We know Sue’s in love with Fred, so when we discover that the reason he’s late is because he’s with her BFF, Joan, we instantly feel Sue’s upcoming pain, although at the moment she has no idea Fred even knows Joan.
3. Via the protagonist’s internal thought: When Sue introduces Fred to Joan, she instantly senses something is going on between them. Watching them pretend to be strangers, Sue begins to plot the intricate details of their grisly demise.
When the events of the story are filtered through the protagonist’s point of view—allowing us to watch as she makes sense of everything that happens to her—we are seeing it through her eyes. Thus it’s not just that we
see
the things she sees—it’s that we grasp what they
mean
to her. In other words, the reader must be aware of the protagonist’s personal spin on everything that happens.
This is what gives narrative story its unique power. What sets prose apart from plays, movies, and life itself is that it provides direct access to the most alluring and otherwise inaccessible realm imaginable: someone else’s mind. Lest the significance of this be lost, bear in mind that our brain evolved with just that goal—to see into the minds of others in order to intuit their motives, thoughts, and thus, true colors. 6 (We’ll explore this further in chapter 4 .) Even so, in life the key word is
intuit
; movies have the raw power to convey thoughts visually, through
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