Crafting Strong Protagonists That Hook Readers Instantly
If your story feels like it is stalling right from the first page, your problem might not be your plot. Before you rush off to rewrite the progression of the first chapter or maybe insert one of those unnecessary prologues, take a moment and look at your protagonist’s entrance.
Readers decide whether to care (or not) about your protagonist, or any character for that matter, in a matter of seconds. You don’t have long to pull the reader in. Most writers overlook this, instead focusing on a gruesome crime, a thrilling explosion, or some other device they believe will capture the action of the scene and pull the reader in at the point of a story’s opening. The problem is that there is no longer shock value in these devices if there ever was. Readers have read about gruesome crime scenes and seen plenty of exploding bombs or detectives being awakened in the middle of the night by a phone call. Like deciding within seconds which stranger you might want to get to know at a party, readers are going to glance for signals that entice them to want to have a relationship with your protagonist. If the first page is flopping and you have plenty of color and conflict, the problem is probably a flat character or, most of the time, a flat protagonist. You must make them care about the protagonist right from the start. If your protagonist does not make a strong first impression, the rest of your story may never get the chance to unfold. Remember: a bomb scene is another bomb scene; an unforgettable character is golden.
From the first moment your character steps onto the page, readers will begin asking three questions, not consciously, but certainly in that primal part of their brains: Do I like, or am I intrigued by, this person? Do I trust them? Are they interesting enough to spend hours with? There is no doubt the reader will ask and answer these questions, and they will do so within seconds. That puts a lot of pressure on the writer. We must give a positive response to each of these questions within moments after a character's appearance for the first time.
Does this magnetic pull come from the exposition of backstory? No. The character’s résumé? No. The immediate conflict? No. Instead, it comes from something near intangible, such as a choice, a contradiction, a spark of interest, something that makes the character active and immediately involved in something in a way that we, as readers, care about.
Let me emphasize again that you don’t have to start your scene with a car chase or a bar fight, though if those things fit the plot, that’s certainly okay to include. If you do begin with the car chase, though, make sure we see immediately that this is a character that we want to spend time with, that we trust, and that we like or are intrigued by. Right from the start, you need your character to do something in that car chase that tells us who they are and why we should care. Let them decide under pressure, and let's see how they react when faced with a challenge. Let them show heart or compassion. Let them stand up to some injustice. Make them mysterious, as though they are hiding something or there is more to them than meets the eye. Any of these (and many other techniques) will work equally well. The important thing is that we writers give readers a reason to lean closer to the protagonist to learn more about her. If we don’t, if the reader doesn’t care about our protagonist, then the reader won’t care about what happens to them. Every following sentence, no matter how well crafted, or the ensuing plot, no matter how intricately designed, will fail disappointingly because the reader never got past page one. As writers, we must pull the reader in and have them identify, or at least be mystified, by the main character. Does the reader like them, or are they intrigued by them? Do they trust them? Is this character interesting enough to spend hours with? These three questions must be answered affirmatively.
For today’s Success Point writing tip, flip back in your work in progress and read over the moment that your protagonist first appears. Ask yourself what impression, right from the start, you are leaving with the reader, and are you revealing who this character is through action, emotion, or voice? Don’t rely on exposition. The choice to stay with you is being made on a visceral level by the reader. You must, instead of appealing to their artistic appreciation or intellectual understanding, hit them in the gut with first impressions. At a party, we feel in only seconds whether we want to spend time talking with someone or find them a bore. The same goes for the reader. We don’t necessarily know why we don’t want to spend time with the bore, but we feel it. That’s what the reader does: she feels it. Hit her with feelings. If you examine your protagonist’s initial interest and it lacks this emotionally attractive component, rewrite the entrance to add it and make your protagonist unforgettable.
You don’t have to be polite with your protagonist. You must be real. You must tell the truth. When the protagonist enters your story in those first moments, on that first page, you are not writing the introduction to your story. Too often, this is what writers do. Instead, you are writing an invitation and a promise, an invitation to invite the reader to join you for several hours in a relationship with this character, and a promise that if they will give you the opportunity and time, you will deliver a rewarding experience for them based upon the subconscious teasers you place within the entrance of that character.
Invite the reader to join you on this character’s journey. Make the character someone a reader cannot help but be attracted to or curious about from the very first moment.
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