I am writing a novel set in the Kosovan War of recent times, and my story is about a family and how they are separated by the war. I don't seem to want to focus on any one family member as a protagonist (I have 4 main family members), and just wondered if this is really the done thing? Can you have more than one protagonist? Can anyone forsee any major problems with my approach??!

Thanks,

Michelle

Plenty of novels have more than one protagonist, Michelle. I can think of several war stories which follow various people's separate stories throuhg the chaos of separation - for some reason I'm thinking of Marge Piercy's 'Gone to Soldiers' which (pulpy though it is) I adore.

What is the downside? Insufficiently close engagement with any one character because of the split in focus, I guess. But if you are aware of that pitfall, and work hard to engage the reader with all of your family members, I can't see why it has to be a problem. Maybe as you write, in any case, you will find that there is one characters who, slightly more than the others, becomes the main focus and draws your (and the reader's) attention most closely. or not. I wouldn't worry about it.

Rosy

Thanks Rosy. I think that perhaps one or two of my characters will be less than protagonists, so will just see how it pans out.

Michelle

We're having a bit of a debate in Novel Motivation about the difference between vp characters and protagonists. I know a vp character doesn't have to be a protagonist (if you have a villainous, creepy vp character that you want the reader to be yukked by instead of identify with, for instance), and I know the protagonist doesn't have to be a vp character (if you have someone observing the protagonist, say).

However, surely in most cases the vp characters = protagonists, because you're usually intended to identify with the vp characters, and thus they become a focus for the story. There can be several more or less equally weighted vp characters, and in this case I would say they are all protagonists. Examples I would give for this are 'A Spot of Bother' by Mark Haddon, and Andrew Miller's Oxygen - all with (IIRC) 4 vp characters. In Oxygen, 3 of the 4 seem of equal weight and the 4th a little less prominent. In Spot, 1 of the 4 seems more prominent, but the others are given good weight too.

For instance, even when you're relating a story where there is one person who stands out as the natural protagonist, by choosing to relate it from someone else's POV surely (unless you make that other person more of a narrator than a character) you shift the focus to that other person, however insignificant they might seem from an outsider's POV. For instance, if you were writing a fictionalised account of some of Elizabeth I's life, she is the natural protagonist, but if you used as your vp character one of her maids (or whatever they're called), then we would feel for the maid, and she has a life too, albeit heavily influenced by E I.

Is it more about whose story it is, whoever's feelings we get to hear? You see, I think the head we're inside is very relevant to whose story it is.

And then there are antagonists, of course.

I'm not sure there is a definitive answer because I suspect all these issues come into play, but I'd be really interested in people's thoughts....

Deb

That's really fascinating, Deb. What do you mean by a 'vp character', excatly? Not just anyone whose POV you use at any point in the book, presumably? Just those where you spend a substantial portion of the book inside their heads? For example, if you have a sub-plot which is mostly told from the POV of the minor character(s) it involves, would that make them, in your defintion a 'protagonist' (albeit not a main one)?

Only, to me, whether you go inside someone's head or not while you are telling the story does not relate at all to how 'major' they are in the book. They might be major but you want to leave them a mystery, because that might be part of the point (the MC's inability to size them up). E.g. in my second novel I tell the story mainly from the viewpoint of the two main characters (one male and one female, as it happens, though it's not a romance) and that of the two charcaters who form the sub-plot (which is a romance), plus the baddy. Those five make up maybe 98% of the book's POV, and the rest is little snatches of the POV of very minor onlookers. But I NEVER go into the POV of the female MC's husband or daughter or mother, even though her battles to sort out her family are a big chunk of the book. Because we need to be outside them, so as to share her inability to fathom them, at times. But I'd say the husband and daughter, especially, are very major/central characters in the book - definitely more so than the sub-plot romance pair, or the baddy.

But do you think a 'protagonist' is distinct from just how major a role a character plays in the plot? Something more to do with reader identification? In which case a book about Elizabeth I told entirely by the maid would actually have the maid as 'protagonist' even if Elizabeth I is the MC....??

I'd love to hear you flesh out your theory a bit more - I'm intrigued.

Rosy

I guess most of the novels I read only have a few vp characters, and all of them are either major in the plot or reasonably major. I've felt we were intended to identify with all of them, although obviously your personal tastes might cause you to identify more with some than with others. The books I read don't seem to show the POV of very minor characters for short periods - all of it is from the POV of one or other of the major vp characters - usually between 1 and 4 of them.

I agree that you might be in someone's POV, and they might be a MC, but you might not go deep inside their head because it suits the writer to keep some mystery there. I'm kind of doing that with one of the 3 vp characters in the novel I'm writing. You see what she sees, from her vp, but often the reader doesn't get to know exactly how she feels about what's happening. Helen Dunmore also did that with the main (and only IIRC) vp character in Talking With the Dead (or whatever it's called). The MC has an affair, but we don't get to hear why she did it and what her thoughts were about it - we have to work that out ourselves, and she leaves enough clues for us to do so.

I suppose I think that (unless the writer deliberately makes a vp character so unpalatable that identification is not intended at all) being in someone's vp means you tend to root for them, even if they're nothing like you and even if they do things you would normally disapprove of. You're inside them, so usually the effect is that you are them as you read, so you understand why they make their choices because you're 'living' their life. For instance, I remember reading books when I was younger from the POV of criminals - both factual and fictional - and you often root for them even though they've done things you consider to be wrong. That probably wouldn't work if their crimes were something most of us find completely repugnant (vicious rapist) rather than illegal in a way we don't tend to feel personally involved in (eg, bank robber).

So yes, I guess I meant that in the Elizabeth I example, unless the maid was simply a narrator in the form of a character, we would identify with the maid and not EI, and thus it could be her story and not EI's story. However, that would depend on what the plot was, how the two characters (EI and the maid) were involved in it, and how it was written.

I guess I'm saying that I don't think protagonist and vp character are actually the same thing, but I think in most novels they tend to be. And I see no reason why you can't have a number of protagonists, but the larger the number, the less effective the identification might be.

Not sure if I've clarified, as asked for, or just rambled some more...

However, if there was strong reader identification with a character but they didn't play mucy of a role in the plot, I'm not sure if you could call them a protagonist or not TBH. But unless you had a clever reason to do this perhaps it would be a bad idea?

Deb

Thanks, Deb. I'm going to go away and think about this now!

R x

Do let me know your thoughts once you've 'thunk', Rosy. This is how I see it, but not necessarily how others see it - I'd be very interested to know how others do see it.

Deb

I'm in the process of writing my first novel, and the advice I have received (from several sources) is that I should only have one main protagonist. Which is not to say only one viewpoint character, but that the readers need to have one main protagonist with whom to identify.
Other viewpoint characters can be used to move the story on for the MP, or to expand the character of the MP, but that would be their main purpose.

I have to say that I have struggled with this, since I do enjoy books which have more than one MP - Oxygen, as someone said; Arthur and George; and Iain McEwan's Amsterdam. But I have taken the advice, and am currently rewriting.

SG

Hmmm. The trouble with such advice is that it's quite restrictive, and one wonders whether those giving that advice thought that it'd be a better plan for a first novel, just to make life easier? Perhaps they're underestimating you.

I think you should write the novel you want to write, and that's the best way to make it good. So while I agree you shouldn't deviate from norms too far in a first novel, having more than one protagonist does not seem to me like doing so.

So did you enjoy Oxygen? I've also read his The Optimists, which I think was even better. I just love his writing style.

Deb

Deb I think you're right - the advice was for a first time novelist. The implication being that I couldn't handle it! But what I was trying to do was to merge 2 stories into one, by linking the theme, which I agree, in retrospect, was overly ambitious.

Re Oxygen, I'm in the middle of it at the moment, and loving it! It's one of these novels that you savour, not really wanting it to end, because it's so good. Haven't read one of these for a while, so I'm taking my time. This is the first of his that I have read.

SG

I totally agree about the savouring - that's exactly how his novels make me feel! He and Helen Dunmore are my writing heroes atm, in no particular order.

Re. two separate stories linked by a theme: I think Emma D might be away atm, but when she gets back she might have some comments on that, if you haven't already chatted with her about it, because her novel TMOL does that. I'm reading it atm.

As for whether it's too ambitious for a first time novelist... I really don't know. I don't think so, but I think you have to feel you can handle it. Go with your gut instinct, and write the story you want to write, would be my advice.

Deb

Scotgal - I'm sure one main protagonist is easier - but no need to restrict yourself, by any means, I reckon.

Rosy x

I'm not really here, but I'm a great believer that you should follow your instincts for a first draft.

I suspect the not-more-than-one protagonist is exactly as someone said - a way of making a first novel more likely to succeed, within its own limits. But those limits are - well, limiting.

If you've got feedback like that, what it means is that at the moment your multi-protagonist setup isn't working. Which leaves you with two options. You've been offered the simpler solution (in my experience editors and agents and feeders-back usually say just this: cut what's not working) which is to stick to one. But there's just as good an option, which is to make your multi-protagonists work. What isn't working at the moment? Are some more likeable or less fully-imagined than others? Are you (and therefore the reader) not getting into some of their heads as well as others? Are you switching too often and not taking the reader carefully with you? Are you sticking with one so long that it's an awful lurch for the reader when you switch?

If yours doesn't want to be a single protagonist, Michelle, I'd say, go for it, and see what happens. And don't believe anyone who tells you you 'can't' do that - just drag them to a library and throw a few shelves-full of modern classics at them.

Emma

but we don't get to hear why she did it and what her thoughts were about it - we have to work that out ourselves, and she leaves enough clues for us to do so.

I much prefer this than having the writer popping in a pov every paragraph (or every sentence) to tell me what I'm supposed to be getting out of a scene. It's fine for the chief protagonist to give the reader a nudge every so often - their take on the scene - but unrelaible narrators are just as fun as reliable ones, and the reader should be free to disagree. I think that is where one protagonist and pov works best, at least per chapter.

Half the problem with first novels is the seductive nature of multiple povs, showing the reader everything the writer wants them to see - it's like wearing a straight jacket as you read it, or having someone whispering the answers as you do the crossword - and one feels like shouting 'back off and let me put together the clues myself, for godsake'


- NaomiM

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(by 'clues' I mean tone of voice and small actions, rather than anything to do with crime fiction).