How ordinary must my protagonist be if the book is written from his/her point of view?
What I've found in most books I've read is that the protagonist is "normal" and/or "average" (at least in the beginning). I believe this is because most readers should be able to relate to the protagonist and if (s)he was superior or simply weird it wouldn't be as relatable. I also read somewhere that your characters can be as weird/crazy/superior etc. as you want them, the only exception is the protagonist who should be more normal/average.
Imagine a work of fiction (classic fantasy/scifi) where the protagonist is the healthy good guy hero (and not an 'American Psycho' or anything like that).
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Would the story work if it was written from the protagonist's point of view and (s)he was:
- very weird, like Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter
- very intelligent, like Sherlock Holmes (In the books, Dr. Watson is the point of view)
- very limited, some say stupid or mentally handicapped, like Hodor from A Song of Ice and Fire
How different from the average can I make my protagonist (if the story is from his/her point of view) without making him/her unrelatable?
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"Glennkill" is written from a sheep's point of view. Which is one of its main points of attraction. I remember a story from the perspective of a cup (Böll maybe?). "The Remarkable Rocket" from Wilde's "The Happy Prince and Other Stories" has fireworks as protagonists. Of course, the Happy Prince himself is a statue.
Many fairy tales have things as protagonists. "Toy Story" takes up this kind of topos as well.
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You practically answered your own question.
In these two cases, you should probably use a third party narrator.
"very intelligent, like Sherlock Holmes (In the books, Dr. Watson is the point of view)
very limited, some say stupid or mentally handicapped, like Hodor from A Song of Ice and Fire"
The first person shouldn't narrate, and the second person can't.
Most other people can narrate for themselves, even "above average" people, as long as they aren't "outliers." In the above, Holmes is an "outlier" who makes Dr. Watson look "average" by comparison (he's actually well above average).
Other than the above, you don't need to "limit" your characters, just so they can be (self) narrators.
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I don't think your protagonist has to be ordinary to be relatable.
- While I haven't read the series, isn't the point of The Diary of a Wimpy Kid that the protagonist isn't the "healthy good guy hero" type?
- Writer Graham Moore just won an Oscar for his screenplay adapting The Imitation Game, a biography of codebreaker Alan Turing, and said that Turing was one of his heroes precisely because he was a weird outcast (who went on to do amazingly heroic things).
- Greg House, the main character of the TV show House, MD, is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, and is the smartest guy in the room (and often the building). He's obnoxious, arrogant, and occasionally cruel, but also brilliant, funny, caring, and occasionally sensitive.
- The narrator of Flowers for Algernon (aka Charly) starts out as mentally handicapped, becomes brilliant, and eventually devolves back to handicapped. The novel is told in the first person.
Your readers aren't all ordinary, for good or ill, so why should all protagonists be?
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