Are reactive protagonists inherently a bad thing?
I'm just getting into writing and while reading about it I've found a lot of topics which claim that reactive protagonists are generally frowned upon.
Reactive: Acting in response to a situation rather than creating or controlling it.
I'm having trouble understanding why such a protagonist would be unacceptable.
It's often been pointed out that Indiana Jones has a minimal impact on the plot in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Most if not …
6y ago
One example I can think of for a truly reactive protagonist is Arthur Dent in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. For t …
6y ago
People want things A character is both more plausible and interesting if they have goals and desires which move them t …
6y ago
I'd say the question of Active vs. Reactive hero is as much a question of how you present events, as of what is actually …
6y ago
This is just about the psychology of what makes a good story. A person is not a hero if they fight because they are forc …
6y ago
I think we are dealing with a scale of greys here. It's true, as Matthew Dave mentions, that the audience will expect th …
6y ago
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I think we are dealing with a scale of greys here. It's true, as Matthew Dave mentions, that the audience will expect the protagonist trying to resolve at least one of the major conflicts in the story arc.
In some genres, e.g. fantasy, the protagonist is usually the one who's supposed to do the final big leap ahead, willingly putting everything at stake in the final fight. In those situations, you don't want to have a pushover-protagonist: one who does things just because he's forced to do them, or his mentor suggests it, or again there is no other choice.
It's true though that in most genres the situation is not so extreme. In a sci-fi novel I'm writing, I'm struggling with the topic of agency: I have a female character who would like to be active, but can't since she usually misses a lot of information of the world she's in, and can't help being pushed by other more knowledgeable characters (maybe related question).
In a more general case, reactiveness isn't inherently a bad thing. After all the protagonist can't be the main cause for all the conflict in the plot - there are the other charaters, the antagonist, and the whole setting to account for. In some situations, I'd say being reactive makes more sense than being active. A character who always takes the initiative regardless of the event will come off as brash, presumptuous or know-it-all.
It's true that protagonists are expected to take a certain amount of action later in the novel; e.g. when a major conflict is revelaed, the protagonist is expected to resolve it in an active way. Activeness in this sense is more like "I want to find a solution" rather than "I'm forced to find a solution".
TL;DR: Reactiveness (unlike total passiveness) is not a bad thing; but it can be ill-suited to some situations or events in the plot. In the end, though, there are a lot of different stories to tell, and it's up to you to decide what kind of it'll be, so take everything with a grain of salt.
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One example I can think of for a truly reactive protagonist is Arthur Dent in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. For the most part, he is basically dragged around as events happen around and to him. He even remarks on it in the second book:
"No, I'm very ordinary," said Arthur, "but some very strange things have happened to me. You could say I'm more differed from than differing."
In this case, though, I'd say that it's done intentionally as a juxtaposition against the wild and exciting universe for comedic effect. If you were to take that story and tell it as a serious dramatic novel, I'd imagine many readers wanting to shake Arthur by the shoulders and yell at him to actually do something.
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People want things
A character is both more plausible and interesting if they have goals and desires which move them to a significant enough degree that the plot is impacted by those desires.
Everyone is reactive to the situations around them; it would be unrealistic if your characters didn't react and adapt, but...
People who sit around and wait for the things want to just come to them are boring
It is important, if you want to keep your audience engaged, to not be boring.
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I'd say the question of Active vs. Reactive hero is as much a question of how you present events, as of what is actually happening.
Let me give you an example: Frodo, the main character of the wildly successful Lord of the Rings, can hardly be said to have actively chosen the quest of the Ring. His initial reaction to learning what he has in his hands and what must be done with it is
'I do really wish to destroy it!' cried Frodo. 'Or, well, to have it destroyed. I am not made for perilous quests. I wish I had never seen the Ring! Why did it come to me?' (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, book I, chapter 2 - The Shadow of the Past)
"I wish the world to be saved, preferably by someone else". After which, he immediately offers the Ring to Gandalf. And later he offers it to Aragorn, and to Galadriel - anyone who might be, in his opinion, "better suited" to the quest.
As long as there's a Gandalf or an Aragorn to follow, Frodo is content to follow - let someone else lead him to the end of his quest. Once he's alone, it turns out he hasn't spent too much time looking at maps, trusting Gandalf to lead him. Not exactly a pro-active attitude, is it?
But every single time Frodo is offered a chance to turn aside and abandon his quest: on Caradhras, on Amon Hen, he chooses, actively chooses to go on doggedly with this quest he never wanted.
You could say that the situation has been forced on Frodo, and he merely reacts to it. It's not much of a choice, is it, if the alternative is watching the world go up in flames? But at the same time, Frodo's choice, his decision, is active. Where everybody else chooses "sorry, I can't", Frodo chooses "I will". Which is both a heroic and a realistic situation, if you think about it.
Which brings me to what I've been trying to say: the situation in which your protagonist finds himself in can be entirely forced on him. But within the situation he finds himself in, the protagonist needs to be making active choices. The choice to go on must be an active one, the alternative needs to be considered, if only to be discarded. The protagonist should be at least somewhat proactive in trying to achieve his goal, even if the goal was thrust upon him, and he would let others do as much as possible.
To achieve this, offer your protagonist chances to turn aside, strip him gradually of help, force him to act. He doesn't need to be the kind of character who permanently seeks to be active - a situation that would pull him out of his comfort zone would do that. The moment he's actively answering questions like "whether to proceed", and "how to proceed", he's active.
A simple example: running away from a collapsing building is a reaction. Helping someone else is a choice. Figuring out how to get out - also a choice. It's all about how you frame it. (And yeh, everybody who's been explaining about how it's important that the protagonist reads as active - I agree completely.)
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It's often been pointed out that Indiana Jones has a minimal impact on the plot in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Most if not all of the major plot points would have happened with or without him. Yet hardly anyone thinks Raiders of the Lost Ark is a bad movie or even that it tells a bad story. They don't even notice this quirk about its plot until you point it out to them.
So it's tempting to use Indiana Jones as an example of a reactive protagonist. If you just look at a list of plot points then it seems Indy doesn't do much. But if you look at the story through his eyes, you'll see Indy tries. He makes many choices and risks his life repeatedly, even though his choices don't ultimately have much impact. At almost any point he could say, "Screw this, I'm going home," but he never does. He keeps going, and in so doing, he takes the viewer on a hell of a ride. People go home thinking, "Man, I wish I were Indiana Jones!"
Now suppose the story were a bit different and most of the same things happen but Indy never actually makes any choices. Maybe the Nazis kidnap him early on and he just watches as things unfold from there. Then he might as well not even be in the story. Nobody fantasizes about being a guy like that.
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This is just about the psychology of what makes a good story. A person is not a hero if they fight because they are forced into the fight. A person did not solve their problem if the solution just happens and they made no decisions leading to the solution of it. They just survived until the problem was resolved naturally.
You can write those kinds of stories, but they tend to not satisfy readers. The only reason instructors, agents and publishers don't like them is because readers don't find those stories satisfying or entertaining.
Typically, the Three Act Structure contains a Setup, a Middle, and a Conclusion.
The Middle is usually divided into two parts for the hero(es), a Reactive phase first (dealing with whatever the problem dealt them) and a Proactive Phase (having learned enough to start planning ahead and making choices to solve the problem).
If you look at this as four parts, each part is roughly equal in length, give or take 10% of the full story length.
Note that the 3AS is NOT an "invention" some professor dictates is the only way to write a story. The 3AS is science, derived from analysis of thousands of successful stories to find out what they have in common, and therefore what makes a story popular. The 3AS and its pacing and nature of the writing in each phase is the result of this distillation.
Of course it is necessarily averages and good stories can deviate from the 3AS in any respect, or perhaps leave some things out. But it does tell you the shape of what readers like the most and consider to be "good stories".
So if you want your work to be liked and considered a good story, then a purely reactive protagonist is, indeed, an inherently bad thing. In a good story, the hero makes a brave choice, risking something important to her (perhaps even her life), to accomplish something that is good, that is worth more to her than the risk of loss. If she doesn't eventually make that choice, then chances are, people will not like the story, will not find it entertaining, will not recommend it, and if they paid for it, may try to get their money back. They read to imagine themselves as the hero, nobody wants to imagine themselves as a passive punching bag.
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