How can I Switch Protagonists Between Books?
Disclaimer: I am not intending on doing this. It is just a question I thought was fascinating and might be useful to other writers.
Here's the scenario. You're writing a series of novels. After the first book, you decide to change to a new protagonist. The reason isn't important. What's important is that if you've developed the protagonist correctly, the reader is invested in him. He wants him to win. Now he must suddenly shift to a new protagonist.
This presents a problem. The reader will want to stay with the old protagonist. That's the one he likes. He spent a whole novel with that person, learning deep truths about his character as they went through harrowing journeys together. Now he's suddenly forced to work with this new person, when he is only interested in reading about the old one. The reader puts the book down and leaves.
So here's my question: is there some tried-and-tested method for dealing with this? Suppose you write one novel, and then shift to the protagonist's best friend for the next novel. You could theoretically lessen the impact by making the friend a strong secondary protagonist in the first novel, so let's make it worse. What if you're telling a genealogy story, and the next novel picks up with the protagonist's kids? You can't exactly make a one-year-old a secondary protagonist before-hand.
How can you shift to a new protagonist in the next novel?
Note: Ignore killing off the protagonist. This is for if he's still alive and well.
Additional Note: I develop my characters so that the reader cares about them. To me, every protagonist needs a reason for the reader to want him to win. I call this quality Strength. He also needs inner conflict, something unresolved inside of him that makes him endlessly interesting to read about. Inner conflict is usually resolved at the end of the book, but you still have Strength, drawing the reader back to the old protagonist.
The opening pages are very important, because if the reader likes the old protagonist (now a side character) more than the new one, he could easily turn against the new protagonist, which would completely skew your novel.
Do note that this method of character development is my own personal method. It is not part of the question (nor should it be part of the answer), and I only include it to show you where I'm coming from.
I have marked what's reply as the answer, mainly for the excellent outline it provides which I consider very useful. I wanted to note however, that I found part of Lew's answer also incredibly insightful. I wanted to note it here for anyone else who might have this question:
If your story is character-driven, switching protagonist probably makes little or no sense, unless the person is killed and someone else has to carry the torch (but it is not the case, I understand).
If your story is plot-driven, you can pick a new protagonist every time the story requires it. It is your story and you can tell it any way you desire.
The readers must not be surprised by it. The marketing for the second book must make it clear what is going on. If you …
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Mark Twain did this with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. In "Tom Sawyer," Huckleberry Finn was the number two characte …
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Consider Almanzo in the Laura Ingalls Wilder classic children's novels. He is a member of the cast of characters in most …
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I think the question really boils down to: what/whose story are you trying to tell? And is it a single story? Look at Ji …
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Ursula K. Le Guin uses a fairly well-tried technique in Earthsea: 1. Write book 1 about protagonist A 2. Write book 2 a …
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I've seen it more than once. It can be a bit jarring, but it can also work fine. It depends on the plot and the writer. …
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In the classic model of a story, the protagonist pursues their desire to the limits of their endurance, concluding in so …
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7 answers
I think the question really boils down to: what/whose story are you trying to tell? And is it a single story? Look at Jim Butcher's Dresden Files stories, for example. Those are almost all centered around the titular Harry Dresden, and he is the POV character for most of the books. The story is his story. Eventually, there are some peripheral characters who get stories, and become the narrator for a time, but it's all in service of telling Harry Dresden's story. And most of the books end with threads left unfinished, so as a reader, I'd be exceptionally annoyed if, when I picked up the next book, I didn't get some amount of closure to the outstanding threads. David Weber's Honor Harrington novels work in the same way. Once the universe is large enough, and some of the peripheral characters have been flushed out enough that the reader starts caring about them as well, switching protagonists is less jarring.
You can compare this to Terry Pratchett's books, which all take place in the same setting, but have many different protagonists. But in his case, when you finish a book, the story is complete. It doesn't mean that everyone is dead, but there aren't outstanding threads to the story. He hasn't introduced a villain who escaped, or some pending disaster that the hero has to solve. The same thing is true of Lois McMaster Bujold's books; again, a shared universe, but each book is a story in itself. While I'm happy to spend more time with a given character, I don't feel like something is incomplete if I don't get to do so. With the next book I read, the story is richer because I've read the other books, but I don't feel I'm missing something if I haven't read the other books.
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Mark Twain did this with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
In "Tom Sawyer," Huckleberry Finn was the number two character after Tom. After they discovered $12,000 of gold together (a quarter of a million in today's money), Huck became "equal" to Tom. So it made sense for Huck to have his own novel, with Tom as his number two.
I once considered doing this for a hero and heroine series (a his and her series if you will).
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I've seen it more than once. It can be a bit jarring, but it can also work fine. It depends on the plot and the writer.
- Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising pentology: the first book is about three siblings, and then the second book is about another young man entirely in a different country who has nothing to do with them. They eventually meet in the third book and books 3 to 5 alternate between their viewpoints. It was confusing at first, but smoothed out eventually.
- Anne McCaffrey's YA Harper Hall trilogy does something similar: Books 1 and 2 are about Menolly, a young girl who has to escape her abusive home to become a musician, and Piemur is a younger boy who is a singer whom she meets and befriends. Book 3 is about Piemur's adventures and Menolly plays little to no role. It works better because McCaffrey set many books in this universe and frequently switches protagonists. Robinton, the Master Harper, is a secondary character in several stories and then eventually got his own origin novel.
- Another McCaffrey example in the same universe: Moreta is about a queen dragon rider, while Nerilka's Story is set starting about two-thirds of the way through Moreta and follows someone else's experiences. Each woman is a tertiary character in the other's story.
- The Rama series by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee: Book 1 is almost a "history of the future," and books 2 to 4 are more traditional novels about a family (and are set some years later, IIRC).
So yes, you can do it. Make all your protagonists worthy of being admired and trust that the reader can keep up.
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The readers must not be surprised by it. The marketing for the second book must make it clear what is going on.
If you just say "The long-awaited sequel to Book 1", people will buy Book 2, but feel cheated and will never buy Books 3 and 4. (And your other books outside this series)
If you say "The adventures for Y, set in the same world as Book 1", people will know what is going on. Somewhat fewer people will buy Book 2, but they will not feel cheated and will probably continue to buy Books 3 and 4.
Of course, people will want to know what happened to the original protagonist after the end of Book 1. You should cover some of that between the action of the new book.
It helps a lot if the new protagonist has a significant role in the first book, to make readers care about their story. That way you can drop the "Set in the same world" part since everybody understands that.
You gave an example of a family saga, where the new protagonist is just a baby in the first book.
In that particular case, you can prime the readers to be interested in the next book by having the parents think about "How is the world going to be when Junior grows up?" Having them worry about this, you also make the readers worry about it... and then there is a new book just about that, how nice!
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Ursula K. Le Guin uses a fairly well-tried technique in Earthsea:
- Write book 1 about protagonist A
- Write book 2 about protagonist B
- At some point in book 2, establish how it relates to protagonist A's story.
The essence is that some combination of the world, the story of book 2, and the character of protagonist B, must be strong enough to make book 2 worth reading. It can't survive solely on waiting to find out how it relates to protagonist A, although I suppose you could in theory use B as a false protagonist and return to A.
Le Guin is good at her job, so protagonist A seen through B's POV isn't the same as A from his own POV. It's quite striking that A is not permitted by the author to become the protagonist of B's story.
The protagonist of a novel is not necessarily "the character we like most" or even "the character whose POV we have", it's the character who is questioned and tested, and whose decisions and development are the subject of the novel. So at risk of reducing this too far, you switch protagonists by writing a story in which a new person decides and develops, and the protagonist of the previous novel plays a role in which their decisions and development are not so important for the time being. A's in it, but it's not about A. I would suggest that if you try to make it be about both A and B simultaneously then you risk either muddying the whole thing, or else (like George R.R. Martin) writing several thousand pages more than you intended.
If you skip step 3, so it doesn't relate to protagonist A's story at all, then arguably it's not a series of novels, it's a separate novel in the same setting. Which is also fine.
Now he's suddenly forced to work with this new person, when he is only interested in reading about the old one.
There are always going to be readers who wish their favourite authors would write about something different from what the author has decided to write about, no matter how compelling the new subject. Live with it. Just don't bait-and-switch them by advertising a series as being about protagonist A when actually it isn't!
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Consider Almanzo in the Laura Ingalls Wilder classic children's novels. He is a member of the cast of characters in most of the books. But somewhere along the line he got a book of his own, that tells the story of his childhood.
We are predisposed to like him because we know he will marry our primary protagonist when he's grown. And then we get to know him and get invested in him for his own sake.
If the new protagonist has a story worth telling you will be fine.
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In the classic model of a story, the protagonist pursues their desire to the limits of their endurance, concluding in some profound change or revelation (depending on whether you think people can change). In some sense, this drains the character of story potential. They have either achieved their desire or been defeated in their attempt. If they have achieved their desire, there is no basis for another story arc. (Or it must be a lesser arc with a lesser objective.) If they have failed, there is no logical trying again, because they have already tried to the limits of their endurance.
If the classic character arc has been accomplished, therefore, and you want to tell another story in the same world, it makes sense that you should change protagonist. New protagonist equals new arc. The previous protagonist can play a new role in the new story: wise man instead of hero, perhaps.
The alternative is that you are telling one story across multiple books. LOTR consists of six books in three volumes, but it is one story arc. A change of protagonist would be out of the question here because the original arc is not complete.
Another pattern we see in serials is that each episode is a different person's story arc in which the recurring hero plays a role. The hero's story potential is never exhausted because they are never actually the protagonist of the story arc. Or, there is a story arc for the hero but it is told very slowly through their participation in the story arcs of a new secondary character each time.
Yet another alternative is the maturation angle. In a maturation plot, the protagonist grows up as a result of the story arc. But there are multiple stage of growing up. Each arc can achieve push them to the limit of their endurance for their current level of maturity, forcing them to accomplish the next stage of growing up. But there is still more growing up to do, so there is still story potential remaining even after they are pushed to the limit of endurance in the last round of maturation. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a classic example of this. It also shows its limits. There is only so much growing up that a person can do, after which there is no maturation stories left to tell. Lewis has to switch protagonists in the Narnia chronicles as his characters grow up.
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