Give Your Protagonist Main-Character Syndrome

Imagine your favorite celebrity. What makes her lovable? What is it about her appeal? And if you idolize her, what drives your insatiable appetite for her dirt, rumors, and surrounding gossip?

Details

Celebrities - they’re just like us. No person is wholly innocent nor completely rotten, so our characters shouldn’t be either.

Let’s create a protagonist your audience will STAN.

Audiences fall in love with protagonists who mirror our inherently complicated internal worlds. However, rearing a character’s certain je ne se quois into existence is no easy feat. For us writers, what is sometimes easy to pinpoint in our favorite TV shows or novels can be tough to replicate sitting before our own blank page.

If you’re struggling with character arc, agency, or likability, the answer likely hides in a flat or disconnected internal world. However, protagonist's external and internal goals are intrinsically related, and you may be yet to realize your plot structure is suffering too. The common pain point is shaky foundational work.

Luckily, there’s a recipe.

What you will learn

A healthy balance of lecture and workshopping, we’ll hone your protagonist's wounds, misbehaviors, and fatal flaws. I hope to tackle these common “literary buzzwords,” in an effort to make their definitions less conceptual and more applicable to your narrative. • Using your protagonist’s external goal as a guide, we’ll reverse-engineer their wound, fatal flaw and misbehavior to drive your story. • Volunteers are welcome to pitch their protagonist’s external motivation and receive blind pitches on matching internal goals. • New insights on protagonists’ wants and needs, and how they can be used as the driving force for your scene work and overall story arc.

Workshop takeaways

• A deepened understanding of the relationship between external and internal goals — and how they’re intrinsically intwined • A “recipe” to outline your protagonist • Group participation and the opportunity to present • A takeaway breakdown of a scene from a popular show, which exemplifies how character internal and external goals motivate plot development

Additional info

If you can't attend this class live, it will be recorded! Students will receive a recording the day after the class, and it will be available for 30 days.