For me, the banner that I want to wave in terms of giving a jump start to writers of any gender is just to make female protagonists as complex as their male counterparts.
There’s something about film that offers this opportunity to stick to a very, very clear single protagonist’s point of view, and I like that.
The conventional Aristotelian plot proceeds by means of a protagonist, an antagonist, and a series of events comprising a rising action, climax and denouement.
It would have been easier to have a male protagonist, but I didn’t want people to assume that Nikki Hill was me in her entirety because a lot of people just don’t like me and I don’t think they would be interested in reading about me, even in the fictional context.
In a movie, you’re just passive; you’re just watching a story that is told to you. But in games, I saw that you could be the main protagonist: you could be in the shoes of the hero and make the decisions.
The lead character in ‘Yennai Arindhaal’ is like an extension of the protagonists of ‘Kaakha Kaakha’ and ‘Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu.’
Should you create a protagonist based directly on yourself? The problem with this – and it is a very large problem – is that almost no one can view himself objectively on the page. As the writer, you’re too close to your own complicated makeup.
Hungry for both fantasy and inspiration, readers crave protagonists who, after overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles, triumph at the end of the day.
I believe there are aspects of the narrative that become easier to understand by shifting the focus of the story to the characters. Illustrating growth and change in the protagonist becomes a simpler process, and these changes are, in fact, one of the themes of ‘Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice”s story.
Everyone’s the hero in their own story. You’ve lived your life. You’re the good guy of your life, the protagonist of your own movie. Everyone knows that they have more in them to offer than they sometimes show.
I gravitated to Judy Blume early on. ‘Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing’ was my favorite, with a realistic and relatable protagonist in Peter Hatcher. When I reached the fourth grade, I made the leap to science fiction and never looked back.
There are very few games, especially on the scale of ‘Horizon,’ that have a sole protagonist that is female.
‘Deathstroke’ became an interesting challenge – not just because of his ethnicity, but because he’s a villain. I’ve never written a villain as a protagonist of a series before. I thought this could be an interesting challenge. That’s really what got my attention, and it just went from there.
One of the bibles of my youth was ‘Birds of the West Indies,’ by James Bond, a well-known ornithologist, and when I was casting about for a name for my protagonist I thought, ‘My God, that’s the dullest name I’ve ever heard,’ so I appropriated it. Now the dullest name in the world has become an exciting one.
If the reader is rooting for the protagonist, they’ll forgive you just about everything else.
I love to play with the notion of who the protagonist is – who is the audience supposed to root for? I did it in ‘Sicario’ and feel it was the strength of the script – guiding the audience’s allegiance toward the villain because they think he’s the hero, until it’s revealed that he’s the villain.
When your protagonist bores you, you’re in trouble.
There aren’t many children’s books about black characters that are just going on adventures. My library has over 2,000 children’s books in it, and most of the protagonists are either white or creatures.
The Cold War was over, presidential sex scandals superseded foreign concerns, and the American public was more interested in reading about fiendish serial killers, dependable mystery series protagonists, and any book thought to be in the vein of Bridget Jones and her abbreviation-happy diary.
That’s what protagonists do. They work hard, they have a conflict, they overcome the obstacles.
I’m looking for the thing that is different from the antagonist in ‘Stranger Things,’ different from the protagonist in ‘Power Rangers,’ and something that will really continue these two amazing opportunities I’ve been given.
As a storyteller, I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of recreating this notion of choices in fiction. My dream was to put the audience in the shoes of the main protagonists, let them make their own decisions, and by doing so, let them tell their own stories.
We ‘chicks’ have munched our popcorn while romantic comedies became just comedies, and then each female protagonist got recast for Matthew McConaughey or Seth Rogan.
I believe that when Fifa hands out an award, it should not be a marketing prize that solely honours the protagonists of a media-crazy sport.
I think as women we’ve always been very used to growing up reading and identifying with male protagonists, especially in fantasy. There’s a saying in publishing that girls will read about boys, but boys will only read about boys, and it’s important to give women strong heroines.
I don’t understand when people say character actors. You either have the protagonist or the antagonist and I’ve played both. It’s an actor’s role to play a character. Does that mean that main stream heroes and heroines are characterless?
While books provided me with some escape from the mental and physical horrors of my early life, they were unreliable. Many times the protagonists suffered terribly and then died at the end.
I’m a girl, so I’ve experienced dismissal because I was a girl or because I write about girls: my book with a guy protagonist is treated as more literary and worthy than my other books with girl protagonists.
Why should I limit myself or drive myself towards a woman-centric film. Sometimes, the most interesting role is not that of the protagonist.
The whole concept of ECW was that the biggest star of the promotion was the promotion itself. It didn’t matter if a persona was designed to elicit cheers or boos. It didn’t matter if someone was an antagonist or protagonist. The whole concept was to fight for the honor of the cause. The cause was ECW itself.
The leading character isn’t always the most important or interesting character; when people think that the protagonist is the character portrayed, it’s people who haven’t read Shakespeare.
Let’s get right to it: On page 5 of Paul Murray’s dazzling new novel, ‘Skippy Dies,’… Skippy dies. If killing your protagonist with more than 600 pages to go sounds audacious, it’s nothing compared with the literary feats Murray pulls off in this hilarious, moving and wise book.
Most modern science fiction went to school on ‘Dune.’ Even ‘Harry Potter’ with its ‘boy protagonist who has not yet grown into his destiny’ shares a common theme. When I read it for the first time, I felt like I had learned another language, mastered a new culture, adopted a new religion.
People seem to need a likable protagonist more than ever.
I’m drawn particularly to stories that evolve out of the character of the protagonist.
I’ve always felt that it didn’t feel right for me when a protagonist goes through a storyline where they’re killing a lot of enemies, and at the very end of the story he ends up kissing the heroine and that’s where you end the game.
It’s worth pointing out that no one faults a male protagonist for falling in love. What is it about a boy needing a girl that seems to round out his character, while a girl needing a boy can be dismissed as pathetic?
In today’s time, when there is so much competition, they must not only focus on the characters of antagonists or protagonists, it is better for them to be good actors first.
It’s not all ‘Jane Eyre’ out there. In her sweet, honorable, slightly passive-aggressive way, Jane was as perfect as a protagonist can get while remaining interesting; in fact, she’s one of my favorites. But most characters are more morally ambiguous.
As Black people, we’re very used to empathizing with the world through white people’s eyes, because they’re the protagonists. I know what it’s like to look at the world and empathize with Superman because I spent my whole life doing that.
The protagonist in ‘Deacon Blues’ is a triple-L loser – an L-L-L Loser. It’s not so much about a guy who achieves his dream but about a broken dream of a broken man living a broken life.
In any novel I write, I have in my mind several things which happened in the protagonist’s past which I never mention in the book.
Audience doesn’t necessarily come only to see a hero with six-pack abs. They will watch him, but if someone who doesn’t have that physique and is playing the protagonist, they’ll watch that too.
One of the reasons why I think virtual reality, as a narrative format, is never going to go beyond the short-form immersion space is because the bedrock of visual storytelling is the reverse angle. If you can’t look into the eyes of the protagonist, you cannot hold people’s attention for more than 15 minutes.
The idea behind ‘Gloria’ was to take a secondary character – the aunt, the mother – and stay with her as she becomes our protagonist.
Out of 10 projects I get sent, seven or eight are female protagonists, and that’s not the only thing I’m interested in.
A lot of times we make God to be this protagonist to our hope and our joy, and to be this old, grumpy man with this long beard and white robe. That is so counterintuitive to the heart of God.
