Creative sparks and the real protagonist

The main character in a novel or short story is called the protagonist. Within a typical story structure, the protagonist faces a problem or challenge that introduces conflict into his/her life. This conflict and its ultimate resolution are what draw us as readers into the story.

If the protagonist solves the problem too quickly and/or too easily, the story is usually boring and without sparks. If the protagonist tries multiple times over many pages to solve the problem, readers may drift away from the story unless they see movement in the plot. Again, the sparks have faded. I like literary fiction, so I am generally fairly patient with outcomes that take some time to evolve. But I like to see a purpose in it whether it's a puzzle of a subplot or a shift to another character's view point.

As a reader and as a reviewer, my eyes glaze over when I confront stasis in the work. I am comfortable with long interior monologues, flights of fancy, dreams, descriptions, explorations of place settings, and plots within plots within plots. But the story must move--somehow, somewhere. The spark cannot have gone out.

Stasis is unnatural in nature, yet when we allow it into our own lives it makes us feel stuck, hopeless, powerless, small, depressed and off-line with the world as it is. When I read a short story or a novel that is stuck--as opposed to the protagonist being or feeling stuck--I begin to question the author's state of mind when s/he wrote the material. Was s/he stuck in some way? If so, did his or her feeling of being stuck somehow find its way into the material?

As reader, I often ask that question. It's rhetorical, of course, because authors aren't likely to appreciate e-mails out of nowhere that imply that their own challenges may have extinguished the sparks their stories could have, should have, might have had.

As an author, I try to remain sensitive to the movement of my protagonist throughout the book. I realize that on days when I am stuck, my attitude about the protagonist shifts. I find myself making his or her lot in life more difficult and the chances of success less likely. I try not to write on such days because it spoils the story.

When I write, I feel that "behind the curtain" of my fiction, I am the real protagonist. I am being changed as I write even though the main character in the story may have little or nothing in common with me. When I stop being changed by what I am writing, the story stops being interesting.

That's when I have to step away from the work until I get my personal spark back from wherever I lost it.

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You may also like:

Review: 'Razor's Revenge' by Paul Chandler
Things That Are Puzzling (where I ask why writers seem to talk more about trivia than writing)
What if all our fiction becomes true? (where I dabble in quantum speculation)
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Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of The Sun Singer, Garden of Heaven: an Odyssey, and Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire.

His work also appears in Forever Friends, Nature's Gifts and 100 Years, 100 Stories.