Protagonists and structure (part 2)

To get back to the question of “Structurally, do you have separate turning points for each of the protagonists and/or principal viewpoints?” the answer is that we are actually back to talking about story-level pacing, believe it or not, something I addressed recently via two posts.

Remember, a story has structure because readers (not writers) demand it. Structure gives the reader some level of confidence that the story is going somewhere and that the time they spent on it will be worth it—otherwise why bother?

Structure is the enemy of meander. And meander happens for many reasons. Only one of those is that the writer doesn’t know what he is doing or doesn’t care. Another is that the writer gets lost. Other reasons include that a writer doesn’t want to rewrite or acknowledge that they added 20K words of fluff to meet a longer word-count. I see this among those who are used to writing short or shorter and have success with that and suddenly they have to produce something more acceptable to trad pub. Or they are always in a hurry to finish the book so they can just push that “publish” button.

To the writer, structure provides answers and guidance, but only if they are willing to listen, and neither structure nor the readers who demand some assurance that their time will not be wasted, care if the story has one, two, or five protagonists. Protagonists, not viewpoint characters, not viewpoints. Multiple protagonists may fracture the story and make it hard to follow or to care, but that’s actually a separate issue.

And if the number of protagonists doesn’t matter, then certainly neither do the viewpoints, viewpoint characters, or narrative schema. And it turns out that whether you serialize or not doesn’t matter that much either. It matters some, at least as far as I can see, but not as much as you’d think.

Let me explain using the mirror-moment in a story.

Not all stories have them, of course, but this is the moment when the protagonist (metaphorically) looks into the mirror and goes “Oh darn, it’s up to me, isn’t it? I must do something.” or if it’s a Mary-Sue, “It’s a good thing I’m here. Step back random citizen. I’m about to be me.”

This is the turning point where they go from being reactive and become proactive. They begin calling at least some of the shots.

In Star Wars it’s the scene where Luke appeals to Han’s greed by convincing him to go rescue Leia from her cell. It’s not very obvious as a mirror moment. We don’t have Luke going, “Well, if I don’t do something, no one will.” But he does say something like “if we don’t rescue her she’s going to die.”

In a way, it’s a dual mirror moment, but not an obvious one. Luke realizes that he has to change tactics and be proactive and he does this by appealing to Han’s greed. That is Luke’s mirror moment, i.e. I’m going to manipulate Han instead of just doing what Ben said or what Han wants to do. And it’s also a mirror moment for Han. He looks in his metaphorical mirror and sees a greedy SOB and is fine with it. So in some way these are separate mirror moments in that they belong to different characters but they are not separate structurally because there is only one story midpoint and the mirror moment belongs in the middle of the story, or as close to it as possible.

As a counter-example, if you have two viewpoints (no matter your narrative schema) and you space their individual midpoints too far apart, the mirror moment may feel like it comes too early or too late. Let’s say there is no obvious mirror moment, but there is an obvious change in tactics from reactive to proactive. If that change in tactics for viewpoint A comes at the 40% mark instead of at or near the 50% mark and the change in tactics for viewpoint B comes at the 60% mark, the pivot at the mid-point may be too muddied for the reader.

Let me give you another example. In both the Hero’s Journey (aka the 4-act) as well as the 3-act, we have the Martyr Moment. This is the moment when the hero is ready to sacrifice it all and goes into the action not expecting to win, but because it’s the right thing to do. He has decided to sacrifice himself.

Ben goes to face Darth Vader knowing he won’t survive it. He makes the ultimate sacrifice. In terms of structure, Ben’s martyrdom happens at the third turning point (6/8th of the way in). But this is not THE Martyr Moment because Ben is not the protagonist, even if Ben gets to be a viewpoint character. This third turning point is NOT Luke’s martyr moment. Ben’s death leads to Luke’s low point (“I can’t believe he’s gone.”) but NOT his Martyr Moment. That comes later during the Climax. It’s that do-or-die moment where if they don’t get the torpedos into that hole, everyone is gonna die and Luke is willing to sacrifice himself for it. And it has to come at this precise moment, near the 90% mark (or 7/8ths in) because that’s where the 4-act structure requires the protagonist to have this moment.

The Martyr Moment, as well as the major structural points, like the inciting incident, the turning points, the climax, all belong to the protagonist. Which is why if you don’t have a clear protagonist, your story can run into trouble as you make the inciting incident (the one that gets your character emotionally involved) belong to one viewpoint and the midpoint to another and the low-point to another and the climax to another.

I see this a lot with new writers who don’t understand who the protagonist is, who write “teams” thinking that they can forego having a protagonist, or who trained on games. Since I’m not a gamer and I don’t read LitRPG, I’m not going to comment on any LitRPG structuring do’s and don’ts.

For those using traditional storytelling structures such as the 3- or 4-act, there is a clear need for a protagonist and for a three-plait story question. You need to know what the protagonist’s or protagonists’ (plural) central question is so that you can figure out what is or is not a subplot, as I discussed here:

No matter how often I say that you need to know who your protagonist is, I run into the dual-protagonist problem or the serialization problem, since serialization relies on a lot of subplots and can appear to have many protagonists.

What then? Well, there are ways to make it work.

The dual-protagonist story works best for Romances because the protagonists spend so much time together and the story is more intertwined than non-Romances. But in a story that is not a Romance even if it’s dual protag like buddy-cop movies or like The Woman in Gold, the overall story beats are off. I sat down with it and the timing was off in terms of movie runtime due to the dual-protagonist AND dual-timeline. I would have had to separate out the beats based on both timeline (there’s a lot of flashbacks) AND which scenes belonged to whom in order to really give you a definitive, “this beat happened at the 2/8th mark for Maria’s current-day timeline” and “this beat happened at the 2/8th mark for Randy’s current-day timeline.” I did not do that due to the time it would require.

Which is why I’m telling you that the confounding effects of stories that have dual protagonists as well as dual timelines (or parallel storylines like a lot of “serial” content) have to be taken into account when studying those kinds of stories.

Something may well comply with structural elements even if it’s not immediately obvious to you. Or it may not because the author’s name will sell it regardless of how many rules it breaks. Or it may sell despite a lack of structural compliance, rather than because of it, so be careful when you decide to emulate something like that.

What about serials?

Last time I mentioned Babylon 5 and the Handmaid’s Tale. Both require a substantial investment of time but I just finished up the new Shogun series and I realized that would be a better one to analyze. It is very well done, especially the foreshadowing, which relies heavily on structural compliance. In fact, I’m getting goosebumps as I type this, because the foreshadowing was so good.

Breaking down ten episodes to the minute and parsing out all the subplots and when plot lines were open and how they were closed will undoubtedly take a lot of time, so I’m not promising anything or that it will be soon.

I kept expecting for the show runners to screw it up and switch protagonists so they can go “Girls rule and boyz drool” but they didn’t. So now I’m far more invested in it than I was at the start, so it’s time to pull it apart and see what makes it tick.

---

Cue rant:

Already I’m seeing arguments that Shogun was too much like Game of Thrones¹ because it wasn’t Tolkienesque which reveals a cultural bias that is just as bad as the notion that 21st-century female empowerment ideas should be spouted and exercised in historical fiction. Or the notion that everything should be written for and cater exclusively to an American audience. I disagree. GoT had horrid characters and everyone sucked. In fact it was so bad that I didn’t bother with the last season or anything with GRRM’s stain on it since. That was not the case here.

Shogun is about Japan not being Europe. It is about the differences between European and Japanese culture. It is a stranger in a strange land, a fish-out-of-water story. It didn’t remake 17th century historical reality into something it couldn’t be but did end on a hopeful note, I thought. Indeed, I found it very Japanese and the entire last episode was a resolution that closed off all the storylines and had an exquisite segment that drove home just how well done the foreshadowing was throughout.

In fact, if you want to study how to do foreshadowing, it’s excellent. Like Die Hard², Harlock (the movie) and Babylon 5, it subtly tells you exactly how it’s going to end in the opening sequence. But you don’t know that, and like a lot of it, it’s so subtle it’s very easy to miss. It also makes you think and isn’t instantly forgettable, which I find to be the marks of a good story.

End rant.

1. Shogun kept all the gore and sex to a minimum. It wasn’t at all the awful on-screen gorefest of GoT. There were some sensitive subjects, but the worst of it was off-screen. The samurai baby sequence was historically accurate (that’s my understanding of it) and off-screen. More importantly, it foreshadowed the high cost of peace which was an underlying theme throughout. If you don’t think life was cheap in 17th-century Japan and all over the world then I have news for you. Some horses were also blown up. For other triggers, please see: https://www.doesthedogdie.com/ (no dogs died or suffered which is really what I mostly care about).

2. In Die Hard, Argyle says something to McClane about riding off into the sunset with his lady, and that’s exactly what happens—McClane gets in a limo and rides off into a metaphorical sunset with his no-longer-estranged wife. I bet you didn’t see it. You’re welcome. Now multiply that by several factors and you get the subtlety in Shogun.