Thinking Through Plot Mechanics

I was recently asked to identify the protagonist and antagonist of my novel. It sent me for a little loop, honestly. I know (obviously) who the book is about, the plot, and even the background motivations of my characters – stuff that isn’t necessarily spelled out in the text of the story but that I’m hoping shines through in little glimpses as the chapters progress. But I don’t tend to think of my stories in those kinds of terms. Heck, I don’t usually think of the books I read in those kinds of terms. One of the things that always made me grimace in the various lit courses I took in college for my almost-lit-minor was having to try and sit down and dissect the book to death. I just want a good story, with well rounded characters, and an interesting plot. Fancy names need not apply. Even though I know there is some benefit to working through the more mechanical details.

Still, an assignment is an assignment and so, with the assignment in hand, I quickly typed up a little description of my main character, Lydia, assigning her the title of protagonist. Then it got a little harder: what does she want? Her motivation really isn’t transparent if you’re focused on a “what does she want” mindset, but after a little contemplation, I had that typed up as well.

Next came the antagonist. With Lydia the protagonist, the story was really more a coming of age type story, making the antagonist her inner struggle. This tied in fairly well with what I’d written for her desire, so I went with it. Then came the kicker: how far will the antagonist go to stop the protagonist?

That really threw me for a loop, because, really, how does an inner struggle stop anyone? Obviously, there’s the idea of self-sabotage, and I played with that for a while. When I had the best I could work up, I sent it off to one of my critique partners to get her thoughts. We both agreed that it was ok, but not really stellar.

We got on the phone and kicked around some ideas. At one point, exasperated with my inability to do something this basic, I muttered, “I should have just made it a love triangle story. Then this would be easy.” But I despise love triangles and, while you should never say never, it’s incredibly unlikely that I’ll ever voluntarily write a love triangle. We laughed and continued kicking ideas around. Then the light bulb flashed. “What if,” I said, “just for the sake of argument, Lydia isn’t the protagonist?”

With that thought, everything fell into place. Sure, she’s still the main character, but she’s very definitely the antagonist of the story and it was only trying to shoehorn her into the role of protagonist that was making the whole thing so difficult. Now I have my assignment completed and I’ve realized that wrestling with my characters to stuff them into the various boxes of literary mechanics is actually beneficial. The new mindset has given me some thoughts for tweaking my blurb a bit – and that’s never a bad thing.