I never would have thought I'd be asking this question, but in my current story there's a bunch of different characters performing different parts of a mission to achieve the same goal. I have a main character in the beginning, but I feel it would be impossible to solely concentrate on the main character throughout the story. Do I need one? Thanks!
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Does A Story Need A Main Character?
- Thread starter Zak9
- Start date
I write ensemble, so I would say "no."
kayd_mon
Sage
Ensembles can work just fine. There are many examples of this, in mosf recent popularity, ASOIAF.
- Thread starter
- #4
Weaver
Sage
I have read many, many stories (some of them award-winning) that did not have a single-character focus. Multiple protagonists -- perfectly valid choice. And as you've already seen, some stories cannot be told properly when limited to a single PoV throughout. Even a story that does have a single MC doesn't mean it must be told only through his/her eyes. You can still have scenes where the viewpoint belongs to the antagonist, for example, or people who do things that the MC does not witness but are nevertheless important to the plot.
A good example of where several main characters work fine is the Darkness series by Harry Turtledove. It features characters from all sides of the conflict (it's a fantasy rendition of WWII) and all of them as the hero of their own story. Only rarely do one of them come across another and most of them never meet any of the other PoV characters.
It's still a great series and it tells the story of the world at war very well.
It's still a great series and it tells the story of the world at war very well.
BWFoster78
Myth Weaver
It seems to me that an author can do anything he wants as long as he's a strong enough writer to pull it off. A better question might be:
How best to pull off a story without a protagonist?
I'm reading a book now that is written by an obviously inexperienced self-published author. It's my opinion that he would have been much better off to concentrate on a protagonist as the stretches in his book shine where he devotes significant story space to a single character. The rest feels disjointed and is hard to follow. Quick jumps between viewpoints and storylines provide discontinuity that this writer did not overcome.
My advice to the OP is to be wary of the risks.
Lohengrin
Dreamer
I think it's legitimate. You'll be writing a story about a Story instead of a story about a character though, and that's fine. Personally I don't like when a story doesn't have a main character, but thats totally my opinion.
If you like it, go for it.
If you like it, go for it.
Addison
Auror
So long as there's someone driving the story, someone the reader roots for in some way driving one scene to the next, then it's good. You don't need one main hero and a list of side characters. They can all be equally important.
We write ensemble, and I would say that our work is very character driven, rather than story driven. Sure, we have a plot, but it's the characters' personalities that drive it, the changes they go through and the challenges they face as people. In our WIP, we have 7 POV characters, 5 protagonists and 2 antagonists, all of whom pull weight plot-wise. Granted, 3 are the real heavy-lifters, but the other's voices will definitely be heard. So, no, having multiple protagonists does not always lead to "writing a story about a story," but it does take a considerable amount of juggling and strong characters to make it work.
Lohengrin
Dreamer
There are several examples of "stories about stories", and they are usually huge and famous books. Of course the plot is character driven, that still doesn't change it is about a story. There are book that when you read it, you think "oh so this is a book about this guy that his throne has been stolen and now he wants it back". There are other books that you can say "this is a story about a war, and the author shows us the war from the X character's pov". The story itself is not about the characters, but the characters as members of this army obviously have huge impacts in it, so in a way, of course they drive the plot.
And I didn't even say "always", it was just a fast reply.
BWFoster78
Myth Weaver
I have to agree with Lohengrin on this one.
If you ask me for a single line to tell you what my story is about, I'd start, "It's about this guy who..."
It seems to me that, if I asked someone the same for any ensemble piece, they'd have to say, "It's about this situation where..." That does not imply that the characters don't drive the plot, but, at its core, I don't see how an ensemble piece can be anything but about a situation.
I'd say it all comes down to how it is written and where the focus is. If a story about one character can be about that character above the situation, then there's no reason a story about five characters can't be about those five characters above the situation they are in.
I can certainly understand that. Thrillers, as a genre, step up to the plate as being excellent examples of plot-driven fiction. They often involve multiple cast members, but do revolve around situations with little in the way of character development.
The difference comes in when asked what our WIP is about, my first reply is "It's about these people who save a city from a Faerie lord out to carve his own kingdom from the Mortal Realm." But, first and foremost, it about "these people." When asked what the meta-plot for the series is, the one-sentence answer would have to be "It's about this multi-generational family that may or may not save the world." But, again, it's about the people first.
See what I'm driving at?
As I'm thinking about this, 12 Angry Men, which I mentioned in another thread, is a good example. Henry Fonda's character isn't really a "main" character, and the title itself tells you it is about more than one person. But the story is ultimately about the characters in the jury room. A deliberation of a jury trial is a pretty generic situation. Even in a murder trial - so what? You could write the situation 1000 different ways and still have the same story because the story isn't about the situation. It's about the characters in that room (mainly a handful of them), and their subjective views, prejudices, principles, how they act under pressure, and so on.
I think of an ensemble piece as telling multiple stories tied together.
There's added challenges which come with doing so, but certainly those can be overcome.
There's added challenges which come with doing so, but certainly those can be overcome.
psychotick
Auror
Hi,
To me it can be done, but it requires skill. A story with a single MC, even if you add in others for flavour and different POV's is something a reader can easily fall into, because as we all know as readers, we often like to identify with the characters. A single or main POV character allows this. When you switch to multiple characters it may be hard for the reader to identify with all the characters. Thus some parts of the book may be more accessible to them than others.
It seems to me that there are only two real solutions to this problem. The first is to make every character a fully developed one, someone that readers can and will identify with. This is probably the better approach but will lead to the inevitable problem that the book suddenly becomes several books interwoven together, and it also is likely to become quite long. This I think is best seen in the "W" series by Hugh Cook. I think it's correctly known as the age of darkness series. It works at first, but after the third or fourth book I got quite tire of reading the same battle again and again and again from different perspectives.
The other approach is to concentrate on the plot, making the characters less important relatively speaking. This is hard,but one example that springs to mind, and which others will disagree with I'm sure, is the Foundation series by Asimov. This is a story about a story, but the scope of the events and the meticulous planning involved in the story's arc still makes it highly enjoyable reading.
Cheers, Greg.
To me it can be done, but it requires skill. A story with a single MC, even if you add in others for flavour and different POV's is something a reader can easily fall into, because as we all know as readers, we often like to identify with the characters. A single or main POV character allows this. When you switch to multiple characters it may be hard for the reader to identify with all the characters. Thus some parts of the book may be more accessible to them than others.
It seems to me that there are only two real solutions to this problem. The first is to make every character a fully developed one, someone that readers can and will identify with. This is probably the better approach but will lead to the inevitable problem that the book suddenly becomes several books interwoven together, and it also is likely to become quite long. This I think is best seen in the "W" series by Hugh Cook. I think it's correctly known as the age of darkness series. It works at first, but after the third or fourth book I got quite tire of reading the same battle again and again and again from different perspectives.
The other approach is to concentrate on the plot, making the characters less important relatively speaking. This is hard,but one example that springs to mind, and which others will disagree with I'm sure, is the Foundation series by Asimov. This is a story about a story, but the scope of the events and the meticulous planning involved in the story's arc still makes it highly enjoyable reading.
Cheers, Greg.
