Yourself as the Protagonist

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I definitely think any kind of character can be the protagonist of a novel, so long as the author is talented enough to make it work. Most of my favorite character in literature are actually pretty boring people when you think about it, but the doesn't necessarily have much to do with whether or not a novel is a good story. There are plenty of different kinds of narratives, your protagonist doesn't need to lead an extravagant life or do exciting things. Leopold Bloom, for instance, is a pretty boring, average guy. He's also one of the best characters I've read. I think what is most important is for a writer to understand their character and for them to empathize with them, to color in their life, no matter how ordinary it may be.

I also think average seeming characters are particularly attractive in some novels. There are stories that do justice to how slow or ordinary life can really be. A novel doesn't have to simply be about the character–– if an author does a great job describing the character's environment, that can shed a lot of light on the life of the protagonist and make them seem interesting or compelling simply by virtue of their surroundings. I think a lot of us live lives that seem very ordinary on paper but we manage to quietly imbue them with a lot of beauty and I really enjoy reading writers that are able to pick up on that. I think there is a real maturity in being able to find value or narrative anywhere you look.

It's also just nice to see that other people live simple lives or that other people live slightly unpleasant lives. It's nice to find this kind of verisimilitude in literature, especially when so many other kinds of nonliterary narratives tell 'exciting' stories. In novels, I think there is a special opportunity to examine the lives that often go unnoticed in many other stories. Novels have plenty of space within which they can work and there are very few limitations to the form. For instance, developing a character's stream of consciousness is much more plausible in a novel then a movie or some other kind of narrative. The novel is a pretty experimental narrative form–– it lends itself very well to all different kinds of stories and protagonists. Again, I think a good writer can tell any kind of story they want.