The Myth Of The Self-Carved Protagonist

Why it actually takes a village to resolve a good plot

Over the last twelve years, I’ve digested a ton of writing advice on how to build a protagonist and structure a story around them—particularly as it relates to their role in the climax. If I could sum up what I’ve learned, it’s this: When you hit the climax, the protagonist, and only the protagonist, should solve the story problem and resolve the plot. If another character steps in at this moment, then you’ve miscast your characters, and the other person is the true protagonist—essentially because the protagonist should display maximal agency at the climax.

I bought this claim and structured an entire novel on it. My agent didn’t get any offers for that book, so now I’m looking at it in the cold light of day. I don’t mean this as a postmortem, but I do want to examine some foundational assumptions by asking a pointed question.

When a protagonist wins the day by their own grit and ingenuity alone, does that story reflect deep reality? Is it a true story?

Let’s unpack this.

On trying to be our own carvers

There’s a marvelous line in The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by Jeremiah Burroughs. When discussing our response to afflictions and suffering, he says, “we must not be our own carvers.” Though the book is some 400 years old, it’s incredible how well this phrase captures and contradicts our zeitgeist. Many of us want to be our own carvers. We want to chisel our shape out of the raw material of our human nature.

In fact, the call to self-carving is ubiquitous in our age. Our culture hammers us with the idea that we not only can, but should forge our own identities—that if we don’t, we’re falling short of our true potential. We hear precious little about the ways in which others have given us our identities—or whether it’s even possible to create one’s own identity and find meaning in the product. Rather, we’re given the picture that each of us is a monad, a self-sufficient, non-dependent entity that not only can create itself to be whatever it wants to be, but can also find deep satisfaction in that self-creation.

Whether you believe in a higher power or not, you know how false this is if you’ve ever tried to do something big and ambitious. If you try an endeavor that isn’t right for you, the universe will simply stop you cold. No amount of can-do attitude or remedial training can equip you to achieve something that isn’t in the cards. The aspiring writers among us should know this even more than casual readers. Any type of interaction with the publishing industry will quickly teach you that if a book isn’t meant to be, it just won’t be.

In fact, I’ve interacted with many writers who seek to be their own carvers. They have plenty of giddy-up, plenty of willingness to learn the hacks and hidden pitfalls of our trade. But I’ve only known a handful of writers who actually got book deals with mainstream publishers—and I know these people online, not in person. Most of us can’t actually carve ourselves—we have to wait for others to pick up what we’re laying down.

If we want to add published writer who’s being read to our identity, whether self-published or traditionally, we need other people to acknowledge our work, interact with it, and give us that identity.

As you can see through my flawless logic (😊), there’s a dimension to identity that we can’t carve out on our own—a dimension that we can only receive from others.

The protagonist who is their own carver

A picture of reality is emerging here. We can’t carve our own identities, at least not in their entirety. We largely receive our identity from others. Those relationships of identity-bequeathal can be life-giving or life-sapping, but they are the primary currency of identity.

Why, then, do so many protagonists not reflect this tenet of deep reality?

Maybe I’m out to lunch, but I see a lot of protagonists who look like this.

• They’re smarter than every other character.

• They’re always right, and they don’t hesitate to correct others, whether out loud or in their heads.

• They look down on other characters, especially those who are less culturally sophisticated, less educated, on the wrong side of history, or ideologically misaligned with them.

• They don’t collaborate well, but rather exude a sense of tragedy about the fact that no one will listen to them, even though they have the right answers.

• Even if they undergo a transformation arc, the narrative doesn’t rebuke them for their arrogance. They kind of just get away with it and come out nice and shiny in the end.

We’ve all known this kind of person in real life. You can’t work with them or befriend them unless you submit to their smothering pride and become a yes-man for their views. In fact, we might say this person is a loser in a quite literal sense. They’re losing out on the deep meaning and satisfaction that come from a life of family, humility, community, and cooperation.

If we know this type of person is a loser in real life, why do we accept narratives that hold up losers as heroes?

Why do we push through and make ourselves finish books that don’t reflect deep reality?

The alternative: Protagonal nexuses

Indulge me in some wordsmithing here. The protagonist that we frequently find on offer today is a monad, a self-defined identity. But real life is built on relational nexuses. Anything you’ve ever achieved—any story problem you’ve solved in reality in your own life—has come about through the efforts of multiple people. Where a lot of current novels give us protagonal monads, real life is built on protagonal nexuses.

For example, you didn’t get through college on your own. Parents helped, friends helped, professors helped, the list goes on. You had to do certain things that only you could do, but there were many times when others carried you.

Likewise, maybe you got married, and you’ve entered the long project of building and sustaining a shared life. The achievement of a healthy marriage isn’t a set of two separate achievements by two separate spouses, but a single achievement enacted by a relational nexus. It’s the very definition of a protagonal nexus—a multipolar network of agonists, of workers.

In fiction, as in real life, the protagonal nexus is far more effective and interesting than the protagonal monad.

Writing protagonal nexuses

In terms of function, the protagonist is a worker who provides a solution that solves the story problem. But there’s no reason multiple protagonists can’t supply a solution that’s greater than the sum of its parts.

So what does this mean in terms of narrative nuts and bolts?

The potential realizations are infinite, but at a high level, the concept is simple. It just means that two or more people are required to solve the story problem—that neither one of them could’ve possibly done it on their own.

A classic example of this is the way in which Gollum and Frodo interact to destroy the ring. While we may not think of Gollum as a protagonist in the traditional sense, in terms of story function, he forms a protagonal nexus with Frodo to resolve the plot. Neither Gollum nor Frodo could’ve destroyed the ring willingly on their own. Neither character’s motivations, nor their ability to execute against those motivations, were enough on their own to solve the story problem. In fact, the coalescence of their motivated actions in that scene is greater than the sum of its parts. It’s almost as if some other mover moves behind the curtain, weaving their actions into a plot resolution.

In this example, the motivations of both protagonists are pretty far removed from what actually happens, but that doesn’t have to be the case. Protagonal nexuses can also form around motivations that are somewhat aligned but not identical. Again, the potential realizations are infinite.

Since The Lord of the Rings is such a familiar example, it helps us illustrate the nature of the protagonal monad really well. Imagine if Frodo had found some sort of inner strength to overcome the pull of the ring and, at that crucial moment, he not only can destroy the ring, but chooses to do so. Now the story is about Frodo’s self-actualization. It basically tells the reader, “You’re don’t need saving. You’re enough.”

Why does the protagonal monad appeal?

If protagonal nexuses offer such power in fiction—a power drawn from the nature of deep reality—then why don’t we find them as much in recently published fiction?

The question comes down to character agency—and the agency that some readers want to live out vicariously in a story.

Some readers want control of their lives. They want to be told that they’re enough. They want protagonists whose stories make them think they can have significant control over their lives and their identities. They want their itching ears tickled.

Yet reality doesn’t give readers much control over their lives. Control, like identity formation, is distributed across relational nexuses, not concentrated in monads.  

The Lord of the Rings reflects this truth. The outcome of the story may look fatalistic, yet that outcome could never happen without the interacting free wills of Frodo and Gollum. There are more ingredients to the soup than destiny alone. While both characters’ motivations and free actions go into the pot, what comes out prevents either of them from claiming responsibility for the plot resolution. Indeed, the outcome erases their control of the climactic scene in an almost dialectical fashion.

This, perhaps, is why we don’t find protagonal nexuses as commonly in recently-published fiction. Our culture is obsessed with self-determination, self-actualization, and the pursuit of self-defined identities. Stories that challenge the reader’s concept of their own agency as lived out vicariously through the protagonist refute our culture’s belief that we can carve ourselves. It’s a powerful refutation, and our culture desperately needs it.

Wrap up: How can we call readers back to reality?

As with anything we cover here on Resurrecting the Real, we don’t intend this as a prescriptive or proscriptive claim. Rather, it’s something to consider in our work. Does something feel off about that butt-kicking, self-carving protagonist? Are readers not connecting? Are you not connecting with your hero?

If that’s the case, you might look at the relationships around this protagonist. Do other people play an integral, non-separable role in the protagonist’s journey and the plot resolution? Or could the hero solve the story problem at the climactic moment without essential input from any supporting characters? If the hero has it covered on their own power, they may be a protagonal monad—and it could be interesting to expand that protagonal function into a nexus formed with other characters. Of course, that may require some heavy revisions. Ultimately, it’s up to you.