Writer's Advice

What Makes a Protagonist?

Protagonists are special. 

Sometimes the protagonist is the Chosen One, or the subject of a prophecy. Sometimes they are royalty. Sometimes they have unique magical powers or skills. Even if they begin as an Audience Surrogate, they rarely stay that way for very long, because the protagonist will almost always end up solving the main conflict (realism be damned).
Chosen Ones, royal lineage, and special magical powers can lead to accusations of Sueishness. There are some critics who will accuse any protagonist of falling victim to , but this is a fallacy. They forget that there must always be a reason why the protagonist is the protagonist. Giving a character some special quality to single him out does not equate to Special Snowflake Syndrome. There has to be a reason why the story is about her, and not anyone else. Sometimes this reason can be as simple as being the new kid in town-- the protagonist is unfamiliar with whatever magical environment she finds herself in, and experiences it as the audience does. Being an outsider is enough to distinguish the protagonist from the rest of the cast, but only to a point. Eventually, the protagonist is going to get comfortable with the world, and then what? Besides, if your protagonist remains a passive observer of the world, she'll just end up boring. If you want your protagonist to eventually be active, you have to justify it; being the narrator isn't enough of a reason to be able to defeat the Big Bad. So, that's why protagonists often end up Chosen Ones or royalty or magical prodigies (which can all be done well, by the way; and they are guilty pleasure tropes of mine). It's an easy way of justifying the protagonist's important role in the story. However, it's not the only way. Fundamentally, what makes a protagonist? It's not necessarily "specialness." It's not narration, either, because a side-character can narrate someone else's story, and of course, the narrator could be omniscient or even its own character. What really distinguishes the protagonist from the rest of the cast?

I learned a lot about the nature of a protagonist while LARPing for the first time. After the game was over, I had a sonder-like experience in which I realized that, because every character in the story was a living person, everyone was a protagonist from their own perspective. So, I thought to myself-- If I were to write our role play game as a novel, who would be my protagonist?
Not me. I made a pretty good side character; I was a good strategist (because I'm Genre Savvy), and a healer with a magic fidget spinner, and I was able to make some sense out of the nonsensical ramblings of our half-crazy mentor. I also gave myself a backstory, dramatically revealing that I had a lover among the enemy faction. (My Sergeant dismayed that she'd now have to fire me, because I'd proven myself to be such a good strategist. She never got the chance, though, because she died in the final battle, and I'll never forget having to tell my partner that she was dead. I mean, of course she wasn't actually dead, but it was still chilling to say so. "Where's the Sergeant?" "She's dead." Damn.)
The most obvious candidate for a protagonist would be Pyronikos, the most powerful psion in the world, apprenticed to our mentor and sought as a living superweapon by the enemy faction. He also was the only person powerful enough to destroy the monsters (the common enemy) that we were fighting. However, he spent most of the game with the enemy, running from the monsters, and my group was attempting to find him. If I were to write from Nick's perspective, I would lose my group's side of the story entirely, because our "plot" revolved around finding him. So, perhaps I'd have two narrators- Nick, to get his side of the story, and then someone from my group.
On my end, there was also a psion, and I'll call her Amber because I think that's what her real name was. Halfway through, the mentor approached her and explained that she had put a magical safeguard on Nick, to curb his insane powers and prevent him from becoming destructive. In order to destroy the monsters, Nick needed to access his full potential, but the mentor was slowly going crazy and could not trust herself to take off the safeguard. So, she gave Amber a spell that would activate the full extent of Nick's powers. Though Amber still spent most of the game running around with everyone else, avoiding the monsters and trying to find Nick, this spell gave her an active role in the plot. Unlike me, she had a job to do-- it was small, but it was something that would directly impact the story. Therefore, I would write from her perspective over that of anyone else in my team. 

The protagonist has to be active. That's why it's weird to tell the story from the perspective of a relatively passive side-character, like me. The readers would be waiting for the narrator to do something, or wondering why the story isn't told from the perspective of a more interesting active character (unless the side-character is explicitly telling someone else's story). Your protagonist doesn't have to be innately special, like Nick, but they need to do something. So, if you were to choose a protagonist out of a group of characters, choose the one with the most active role in the story.