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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Welcome everyone. Welcome as you filter in. If you can see and hear me drop your location in the chat so we can see where in the world you're joining us from? Welcome back to another Science Fiction writers. Week session.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: I see Netherlands. Hi, Arthur, welcome back. Renee's in El Paso, Amanda's in South Africa. I see a lot of repeat names.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: I'm gonna drop some links in the chat for you.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: We will get started in just a moment.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: It looks like you can see and hear me. Fine. That is great

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: as usual. We just have a couple of housekeeping items to go through, and then we'll get right into the session. So your replay access head over to our Science Fiction writers week hub for all of your replays. Special offers links our schedule for the week. Everything is there that you need, and then the replays will also be moving to the community page

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: by next Friday, so you can view them at your leisure along with all of our past event replays. They're also there in our event recordings. Page

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: our premium day is this, Friday. So Monday through Thursday is free for everyone to attend. But Friday is for premium and premium pro users. However, if you are interested in upgrading to attend Friday session. We do have a special offer for you which we will get into in just a moment.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Premium and premium pro users. You will receive an email Friday morning with your instructions for attending these sessions and viewing the replays. So keep an eye on your email Friday morning, if you don't receive anything. Email us at hello@prowritingaid.com, and we'll be happy to help

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: for anybody interested in upgrading this week. We have a special offer for sci-fi writers, week participants, 15% off your 1st year of premium or premium pro. And there's a special code. If you use the link on the Hub. The code is already entered for you, but the code is Sfw. 2,024, and this offer is good until September 27, th so you can check out more information on that on the Hub.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: If you would like to keep talking sci-fi writing, we'd love to have you in our private online writing community. The link is in the chat, and also you just log in with your prorating aid account information. It's super easy. It's free to be in there, and then you can see the live event chat where we're we're talking now. You can see the event recording space. There's a section to introduce yourself, and also to submit. Feature requests

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: reminders for this session. Please use the QA. Box if you have questions for our speaker or for myself. If you'd like to chat with other viewers, use the chat for that, as you can see, it moves very quickly. We usually have a nice lively discussion. But whenever you are typing and sending your messages, if you want everyone to see them, you'll just want to select everyone in the drop down menu beside 2. Otherwise by default, they just come to the host and panelists

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: and links and offers from our speaker today will be on the hub, and they're also in the chat, and I will drop these links intermittently throughout the session today.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: So with that being said, I'm so excited to introduce our speaker, Hannah Kelly, Hannah Kate Kelly is a developmental editor and author, accelerator, certified book coach helping fiction. Writers write, revise, and launch their stories. She lives in New York City with her partner. Welcome, Hannah, we're so happy to have you.

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Hannah Kelley: Hello, and thank you for having me.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: You're so welcome. I'm going to hand things over to you, and we can take it away.

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Hannah Kelley: Perfect. Hello, everybody. I'm gonna stop sharing my video

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Hannah Kelley: and

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Hannah Kelley: share my screen.

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Hannah Kelley: Okay.

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Hannah Kelley: so

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Hannah Kelley: Hi, everybody welcome. Thank you for being here today. We're going to talk about how to write single versus multiple protagonist stories, and which option is going to be best for your sci-fi story.

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Hannah Kelley: Quick, quick disclaimer. Here I live in New York City, which is awesome. We do have a lot of sirens passing by, so if you hear any ambulances, I might pause for a second. I'm sorry in advance.

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Hannah Kelley: just just the way it is over here in New York.

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Hannah Kelley: Alright. So let's get started

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Hannah Kelley: by the end of this class. I hope that you'll get these 3 things. I hope that you understand how to craft single and multiple protagonist stories. We're going to look through 4 different sci-fi book examples, plus a few bonus ones.

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Hannah Kelley: and then by the end, I hope you have a good idea of which route to take with your own sci-fi story.

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Hannah Kelley: This is me. I'm Hannah. I just want to introduce myself a little bit more. As Michelle said. I'm a developmental editor. I help writers, especially writers who do sci-fi fantasy and other speculative fiction works really polish up their manuscripts, I think, to help you tackle the big issues. Like how many protagonists you're gonna have, for example.

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Hannah Kelley: And as I said, I live in New York City, I've also put a few things here that

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Hannah Kelley: that connect me to the writing world.

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Hannah Kelley: Okay?

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Hannah Kelley: Also, before we get into everything, I just wanted to kick things off by sharing my favorite sci-fi book, which is Uglies, by Scott Westerfield. If any of you know this book, it was the 1st one I read, I think, when I was a teenager.

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Hannah Kelley: and it's fun. It's dystopian fiction, which, as you'll see all of the examples pretty much today, are also going to be dystopian fiction. I'm a big fan.

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Hannah Kelley: and I think it's also going to become a movie later this year or next year. So I'm excited for that.

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Hannah Kelley: Okay.

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Hannah Kelley: now, let's get into things. So we're here today to talk about protagonists.

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Hannah Kelley: And also in order to talk about protagonists, we're going to look at the 2 other types of characters because we want to see what a protagonist is and what they are not.

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Hannah Kelley: Alright. 1st up we'll talk about what protagonists are, and for those of you who know who Katniss Everdeed is. I'm not going to go into too much detail about the hunger games at this point. But if you know who she is, great, if not, all you need to know is, she is the primary protagonist, and she has all of these tenants.

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Hannah Kelley: Okay, so she is the hero of the story that doesn't necessarily mean she's a good person. Katniss is pretty good, but you know your protagonist in your story can also be the villain. Okay, what they need to be is the center of the story. The story needs to belong to them more than anyone else. They need to be the most active in pushing the story forward than any other character, right? So active, not passive.

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Hannah Kelley: They also need to have a clear goal in a character arc and a character arc, as you know, is when a character

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Hannah Kelley: changes throughout the course of a story. Often in a positive arc they get better, they become a better person.

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Hannah Kelley: They also are going to have more page time than any other character. And they're also going to be a narrator way more often than not. Okay. We're going to talk a little bit more about this, and why it's important in a couple of slides

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Hannah Kelley: next up, we have secondary characters. And then, lastly, we have tertiary characters

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Hannah Kelley: using our hunger games. Example, we have Peter Malarke. He's the second tribute right from District 12 who goes to the Hunger games. He's also the love interest, pretty big character, but not a protagonist, I would say. Some might argue differently. But I'll explain my reasoning in a second, and then we have Lavinia. She's a very minor character in the books, and I think she's

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Hannah Kelley: hardly in the movies. If I remember correctly

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Hannah Kelley: the 1st thing that makes them different is they're going to be less active. And they're going to become least active when you get to tertiary characters. So they're going to be less central to the plot than the protagonist.

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Hannah Kelley: They have the same role, which is that they're both supporting and or hindering the protagonist's journey.

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Hannah Kelley: A secondary character may have a character arc. They often do like. Peter Malarke, I believe, has one but the tertiary character, like Lavinia, is going to be really static probably won't have one at all.

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Hannah Kelley: And then, lastly, page time. So you're gonna have more page time when you're a secondary character than a tertiary character. But the protagonist is gonna have definitely the most by far.

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Hannah Kelley: Next, we're going to talk about what is a narrator, because more often than not, almost always. Your protagonist is also going to be a narrator in your story.

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Hannah Kelley: So what is it? The character or voice telling the story? And that's going to be in 1st person, second person, which is very rare, right or 3rd person. Pov.

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Hannah Kelley: They can be anyone in your story. The narrator can be anyone which includes protagonists. But you can also have other characters step in to tell their own side of the story as well.

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Hannah Kelley: And lastly, you can switch from scene to scene. You don't really want to switch mid scene. We kind of tend to call that head hopping. I'm not going to get too much into Pov and pov of styles in this. But I just want to touch briefly on what a narrator is, because.

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Hannah Kelley: again, is every protagonist going to be a narrator almost always. Yes.

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Hannah Kelley: for the purposes of this webinar. Every protagonist that we're going to look at is also going to be a narrator. Whether that's in a single protagonist story or a multiple protagonist story. And why? Because readers really, overwhelmingly prefer to get as close to the protagonist as they can. And one of the best ways to do that is, by making them a narrator.

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Hannah Kelley: There are rare exceptions to this rule. But we're not going to be going over that at this point in the Webinar. Okay.

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Hannah Kelley: these are the examples I have chosen for us today. You might know them. We have the handmaid's tale by Margaret Atwood, Parable of the Sour, by Octavia Butler Wool, also known as the Silo Series, by Hugh Howey.

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Hannah Kelley: and lastly, the power by Naomi Alderman.

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Hannah Kelley: Okay, so these all have weirdly very similar book covers. Which was not the point. I just wanted to choose stories that were dystopian. So all kind of in the same sub genre of sci-fi. And I wanted to choose stories that

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Hannah Kelley: all 3 out of the 4 have a books. A TV series that has come out of the book, so you can kind of like get an idea. I think it might be a little bit more popular. And you might know them, which would be great.

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Hannah Kelley: Okay? But I do want to mention, okay, we're gonna go through these, and there's gonna be some spoilers. So that's the 1st point. But second, the TV series, if you have seen them differ a little bit in some big ways, and how they handle protagonists

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Hannah Kelley: than the books. So I'm specifically going to be referring to the books when we discuss each example.

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Hannah Kelley: Alright. 1st up, we've got single protagonist stories. I am going to talk about how to write one of these stories. We're going to break down the steps. And then I'm going to show you 2 examples, and then we're going to do the same thing with multiple protagonist stories.

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Hannah Kelley: Alright. So why would you want to write a single protagonist story? I have 2 big reasons that I think you'd want to write one. The 1st is that you can create more mystery for the protagonist by limiting additional Povs. And when you think about it. This makes sense. Because if you have multiple protagonists, they're all going to be narrators. They're all moving the story forward. It's going to be really hard to hide any mystery from the reader.

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Hannah Kelley: so this can be really exciting for the the reader with a single protagonist point of view.

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Hannah Kelley: The second biggest reason here is with more page time. Readers can get way closer to your sole protagonist, which, as I explained, earlier readers really like getting close to your sole protagonist. So this is something to really consider

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Hannah Kelley: when you're debating between the 2 for your story. And then, lastly, it is just so much easier to write a single protagonist story than it is to write multiple. Because you're juggling less characters. You're juggling less arcs. We'll get into that a little bit later.

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Hannah Kelley: Also, I want to note, that most stories have a single protagonist. I don't know the exact data on this. There might. This might exist somewhere out there. Someone's done this this work to figure it out. I'm not sure but

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Hannah Kelley: The majority are going to be single protagonist stories.

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Hannah Kelley: However, they can be a popular choice, for, like sci-fi because of how extensive the world building is and how extensive like the book series is, you have more time, and you have a bigger world, more word, Count.

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Hannah Kelley: You can get into multiple protagonist stories.

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Hannah Kelley: Alright. So how do you write a single protagonist story. I have broken it down here into 4 main

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Hannah Kelley: steps. First, st we're going to choose your protagonist.

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Hannah Kelley: Second, you're going to develop their arc.

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Hannah Kelley: 3. Plot, their journey and 4 consider other povs, and then, voila! You'll be done. Well, not quite, but

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Hannah Kelley: alright. 1st let's choose your protagonist, so we're not going to go through

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Hannah Kelley: all the steps to choosing one. But basically, I want you to consider a few things before you make your choice.

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Hannah Kelley: So consider, first, st who's the most interesting person to tell this story.

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Hannah Kelley: you might have someone who pops up immediately to mind. You might need to think about it.

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Hannah Kelley: Second, who is the most central to the story. Who does the story belong to more than anybody else?

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Hannah Kelley: Next consider who will readers enjoy investing in most? Think about your audience.

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Hannah Kelley: And who do you want to explore most? After all, you have to write the story so you might as well choose someone you really want to write about

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Hannah Kelley: next, you're going to take your protagonist and develop their arc. As I mentioned, an arc is a change from.

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Hannah Kelley: or a protagonist over the course of a story.

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Hannah Kelley: So, for example, I pulled Katniss Everdeen here. This is throughout the whole Book series. One of her major arts is going from only focusing on her family's survival to spearheading rebellion against the Government, which is a really big change

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Hannah Kelley: if you're still not quite sure what their arc is going to be. I've also listed a few questions here for you to consider later.

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Hannah Kelley: So how will your character, your protagonist, grow from the beginning of the story to the end.

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Hannah Kelley: What will they have? What type of arc, positive, negative, or flat flats, not very common, necessarily positive, is the most common. Again, we're not going to be going too deep into how to craft an arc in this webinar. That's like a whole other class.

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Hannah Kelley: But I just want you to consider where your character is going to go. And then, lastly, if this is going to be a series, a book series, what will each of their arcs be for each book as well as the series as a whole.

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Hannah Kelley: So every book your protagonist needs to develop

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Hannah Kelley: an arc, a mini one, and then they'll have a big one like you see over here on the right kind of throughout the entire book series.

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Hannah Kelley: Next, you are going to plot their journey.

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Hannah Kelley: this is when you get into a little bit of story structure again, we're not going to go too deep into how to use story structure to plot your character's goal and journey throughout the story. But I just wanted to show you here that this is an important step. You're going to take your protagonist through.

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Hannah Kelley: This is a simple 3 act structure. This is what I recommend to most writers to use. You can get more in depth with like save the cat or another structure. But basically, you want to move them through an inciting incident to a midpoint, to a climax, to the resolution.

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Hannah Kelley: And then, lastly, I think you consider other narrators so which Povs or narrators would be good to use in my story, because just because you have a single protagonist doesn't mean you don't need to bring in a few other narrators from time to time. How can you use those Povs to create mystery, or reveals for the reader or tension.

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Hannah Kelley: And then what format do you want those other narratives to take? Maybe they're each their own chapters, or maybe you have the protagonist. Give an entire story, all from their narrative narrative point of view. But the prologue is from the villain, and they give their side of things.

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Hannah Kelley: And next

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Hannah Kelley: I just want to run through a few things here with you about why you might want to choose another pob.

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Hannah Kelley: So here's a couple of reasons. First, st you might want to reveal parts of the world. The protagonist can't physically access.

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Hannah Kelley: This is important sci-fi. Again, with extensive world building. You might want your readers to see everything you've you've come up with in your awesome world. Also, you might want to develop rich subplots and sub themes to make the central plot stronger. You might want to reveal alternative views on events, or show that the protagonist is actually an unreliable narrator.

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Hannah Kelley: You could build dramatic irony by introducing information or clues that the readers know. But the protagonist doesn't know yet. That's super tense. We'll see an example of that later. You might want to provide variety to break up the narrative, flow slow down, or speed up pacing, convey the antagonist motivations. So we get their side of things, and lastly, you might want to carry on the story. When a protagonist dies off.

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Hannah Kelley: This can be tricky to do. Readers don't always like this, but you know, sometimes it happens and you need someone to keep the story going.

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Hannah Kelley: So

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Hannah Kelley: oh, let me hide my corner. Okay.

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Hannah Kelley: so yeah, we're gonna look at an example of that soon as well.

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Hannah Kelley: When you're writing a single protagonist story, just try to be aware of these 4 common pitfalls. So 1st of all, don't skimp on the character development for your protagonist. They're your bread and butter. They're the main event. You want to make sure

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Hannah Kelley: that you're giving. You're all into their development and make them really interesting.

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Hannah Kelley: Second, you don't want to have contrived plot points or coincidences, strain believability when you have one protagonist pushing the narrative forward constantly.

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Hannah Kelley: Sometimes you might want to bend them towards what you know, where you want the plot to go. Try not to do that. Try to make it happen as organically as possible for the character.

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Hannah Kelley: And then, 3, rd here underdeveloped secondary characters and tertiary characters. You don't want those either, just like you don't want an underdeveloped protagonist, so you know.

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Hannah Kelley: give them their proper attention as well. And then, lastly.

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Hannah Kelley: when you're writing sci-fi, sometimes you don't want a 1 dimensional view of your

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Hannah Kelley: extensive world building. So consider how you can show more perspectives on that as well.

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Hannah Kelley: And now we're going to go through our 1st 2 examples.

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Hannah Kelley: We're going to start off with the handmaid's tale by Margaret Atwood, as I mentioned. If you don't know the story, that's okay. I'm also going to read a little blurb. Here

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Hannah Kelley: environmental disasters and declining birth rates have led to a second American civil war. The Republic of Gilead now rises a totalitarian regime, enforcing rigid social roles, and enslaving the few remaining fertile women

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Hannah Kelley: offered, is one of these women, a handmaid bound to produce children for one of Gilead's commanders, deprived of her husband, her child freedom, and even her own name. Alfred clings to her memories and her will to survive.

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Hannah Kelley: There we have it. There's Alfred, our sole protagonist or sole narrator for the story. So why is she the only one? Why is that the best choice? Well, first, st because she's 1 of the only handmaids who chooses to rebel, so not only is she one of the only ones there, but she's 1 of the only ones who chooses to rebel. That's pretty interesting. So I would argue, she's probably the most interesting person to follow.

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Hannah Kelley: And then, second.

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Hannah Kelley: we get to see a mystery untangle through her, because none of the other major characters in the story. We don't get their viewpoints. They don't become protagonists, so we don't ha! They don't have to be narrators.

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Hannah Kelley: which means we don't really know what is going on, and that's exciting.

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Hannah Kelley: So, for example, at the end of the story, a character who's a very big character.

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Hannah Kelley: sends her basically into this van and she doesn't know. Is she gonna be killed? Is she gonna be captured, or is she gonna get to freedom. We don't know. She doesn't know, and that can be exciting. If he had been made into a protagonist.

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Hannah Kelley: Because he's 1 of the biggest characters in the story.

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Hannah Kelley: we would have been really hard to hide that mystery from readers.

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Hannah Kelley: So I'll give an example here of the final sentence. She says, whether this is my end or a new beginning I have no way of knowing. I have given myself over into the hands of strangers, because it can't be helped. And so I step up into the darkness within, or else the light

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Hannah Kelley: you get an idea of the mystery that we get, because we don't know what's gonna happen to her.

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Hannah Kelley: Alright.

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Hannah Kelley: So again, why does the handmaid's tale work best with one protagonist?

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Hannah Kelley: As I mentioned? I don't think any other character is as interesting or as active as offred. She is central to the story, she is pushing it along more than any other character, and second additional protagonist Povs would ruin the mystery. You can still keep mystery in a multiple protagonist story, but it's a lot harder.

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Hannah Kelley: Next up we're going to talk about parable, the sour. And this is by Octavia Butler. As I mentioned, I'm going to read the blurb to this too

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Hannah Kelley: global climate change and economic crises lead to chaos by 2,024, which happens to be this year. California suffers pervasive water shortage to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to survive 15 year old. Lauren Olomena lives inside a gated community with her preacher, father, family, and neighbors sheltered from the surrounding anarchy.

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Hannah Kelley: In a society where any vulnerability is a risk. She suffers from hyper empathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others, emotions. What begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more the birth of a new faith that Laura creates called Lauren creates called earth seed in a startling vision of human destiny.

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Hannah Kelley: All right again we have our sole protagonist and narrator this time. It's Lauren. So why is she the only protagonist for this story?

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Hannah Kelley: Again, she has the most unique perspective. I think she pushes the story forward more than any other character. Even if they were upgraded to protagonists, she would still be the best choice, because she's making the most

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Hannah Kelley: narrative drive.

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Hannah Kelley: She is the preacher's daughter. She's also a young black woman, a hyper empath, which is the specialty thing in this world and the voice of a new religion. That's a lot to make her special.

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Hannah Kelley: And second, I think another reason why it works so well is because this whole story is written as a diary. So you feel like when you pick up parable this hour. You've picked up Lauren's diary.

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Hannah Kelley: and if there had been any other protagonist they would have been a narrator, right? And what would that have looked like if their diary entry had come in? Or if it wasn't even a diary entry, it's just like a regular narration of the present action. It might have made things feel a little bit interrupted.

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Hannah Kelley: I put an example here from her diary entry. She says, I haven't been able to write a word since Wednesday. I don't know what to write the body was Keith's.

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Hannah Kelley: and, to sum up so, why does parable of a soury, sour work best with one protagonist. Again, no other character is as interesting or as active as Lauren in this story.

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Hannah Kelley: and second, additional protagonists might interrupt the diary format that the author created. So well.

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Hannah Kelley: all right, I'm just gonna take a sip of water.

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Hannah Kelley: we just discussed single protagonist stories. And now we're going to move on to multiple protagonist stories

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Hannah Kelley: again, we're going to do the same thing. We're going to talk about

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Hannah Kelley: how to write one of these stories, and then we're gonna go into examples. It gets a little tricky. As I mentioned before, writing, these are a little bit harder. So it's gonna take a little longer to talk through

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Hannah Kelley: how to build their journeys. But we'll get there.

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Hannah Kelley: Why do you want to write a multiple protagonist story? There's many reasons. But I picked 2 2 good ones, 2 big ones. First, st you can explore several different plot lines, spaces, characters.

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Hannah Kelley: sectors of your unique world building. Sci-fi has a lot of world building generally. So this can be really exciting for the writer and the readers. A big draw of the genre.

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Hannah Kelley: Second readers get to invest in more characters, especially over a series. Right? You get to just have more. You have more time to invest in them, more pay more room for all of them. Or, as I said, we'll discuss later. If a protagonist dies off, you get to have someone else that readers still get to invest in, which, like

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Hannah Kelley: game of thrones, is not you know, a sci-fi example. But there's a lot of characters that get killed off. Fortunately we get to keep on with our other protagonists. We care so much about

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Hannah Kelley: the same way we wrote a single protagonist story is how you're going to write multiple protagonist story. There's just going to be a little bit more work on these same steps. So first, st you're going to choose your protagonist.

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Hannah Kelley: Second, you're going to develop each of their arcs.

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Hannah Kelley: 3 are going to plot each of their journeys, and that's where it can get a little tricky.

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Hannah Kelley: And then 4. You're going to consider other Povs as well.

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Hannah Kelley: because just because you have several protagonists doesn't mean you can't have snippets from other characters as well.

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Hannah Kelley: Alright. Step number one. You're gonna choose your protagonist. It's going to be very similar to how we talked about in terms of who you choose and you. But what might happen is, you might have several good ideas, but one person kind of like comes up above the rest. We call this a primary protagonist.

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Hannah Kelley: So what is this primary protagonist? Well, they're often the 1st narrator that readers meet. So let's say you have 3 different protagonists. We might meet this primary 1 1, st

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Hannah Kelley: we care about them first.st

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Hannah Kelley: Also, they're going to be more central to the main plot

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Hannah Kelley: than any other protagonist. So again, they're going to be the frontrunner. The special star

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Hannah Kelley: and typically the protagonist, the primary one is going to be featured on the book cover, or if you read the jacket copy, their name is going to come up first, st or there might be the only protagonist name on the on the jacket copy.

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Hannah Kelley: So these are hints at who the frontrunner is.

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Hannah Kelley: I put a note at the bottom here. Not every single one of these multiple protagonist stories has a primary protagonist, but most tend to it can be subtle, but they usually have one. We are going to look at 2 examples, one that has a clear primary protagonist and one where they're really actually very equal across all the protagonists which I think will be interesting to see.

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Hannah Kelley: You might be thinking, wait a second. What is the difference between all of these really really similar characters. And I, if you're feeling this way, don't sweat it because they are really similar. So primary protagonist. And now a non primary protagonist who is still a protagonist and then a secondary character.

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Hannah Kelley: I've boiled it down to these very basic 3 things.

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Hannah Kelley: So I think when it comes to page time how active they are, and whether they have a character arc or not is gonna clue you in kinda to who they are, it can be subjective. So there's no need to like really, really iron this out at this stage. But I will go over these. So the primary protagonist is going to be the most page time out of all of them. They're going to be the most active pushing the story forward, and they're gonna have a character arc

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Hannah Kelley: the second one here. Non primary protagonist. They're not less page time. They'll be less active than the primary protagonist, and they'll have a character art still.

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Hannah Kelley: and then secondary characters. They're going to be least out of the 3. They're going to be the least page time, the least active, and they might have a character arc. They might not. If they do, it won't be as big of a deal as our 2 primary as our 2 protagonists.

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Hannah Kelley: Next, we're going to develop each of their arcs. So just as we discussed before, you're going to have arcs for your characters.

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Hannah Kelley: but they each need one now.

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Hannah Kelley: So, for example, let's say you have 2.

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Hannah Kelley: The 1st one might start the story with low self worth, and then they might end with high self worth. That's an arc example. And the second one might be blind to their privilege and then end the story, using their privilege for good again. We're not going to go too deep into how to craft these arcs. But this is something that each one will need. So make sure you develop all your protagonists.

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Hannah Kelley: Alright. This is where things start to get a little bit hairy. All right, you're gonna plot each of their journeys.

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Hannah Kelley: Why, okay, let's break it down. Each protagonist needs a goal.

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Hannah Kelley: Each protagonist needs to have an arc as well.

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Hannah Kelley: So in order for them to attain that goal to complete their arc, they have to go through a journey they have to be able to go through the journey to change.

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Hannah Kelley: So that means they need an inciting incident, a midpoint, a climax and a resolution. This is bringing us back to these basic plot points from the 3 act structure

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Hannah Kelley: alright. But something I want to share is you can have a protagonist cluster. What is this? Well, it's when you have protagonists that are all sharing the same goal. They're all against the same conflict, and they're all working as a team or a crew, and that's what we call cluster.

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Hannah Kelley: For example, I've pulled guardians of the galaxy on the left here, so Peter Quill is. The is. The primary protagonist and his other protagonists are around him, but they're all clustered because they're all moving together when they meet at the inciting incident. They all join forces to defeat.

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Hannah Kelley: Ronan. I always say, Thanos, it's Ronan. Okay?

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Hannah Kelley: Does every protagonist need the same goal like they did in their cluster. No.

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Hannah Kelley: but they have to connect somehow. Otherwise you're just forcing 2 stories together. That should be their own books, right?

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Hannah Kelley: So they have to connect on one of the 4 things. Sometimes they connect on all 4, sometimes 2, sometimes 3, sometimes they just have one.

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Hannah Kelley: So they need to have a shared goal like we just discussed. That could be one of the things that unites them, or they could have different goals. They need to have, you know, maybe shared conflict, or they could have different conflict. Their story lines could converge, meaning, they meet each other. Maybe they start off in different corners of the world, or they time travel, but somehow they meet, and then they domino effect, affect each other's lives.

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Hannah Kelley: And then, lastly, let's say, they never meet ever it takes place during like the present era, or a thousand years in the future. They never meet, but they still have this theme that's connecting them a theme of justice, maybe, or love

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Hannah Kelley: to make this a little easier to understand. We're going to look at the 3 common multiple protagonist journeys.

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Hannah Kelley: So we're gonna see what that looks like in all these diagrams that I have hopefully made clear enough. We'll see just to look at these different journeys. So the 1st one is they're going to have the same goal.

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Hannah Kelley: Then they're gonna have different goals. And then we're gonna see what it looks like when they never meet

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Hannah Kelley: alright. 1st up.

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Hannah Kelley: the protagonists share the same goal in a cluster right? Just like we talked about with guardians of the galaxy.

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Hannah Kelley: It might look something like this on the left. Here we've got our 3 different protagonists coming from their 3 different areas of life.

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Hannah Kelley: They meet together at the inciting incident. It binds them together, and they're like, we're gonna go on this quest to defeat this person. Together they all have different motivation, but they all now have the same goal. So they take their motivation, and they work together, and they experience the midpoint together. When the conflict gets even greater they experience the climax the highest point of

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Hannah Kelley: of conflict, and then they have a resolution together as well.

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Hannah Kelley: And, as I said, each one is going to have a character arc. So they're all going to be developing different arcs. But it's all going to be happening at the same time. So this is an easy, an easier choice for a lot of writers when they have several protagonists.

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Hannah Kelley: Now let's look at something that's a little bit different, a little bit harder. Maybe so protagonists can also have different goals. We're going to be looking at the power, as I mentioned

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Hannah Kelley: in a minute. Where they all have different goals. It might look something like this.

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Hannah Kelley: Okay.

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Hannah Kelley: so we've got 3 different protagonists and

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Hannah Kelley: they are all moving through the inciting incident, midpoint, climax and resolution at the same time, but they all have their own goals, so that kind of puts them on different tracks. For example.

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Hannah Kelley: we have our protagonist one. Their goal is to run the cartel. The second one is to run a colts, and the 3rd is to run the government, the Us. Government specifically.

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Hannah Kelley: And so they all go about their things once they get their supernatural abilities during the inciting incident, and they continue on the story, and they don't really cross paths except for once. Here at the midpoint we have one and 2 protagonists, one and 2 join forces, but then they continue to go back on their own tracks. They're after their own goals.

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Hannah Kelley: We get to the climax because of each of their goals and their journeys. It pushes all of them together, so their storylines converge, and they are the the people who decide whether there's going to be a nuclear war or not.

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Hannah Kelley: They make their choices, some protest, some are all for it. And then, you know, in the end, they're actually as nuclear or spoiler, alert, very sad. But that is an example of what this might look like if they have different goals.

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Hannah Kelley: Now, what happens if they never meet up? Well.

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Hannah Kelley: it still works.

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Hannah Kelley: So let's look at this example as I mentioned earlier. Let's say, if you've got 2 protagonists you got in the same story right? And you're alternating chapter by chapter. Perhaps

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Hannah Kelley: you have one in present day 2024 and one in the year 3,000.

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Hannah Kelley: They are going to be living very different lives and never going to meet. Therefore their storylines are never going to like physically converge.

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Hannah Kelley: But we've got some some similarities here, because they're both dealing with probably the same theme like I said justice. Maybe with their governments or some other facet of your world building love. Maybe, whatever it is, it just needs to be something that unites them. So it makes sense that they're both in the same story.

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Hannah Kelley: And lastly, you're going to do just like you did with the 1st single single stories.

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Hannah Kelley: Step number 4. You're gonna consider other narrators. Because, again, just because you have several narrators, 2, 3, 4, maybe more doesn't mean you can't bring in other perspectives for the same reasons.

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Hannah Kelley: So you'll consider the same things. We're not going to go over this again. But I just want you to know that this is this is what you'll think through, too.

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Hannah Kelley: When you're writing one of these stories, you're gonna have 4 very different common pitfalls. But you need to be careful about these as well. So first, st you might want to avoid becoming unfocused from just having way too many plot lines.

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Hannah Kelley: This is a common issue, and it makes sense. It's a lot to juggle when you've got a lot going on.

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Hannah Kelley: Second, you don't want to have imbalanced page time pacing development for some of the protagonists, but not others. It's fine if you have a primary protagonist and they take precedence. But let's say the you have 3, and one's a primary protagonist, and the other 2 are the other ones. You don't want one of them to overpower the other.

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Hannah Kelley: Next, you don't want to have scattered or contradictory themes that dilute the central message. You want to again keep things focused. And then, lastly, you don't want to have character overload, which I'll mention game of thrones again for some writers. For some readers they might feel like there's just way too much going on, too many people to keep track of.

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Hannah Kelley: And now we'll get to these examples.

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Hannah Kelley: And again, I'm just going to take a sip of water.

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Hannah Kelley: Okay.

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Hannah Kelley: we're going to talk more about the power. We talked about this a little bit. But we have 4 protagonists again, with 4 very different goals.

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Hannah Kelley: The world is a recognizable place. There's a rich Nigerian boy who lounges around the family pool, a foster kid whose religious parents hide their true nature, an ambitious American politician and a tough London girl from a tricky family, but then a vital new force takes root and flourishes, causing their lives to converge with devastating effect. Teenage girls now have immense physical power. They can cause agonizing pain, and even death through the electrical currents in their hands.

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Hannah Kelley: With this small twist of nature the world's balance of power dramatically resets.

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Hannah Kelley: What makes this story

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Hannah Kelley: such an interesting example is that they really are such 4 different, equally balanced perspectives, and they all have their own corner of the world.

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Hannah Kelley: So with one protagonist, they're running the cartel. Another one's doing government, one's doing political reporting. And then the 4th one is running a religious cult. So it's 4 different facets of power. Again, we see it's being they're being united on theme, and they're all in 4 very different parts of the world as well. Different cities, different countries. But again.

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Hannah Kelley: they all want the same thing. So this is what's uniting them, even though their goals.

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Hannah Kelley: their areas of the world, their factions, are different.

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Hannah Kelley: First, st up. We meet Roxy.

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Hannah Kelley: She may be the 1st narrator we meet, but she's not the primary one. There really isn't 1 in the story which is kind of cool.

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Hannah Kelley: So why is she a good protagonist? Well, like I mentioned, she has her own unique goal, her own unique, unique side of the world.

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Hannah Kelley: She wants to rise to power

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Hannah Kelley: as the world's largest cartel boss. Pretty badass and very scary. She.

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Hannah Kelley: It's also interesting for the story, because she's 1 of the 2 characters who has a positive arc.

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Hannah Kelley: Only 2 of the 4 have positive arcs, and the other 2 have negative, which creates a really interesting nice balance between the 2.

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Hannah Kelley: Next we have 10 day.

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Hannah Kelley: He is his goal is to rise as the most prestigious political reporter. But now it's in a field that is being dominated by women. So that's interesting to see how the gender gender roles Flip.

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Hannah Kelley: He's also, as I mentioned, the only male protagonist in the story.

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Hannah Kelley: So the token guy this time right? And then, lastly, I mentioned, he is the other protagonist who has a positive arc again, keeping that balance between the 4

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Hannah Kelley: next up we have Margo. She's the one who's trying to take over the government, and then later, the world.

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Hannah Kelley: That's her goal.

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Hannah Kelley: She has a very negative character. Arc and I have listed here. An interesting example I want to talk about for a minute. So her daughter becomes a character, a protect, a narrator in the story as well.

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Hannah Kelley: But I would argue that Joss Cleary, her daughter.

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Hannah Kelley: even though she comes into the story later, and she has ample amount of page time. As a narrator I would say she's the secondary character, because her arc I don't even know if she has one, but it's not very big, and it's not very. It doesn't push the story very far. So she's not that active in the main plot.

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Hannah Kelley: I think, really. Why she's there is for her fate, which doesn't end up well. Another spoiler for those of you who haven't seen it or read it

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Hannah Kelley: you things don't end up well for her which pushes Margo to

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Hannah Kelley: complete her negative character. She could go up, but she goes down

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Hannah Kelley: so that's really interesting. Again, I do think the TV series which I haven't seen for this book might differ. I think she does become more of a protagonist in the series.

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Hannah Kelley: so I'll make that I'll make that note.

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Hannah Kelley: Lastly, out of our 4 we have Allie. She is a great.

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Hannah Kelley: interesting protagonist. Her rise to power is becoming the world's largest cult. Religious leader. And she also has a very negative arc.

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Hannah Kelley: If we were to choose, if there was a primary protagonist. I might be leaning towards her. Only because I think she is the strongest out of all of them. Which might make her seem a little bit more active. Her her power, like her supernatural ability, is the most powerful. But I would generally say there isn't really a primary protagonist.

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Hannah Kelley: To sum up.

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Hannah Kelley: why does the power work best with multiple protagonists?

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Hannah Kelley: 3 different reasons again, recapping. So all protagonists have equal page time. There isn't really a primary one.

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Hannah Kelley: Each protonist gets to explore a different facet of power, the theme right with their own goal. So we don't have a cluster.

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Hannah Kelley: And then, lastly, readers, get in depth, explanation, exploration of 4 huge corners of the world building. Again, we have this big world. A lot is changing. And without seeing through these 4 different protagonists. We wouldn't get to see the effect

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Hannah Kelley: of this New World order

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Hannah Kelley: really cool.

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Hannah Kelley: alright.

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Hannah Kelley: And now we're going to talk about wool also known as silo. If you have seen the TV series, this is by Hugh Howdy.

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Hannah Kelley: The world outside the silo is too toxic to survive the view of it limited and talk of it forbidden. The remnants of humanity live underground in a single silo. Those who hope of a safer world outside are the dangerous people, the residents who infect others with their optimism. Their punishment is simple. They're given the very thing they want. They get to go outside

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Hannah Kelley: after the previous sheriff leaves the Silo Juliet, a mechanic from the down deep is suddenly and inexplicably promoted to the head of law enforcement with newfound power, and with little regard for the customs she is supposed to abide. Juliet uncovers hints of a sinister conspiracy.

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Hannah Kelley: What's so cool about this is? We have a protagonist who dies a second one who dies, and a 3rd one who survives.

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Hannah Kelley: I wouldn't necessarily recommend this for writers. However, I I do think it works with the story. And I think it's an interesting example to cover.

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Hannah Kelley: So we have our 1st protagonist, Holston.

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Hannah Kelley: He is the only protagonist, the only narrator, until he dies in Chapter 7 again, spoiler, but an early spoiler.

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Hannah Kelley: His character arc reveals a major part of the conspiracy, which is that the outside world is not livable. I'm not gonna get into the conspiracy because it can get rather convoluted. But if you just need to know that his death reveals a major piece of information.

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Hannah Kelley: not for the other protagonists, right? They don't know what he knows, but the reader knows, and this doesn't create mystery for the reader, but it does create a lot of tension because we're sitting here like, Oh, when are they going to figure this out? And that can be a really interesting choice for your story, too.

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Hannah Kelley: Next we have Mary Johns. She steps in at his death until she gets killed off in Chapter 16. Such a shame! All the deaths. Why is she good? Well, yeah, she takes over as Narrator but also her arc later reveals who the story's villain is. It's not her. It's the man who killed her.

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Hannah Kelley: And we, the reader again, know another thing that the next protagonist who takes over is not gonna know, and we're even more tense now trying to figure out what she's gonna do.

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Hannah Kelley: And then we meet her. Juliet. She's the primary protagonist I wrote Rotagonist. Sorry about that and she

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Hannah Kelley: takes over from chapter 17, and continues out throughout the rest of the novel and the book series, I believe, as well. Her character journey eventually reveals what we readers kind of already know. Which is this conspiracy that is going on here in the silo, and what the the villain is.

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Hannah Kelley: and this happens slowly. She she takes a long time figuring this out right. She has more page time than anyone else. As she continues the story.

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Hannah Kelley: Why does Wool Aka silo work best with multiple protagonists? Again, just to recap when one dies, another can take over each protagonist jury journey reveals a crucial piece of the conspiracy, and each perspective expands the access to this world building without knowing that Holston goes outside the world. We wouldn't know what it would look like we wouldn't know what the conspiracy was. So we get to explore this through his eyes and only his.

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Hannah Kelley: And then I have 2 other follow up examples which are kind of cool, and how they

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Hannah Kelley: and how they deal with protagonists.

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Hannah Kelley: The 1st one is a bit of a plot, twist you

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Hannah Kelley: in the 5th season. The end reveals that the 3 protagonists, I believe, are actually different life stages of the same person. So young, middle, aged older. It's both right single and multiple protagonists. But that's kind of the twist, too.

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Hannah Kelley: And second, when you're writing a single protagonist book series like the divergent series which you are likely familiar with.

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Hannah Kelley: Tris, who's the sole protagonist and narrator dies at the end? I believe, right before the last chapter. So the last chapter is 4 who's a secondary character. He steps in, and he finishes the series with the final chapter. So it's an example of bringing in an additional Pov to tie things off, and to give the readers some resolution that they otherwise wouldn't get

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Hannah Kelley: next up. We have a little summary here, so again, prose. If you're single protagonist stories you can have more mystery. You can also get way closer to your protagonist.

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Hannah Kelley: and then over here on the right?

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Hannah Kelley: the pros are that you can explore multiple different plot lines and parts of your unique role building. Also, you get to invest in more characters, right. If you have a book series or protagonists die off like they did in wool.

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Hannah Kelley: Okay, oops. Looks like a slide. Got skipped. Okay? So before you choose single or multiple protagonists? I just want you to think about a few of these questions.

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Hannah Kelley: So who in your story is the most unique character? Is there one? Is there a few?

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Hannah Kelley: Whose story is this? Does it belong to more one person than all the others? Or is it really equal?

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Hannah Kelley: Which Povs. Are you most interested in exploring?

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Hannah Kelley: How many viewpoints do you need to tell the story in an interesting way?

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Hannah Kelley: If there is a mystery, how do you want to unravel it? Is it going to be possible? If you have multiple Povs

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Hannah Kelley: or multiple protagonists?

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Hannah Kelley: Is each protagonist gonna have a clear arc? They all need one. Is there going to be room for one? And do you have a room again for each protagonist journey?

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Hannah Kelley: And then, lastly, if you're gonna have them all sharing the same track and goal. And as cluster, or you're gonna have them on different goals, different tracks. If so, what is that? Gonna look like, how are you gonna map that out, you know, visually, like I did, or at least enough to make sense of it in your own mind.

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Hannah Kelley: And here we are finally at the end. So you're leaving class hopefully, with an understanding of how to craft both of these different story types, single and multiple protagonist stories.

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Hannah Kelley: And then we looked at 4 different examples. Again, 4 very, very red covered books.

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Hannah Kelley: and a few other examples, too. And then, lastly, an idea, hopefully, of which route you're going to take with your own sci-fi story.

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Hannah Kelley: And, as Michelle mentioned, I have left a code here which is to work with me, if you would like, on your manuscript could be this sci-fi story you're working on, or another one in another genre I'd be happy to hear about your story and potentially work with you.

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Hannah Kelley: So I'm gonna leave that as well. Thank you from Michelle for sharing.

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Hannah Kelley: and that is it. Thank you, everybody so much for coming today. It's now going to be the Q. And a time which I think we have a few minutes for

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Hannah Kelley: awesome I'm gonna look at the QA. Also, I left my website here just in case you want to contact me, ask me any questions about this webinar. Anything else story related? Please hit me up. I'd love to hear from you. And I also have a few resources, free resources on my website that might help, especially if you're feeling a little stuck by the plotting process.

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Hannah Kelley: All right. And

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Hannah Kelley: thank you, Michelle, do you want to hop in? Or

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Hannah Kelley: so I keep going.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: I'm happy to hop in. We do have a few questions.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Okay? And asks with multiple Povs, can you mix 1st person and 3rd person Povs, or should they all be in 3rd person? For example.

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Hannah Kelley: They're typically all. Yeah, this is an interesting question. And thank you.

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Hannah Kelley: They're typically all going to be in the same Pov style. It makes it a little less jarring for readers. However, sometimes you do want to make your readers be like Whoa! What is going on?

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Hannah Kelley: And then you can switch the Pov tents.

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Hannah Kelley: So I've seen it work both ways definitely, but more so than not. You're going to want to keep them pretty pretty similar in the same Pov style.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: We have an anonymous attendee. Who asks, is it a good idea to use an on an omniscient narrator? If you want to provide information. Your protagonist doesn't know but that you want your readers to have a little glimpse of what's going to happen in the future, or it's better to have another character, like the villain, to do it.

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Hannah Kelley: Yeah, this is interesting. I'm a little biased. Here, i'll tell you, I don't love omniscient narration styles, I think they're a little tricky

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Hannah Kelley: to handle, because, as I mentioned, you can have a lot of head hopping if you're doing mid scene transitions.

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Hannah Kelley: So I think.

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Hannah Kelley: But I think you can do both. I think it's which style you want to do better. Do you want to get into the head of your villain in a more direct way. Or do you kind of want to dip in and out in a more removed fashion as an omniscient narrator? So again, you can do both.

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Hannah Kelley: and it'll also be a little bit genre dependent, I think. Sci-fi and fantasy. A lot of speculative fiction does play around with omniscient narrative styles. So.

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Hannah Kelley: yeah, I think you can do both.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: We have an another anonymous attendee who says, can the narrator's identity be revealed near the end of the story to support the plot line.

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Hannah Kelley: Okay, hold on. The narrator's identity

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Hannah Kelley: be revealed.

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Hannah Kelley: I'm not sure I'm quite following the question.

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Hannah Kelley: but if but I'm happy to answer this question. If you want to email me. I'm I'm happy to get to to look it over. I'm just. I'm a little confused about the question. I think.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Steve asks, when the multiple protags come together. Should the Pov remain with the primary, or can it go to omniscient or continue to switch around. Is there any best practice.

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Hannah Kelley: Okay. So when they come together, I'm gonna assume this is gonna be like a cluster and this can be inciting incident. Probably when they come together right.

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Hannah Kelley: Should the Pov remain the primary or can go tomnition, continue to switch around like I mentioned, when you have multiple protagonists.

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Hannah Kelley: it's you're gonna want to balance their narrations between all of them as much as possible. You can have. Your primary was more. But you're gonna want to make sure that you're not just sticking with the primary protagonist after the inciting instead.

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Hannah Kelley: So you can go to omniscient. You can definitely do that you can

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Hannah Kelley: talk about all the different characters. From that point of view. But I just wouldn't stick in the primary protagonist head that whole time. Right. You really want to balance it around and you can switch it. You can switch again, as I mentioned, from scene to scene, from chapter to chapter.

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Hannah Kelley: Those all work.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Mark asks, what are your thoughts about a semi omniscient narrator who knows everything that occurred with each of the Mcs. I think it could work as a bookend device, possibly with occasional interludes.

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Hannah Kelley: Okay.

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Hannah Kelley: sorry. I have to read it again. Takes me a minute to process things.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: No problem.

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Hannah Kelley: Your thoughts, my initials, everything that occurred with each of the Mcs. I think it could work as a kind of us.

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Hannah Kelley: Yeah, I'm trying to think of an example of this.

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Hannah Kelley: I think it could work too. I probably have to sit on this a little bit longer to think about, you know. Yeah, how is it switching off? How much of our

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Hannah Kelley: narrators? Voices are coming through with this? But yeah, I I think I think it could work.

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Hannah Kelley: There's a lot of questions. Yeah.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: And says to prologue or not to prologue, you mentioned that prologues are generally, from the villain's point of view. Can you please elaborate.

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Hannah Kelley: Yes, if I said, they're generally from the villain's point of view, I I didn't mean that. They're not always they can be. So, yeah, this is an interesting question.

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Hannah Kelley: I I think it's gonna depend on a few things I used to not like prologues. Soon as I saw the word prologue, I'd be like, oh, let me just skip to Chapter one. But really they are like a chapter right? They may not have the same scene structure as you want in a chapter. But they're gonna be interesting a lot of the time. So I've changed my mind. I do like them now.

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Hannah Kelley: are they going to work for your story?

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Hannah Kelley: Maybe you need to think of a few things. Again, consider genre, I think, with sci-fi fantasy, other speculative fiction. It works to have a prologue.

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Hannah Kelley: And you can do a few different things in your prologue. It doesn't have to be a different person's Pob. It can be a flash forward to the future. It can be omniscient while the rest of your story is a single person. Narrative style like you can switch the style there.

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Hannah Kelley: And it can also be like a flash forward. So you can go right to the climax and be like dun dun dun. Here's what's gonna happen. Here's sneak, peek. You're gonna want to stick around for this. That's a common use of a prologue.

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Hannah Kelley: And yes, you can feature the villains. Pov.

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Hannah Kelley: You can also do a go back in time to. So not a flash forward, but like a flash backwards to fill in readers on some important backstory, as if it was happening in the present tense.

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Hannah Kelley: And then you can one more thing.

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Hannah Kelley: Some people also use them for

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Hannah Kelley: world building details. So if you have extensive role building, sometimes you want to give, like some information upfront about how your world works before they even dive in, because they just have to know. I don't always recommend that. It can, you know.

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Hannah Kelley: stall story a little bit. But sometimes those are needed.

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Hannah Kelley: Okay, great.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: Looks like we have 2 questions left. I can, if you would like to pick which one you think you have more time to answer.

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Hannah Kelley: Okay. Well, I don't know what

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Hannah Kelley: Rosh Shaman style is if I said that right?

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Hannah Kelley: None of the narrators are reliable. I've never heard of that before.

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Hannah Kelley: Oh, sorry! Yes, we are at time. So that is so interesting.

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Hannah Kelley: Sounds really hard. I'd have to look into this a little bit more.

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Hannah Kelley: but yeah, it seems like it'd be a little tricky Japanese phone. Thank you. It'd be a little tricky to figure out who

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Hannah Kelley: you can still have the person who has most time are going to have be your your protagonist might be one. It might be several.

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Hannah Kelley: But yeah, I'm not sure exactly what the question is there just like? Have I heard of it? No, but yes, you can still have protagonists. It looks like with this

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Hannah Kelley: with this style?

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Hannah Kelley: Okay? The last question looks very long. Should I dive in? Do we have time.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: It's up to you.

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Hannah Kelley: Okay. Oh, it looks like they got cut off, too.

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Hannah Kelley: You know what? This person, please email me with your question, Richard. I'd be happy to talk through what this is. I I don't want to run out of out of time for everyone else but again. Thank you so much. Everybody. Thank you, Michelle. I really appreciate being here.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: You are so welcome. I'm gonna drop your links in the chat one more time, and these are on the hub and the slides and the replay will also be on the hub, so everybody can take advantage of all of that there.

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: and thank you, Hannah, for being with us. This was great. Make sure you check out her website and the offer she has that will be valid until October 10.th So you have some time to check it out, and we will be back with another session in an hour, so we'll see you all. Then

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Michelle @ ProWritingAid: bye, everybody.