ID 125627495 | Hero © Kiosea39 | Dreamstime.com
Often times people lump the Main Character, Protagonist, Narrator, and the Hero together in their head, but these parts of a story are actually all just a little bit different. I recently finished watching Murderbot Season One, and it inspired this post.
NARRATOR: As in the books, SecUnit is the Narrator in the television show. The person whose voice is telling the story. In some books, this is a generic omniscient speaker. Other times, it can be the person outside story, such as the grandfather reading the story in the Princess Bride movie. Fantasy loves telling stories from a historian’s point-of-view, writing the epic centuries after the events.
Much more often, in the present trends of storytelling, the narrator is the point-of-view (POV) character of the story as that is the POV we are seeing everything from, and whose emotional and experience lens the knowledge is being passed to the reader.
Now what caught my interest in Apple+ version of Murderbot is in order to make the story work in a television setting, the protagonist wasn’t SecUnit.
PROTAGONIST: Protagonist meaning “The Player of the first part / Chief Actor” from Ancient Greek dramas. But someone once gave me a definition to help me, as an editor, figure out who the protagonist of the story is: “The person who changes the most in the story.” This is the person the plot impacted; they changed because of the events around them.
These would be the main characters: Murderbot, Mensah, Arada, Pin-Lee, Ratthi, Bharadwaj, and Gurathin. Most of the group are the same people coming out of the story as going in; even SecUnit. Yes, it matured, but at it’s core it is still confused for purpose, a video addicted security expert, and very much a child in terms of understanding and accepting responsibility. It will grow up later; around book 3 or 4, it finally started understanding “adult” responsibilities.
The one who changed on the Apple TV version of Murderbot season one was Gurathin. He started outside the group, hurting and unsure. Jealous of the new member who Mensa had adopted as a new project. Acting out from the pain of isolation. By the end, he is still Gurathin, isolated, but instead of being just outside the circle, he is a step or two inside the community. He has let go of his jealousy, and acted to save his friend-enemy.
HERO: While many story structure analysis says the protagonist comes in three flavors: hero, anti-hero, or villain (again the one driving the story), I am going to say in this case, the hero is different. The Hero of the story is the Good Guy, the one you hope succeed, and aspire to be like. Again, this is very much not Murderbot. It likes killing. The one I would aspire to be is Mensah. She is the hero for all of them. Even for Murderbot. She isn’t its mentor, she is its favorite human. The one it goes out of its way to help succeed. The rest of the group is its humans, but Mensah is its hero.
MAIN CHARACTER: Finally, we have the Main Character (MC). In most stories, especially Urban Fantasies, the MC, narrator, protagonist, and hero are bundles into one person. In the Murderbot TV show, the narrator is clearly Murderbot. When it goes offline, we lose parts of the story. It is also, clearly, the title character. (Note that the title character is often NOT the main character.) SecUnit has the most screen time. In the case of the TV series, I would say Murderbot is the main character.
WRITING EXERCISE: Take a movie, TV show, novel, or story you are writing and figure out who is the Narrator(s), the Protagonist, the Hero, and the Main Character. Write it up on your blog and drop the link below, or just drop the results of the exercise below.
My attempt: Obviously, Murderbot AppleTV was used above. But I recently submitted a short story to an anthology. I don’t know what the final name will be, but the anthology should be coming out soon. In the superhero road-trip story,
NARRATORS: I have three point-of-view (POV) characters: Annie / Freakin’ Angel; Onyx / Fire Orb; and Vicky / (superpower name not chosen yet – nor whether she is a villain or a hero).
PROTANGONIST: The story doesn’t have one. The point of the story is a road trip. Everyone is the same at the end of the story as the beginning. The trip doesn’t change them, nor does their actions change the world. Some genres and story-plot-archetypes just break the rules that way.
HERO: Someone you want to be like, who inspires you. As this is a subsection of protagonist, we don’t have a hero/anti-hero/villain. The characters of this story are superheroes, but not necessarily heroes, not yet. That might happen in the next story.
MAIN CHARACTERS: That is the road-trip pair: Annie and Onyx / Freakin’ Angel and Fire Orb.
If you get a chance to read the novelette, be sure to drop in the comments below if you agree with my breakdown of the story.