fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2577 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2577 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

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02.

[Theresa Lopez-Fitzgerald-Crane, from the soap opera Passions]

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03.

[BBC Sherlock]

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04.

[Nobunaga the Fool]

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05.

[Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia from Star Wars]

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06.

[The Quick and the Dead]

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07.

[Nathan Fillion]

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08.

[Warehouse 13]

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10.

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 030 secrets from Secret Submission Post #368.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What did you read that said that?

This one-

http://storyfix.com/the-case-for-%E2%80%93-okay-against-%E2%80%93-dual-protagonists

Maybe I missed something but it seemed very negative.

That does seem pretty obnoxious. But then my tastes run toward experimental stuff that tries new narratives and techniques so I'm so not the person to ask about what won't work for the average person.

Ugh, that guy rubs me the wrong way. Do it, and do it fantastically.

What I do take from that article is what I discovered when I was writing a story with four rotating perspectives - one of them will be the lead perspective. They're all developed and have arcs, everything, but one comes out leading the charge.

With two, you can't have that, because it just weakens the second one, but if you can make it work, make it work.

I plan on it *salute*

I plan on making the two siblings equal. In one's story, the other is an integral part, and both siblings contrast each other.

They both fit in a character theme I have going throughout the novel, the theme of "pretending to be 'normal'" in different ways. One tries to pretend to be a "mundane" (he's a telekinetic) because his father brought him up the way. The other tries to pretend that he's not an empath, because he learned at a young age that being an empath is bad to the other people in their fictional society.

As long as they face different conflicts and resolve them in different ways, I don't see why it can't work. The publishing world is also changing, probably too fast for this guy. No one knows what it's going to look like even in 5 years and what sorts of conventions will be broken.

Well that was pretentious and narrow-minded (and ends on a word that doesn't exist). Feel no qualms about writing this guy's opinion off.

That's because it was very negative. It's much harder to write the same story from different perspectives than from a single perspective, sure, but he got really pissy about character labels. I read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi where it's common to have more than one protagonist and more than one antagonist, because the story consists of opposing groups, and the varying perspectives intertwine. Even if there's technically one hero who's more thematically important than the rest, they may not be the person I root for. Like, I don't know who the hell THE HERO is supposed to be in A Song of Ice and Fire, but I know Dany was the only perspective I cared to remember.

And personally, the protagonists I always end up resenting the most are the ones who the narrative keeps bullying me into focusing on as THE HERO when it's actually several other characters contributing just as much, if not more, to the heroic side of things. THE HERO starts to feel more like an intrusion in an otherwise good story, rather than the supporting backbone of it, because the writer feels like they have put one person above all the rest. Hence why I don't like attitudes like in that article that insist that kind of thing is always good for a story.

Tl;dr: Screw that article, write what works for you.

Oh, wow. I actively started going "What?" out loud, alone in my room, due to the absurdity of that article.

He raises a few good points. (Mostly that it's adding extra difficulty to your novel, and variations thereupon.)

But seriously, he has a *really* narrow definition of protagonist. Or hero. Or something. He seems to keep flip-flopping on that. "Well, you shouldn't write two protagonists. Or well, there might be two protagonists, but only one is the *hero*. Or maybe you have two antagonists." It's... weird.

[ SECRET POST #2577 ]

Re: So I just read some stuff that "Dual Protagonists are not reccomended"

Re: So I just read some stuff that "Dual Protagonists are not reccomended"

Re: So I just read some stuff that "Dual Protagonists are not reccomended"

Re: So I just read some stuff that "Dual Protagonists are not reccomended"

Re: So I just read some stuff that "Dual Protagonists are not reccomended"

Re: So I just read some stuff that "Dual Protagonists are not reccomended"

Re: So I just read some stuff that "Dual Protagonists are not reccomended"

Re: So I just read some stuff that "Dual Protagonists are not reccomended"

Re: So I just read some stuff that "Dual Protagonists are not reccomended"