{"id":22546,"date":"2025-10-30T07:50:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T12:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/?p=22546"},"modified":"2025-10-30T07:50:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T12:50:15","slug":"the-author-and-the-protagonist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/2025\/10\/30\/the-author-and-the-protagonist\/","title":{"rendered":"The Author and the Protagonist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I, like any passionate writer, really love characters. And before I wrote tragic backstories, draining developments, and colorful personalities, I actually drew them! I wasn\u2019t serious about drawing and writing until fourth grade, but drawing was definitely my first love. I wouldn\u2019t say I was any good until eighth or ninth grade, but I was unbelievably passionate and I think that\u2019s what really matters here. I would draw countless characters and somehow intertwine them with crazy storylines. I would make comics, animatics or animations, and fill my sketchbooks with shocking speed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Eventually, when I did try my fourth grade hand at seriously writing for a personal hobby, my first vivid memory of this was in my math class after I finished my morning work. I opened my composite notebook and wrote about three full pages throughout the whole class with a story where I was the main character and I described my adventures as a famous Youtuber. Honestly, it was really cute. I was nine years old writing about being best friends with my favorite Youtubers and living out my dream (that may or may not still be my dream eight years later).<\/span><\/p>\n

With my first experience of seriously writing being, more or less, self-insert fanfiction, this started a deep connection to my protagonists. I mean, my first protagonist was literally me. I was writing from my perspective, what I would do, and how I would react. So when I did, thankfully, move onto original work with characters that I didn\u2019t suspiciously share a name with, I found myself exploring the main character a lot deeper than I thought I would\u2019ve. I absolutely believe that this was because I wanted to match my knowledge of my protagonist to my own knowledge of myself. It was a strenuous method of developing my characters but it\u2019s definitely helped me later down the line. <\/span><\/p>\n

As I write more short stories, more little worlds to dive into and explore, I\u2019ve been admiring the art of creating a fictional world. It\u2019s an unbelievably beautiful process and, at least in my life, it\u2019s not talked about enough.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, there are many different ways of creating a fictional world. Creating a fantasy world from scratch is completely different than a modern day story in the U.S. but the only thing that\u2019s different is (insert random event here) never happened. Worldbuilding is still a craft that I haven\u2019t learned much about. The thing that I\u2019m really interested in is character.<\/span><\/p>\n

People say if you base your characters off of people you know in real life, it makes them seem more real. Regardless, you\u2019re still creating a new character. This is a new life you\u2019re breathing into from an idea in your head. <\/span><\/p>\n

The relationship between the author and the protagonist is something that\u2019s infested my mind for a few months now. The protagonist, if we\u2019re excluding metanarratives, doesn\u2019t know of the author\u2019s existence. And the author knows everything about the protagonist. The protagonist goes on about their life, perhaps believing in another religion in their world not knowing their real creator is, for (totally not a specific) example, a teenage girl in art school sitting on a unicorn blanket in her dorm\u2026 <\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s something specifically intimate about being someone\u2019s creator. Outside of art and religion, there\u2019s not many areas of life that reflect this. Motherhood is the only one that comes to my mind and, yet, as someone\u2019s mother, your child will eventually grow up and become their own person that you can\u2019t control and may not know the full extent of. Creating a fictional character does just that. You can control them, know them more than you know yourself, and you get the privilege to say they\u2019re yours.<\/span><\/p>\n

I love creating new characters. My favorite ones usually come from stories that I haven\u2019t even fleshed out yet or stories based on my favorite games or media. As I\u2019m preparing for national novel writing month and even getting ready for a personal project in December, lots of characters have been on my mind. And, of course, I\u2019m trying to get to know them better than I know myself right now (which shouldn\u2019t be hard). Some ways I do that is through making family trees, Pinterest boards, Spotify playlists, and \u201cheadcanons\u201d even though they\u2019re my own characters so it\u2019s just\u2026 \u201ccanons\u201d even though that\u2019s not very fun. One thing that I haven\u2019t been doing, though, is drawing them. Hopefully I can return to visual arts again when I have more time. I miss my first love (drawing).<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m so glad I was able to finally talk about this idea. The relationship between the protag and author is something that\u2019s been rotting my brain since the beginning of this school year. It took a lot for me to not research for this blog and use my own input because I was afraid I would unintentionally rip-off someone\u2019s ideas. So this is completely from my own head and I\u2019ll probably research more for my own sake. This blog was a lot more laid back than I thought it would be but diving into the anxiety-inducing intimacy of being someone\u2019s creator just isn\u2019t what I want to talk about so I substituted that for how much I love making characters.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I, like any passionate writer, really love characters. And before I wrote tragic backstories, draining developments, and colorful personalities, I actually drew them! I wasn\u2019t serious about drawing and writing until fourth grade, but drawing was definitely my first love. I wouldn\u2019t say I was any good until eighth or ninth grade, but I was … Continue reading “The Author and the Protagonist”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[49,24,95],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22546"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22546"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22553,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22546\/revisions\/22553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}