Passive/active/reactive

I stumbled across this and thought it was interesting. I also added an article on the difference between passive and reactive and how you can make a reactive character interesting.

Passive v active characters

Knowing the Difference Could Save Your Book.

From romance to Russian Lit, and memoir to middle-grade, almost all bestselling stories are centered around active protagonists. Understanding the difference between passive vs. active characters is vital in terms of reader engagement and commercial viability.

So why are active characters so important? Let’s start by looking at why humans are drawn to stories in the first place. In addition to providing basic entertainment, storytelling offers us a precious opportunity to explore the human experience. Transcending loss. Being transformed by love. Overcoming hate. We live vicariously through our character’s struggles, growth and ultimately, triumph.

But at the heart of each journey is one vital ingredient, and it’s here that we discover the key to crafting an active character:

Desire.

Deep, life-changing desire pushes a character to take action and thereby become active. Active characters make decisions, take risks, and learn from their mistakes along the way. As the captains of their own destiny they push the story forward, even in the face of incredible opposition.

An active character—hero or villain—wants something so badly, they’ll risk their health, wealth, relationships and sanity to go after it.

By crystallizing a character’s deepest needs and giving them a goal of vital importance, we encourage the reader to empathize and become invested in their cause. After all, if the protagonist doesn’t care overmuch, why should we?

Time for a story example…

A rogue bear is terrorizing a village, and several victims have gone missing. Mr. Pete Passive sits in a barn with his sheep and pigs, a gun placed across his lap, hoping to be spared from the beast’s hunger. The barn doors are flimsy, and he’s pushed some rusty farm equipment up against them. But the grizzly is said to be huge, and smart. It only attacks at night.

All Pete can do is wait.

Nearby, Ms. Anna Active sits on the roof of her farmhouse, braving the cold as her sister and young children huddle inside. A haunch of meat hangs from the pear tree in her yard. Her rifle is cocked, and trembles in her hands. But she’s had enough. She must destroy the creature once and for all, even if her sister swears her plan is madness. Will the bear appear before she passes out from the cold? And if it does, will she kill it before it reaches her house?

Both characters are driven by the same basic needs: survival, protection of others, and restoring peace. Both Pete and Anna are dealing with a powerful external antagonist. But which scene would you rather read?

Anna is the more appealing character because she has taken her fate, and that of her family’s, into her own hands. She can’t control the fact a rogue bear is attacking their community, but she has a gun and a plan, and believes she is the only person who can save her family. As a result, her predicament is far more emotionally engaging. After all, she could very well draw the bear to the house and cause someone she loves to get terribly hurt, risking a lifetime of shame and guilt. She’s spent all their savings on a hunk of meat, and is more likely to catch influenza than the bear. But Anna is exceptional – the only figure who will risk everything to pursue her goals. By taking action she’s ‘earned’ the right to kill the bear, and win her happy ending.

In comparison, passive characters play it safe. Anna’s sister thinks she’s crazy, and—like Peter Passive—is paralyzed into inaction, opting for the simplest, most expedient response, and waiting to see what happens. Sound familiar? Most of us live our lives this way. But fiction is larger than life, and your protagonist should be too. That’s why passive characters are most often side characters, while active characters take center stage as the protagonist/antagonist.

6 Signs Your Character is Passive

1. As a writer, you’re more plot-focused than character-driven. You’ve got a great story idea, and you’re trying to fit your hero into an existing set of events. Most of the drama in the story is milked from the external (world) problems, instead of your protagonist’s internal choices and actions.
2. Your scenes feel episodic; a series of one-off events that lack the cohesion of a greater plot arc and purpose.
3. The protagonist is often waiting for the antagonist to make their move, and reacting instead of acting.
4. The protagonist doesn’t have a clear goal or mission of their own, that’s personal to them on some internal level.
5. Your hero is a kind of ‘everyman’ or woman, without big personality traits, flaws, or gifts. They might even be an author surrogate.
6. The central story theme (revenge, justice, love, control, power, etc.) remains murky.

Sound familiar? Don’t worry, driving your passive character towards action is easier than you think.

4 Solutions for Passive vs. Active Characters

1. Dig deep into discovering your character’s needs and wants, and in turn, what they lack in order to be truly happy. If they have a desire for revenge, a longing for love, or a fear of rejection, those are all great catalysts for forming a plan and taking action.
2. Challenge these needs with triggers in the form of external events or characters. I.e., if your protagonist is obsessed with ‘keeping up appearances’ then maybe her daughter’s new boyfriend is totally socially inappropriate. Or to return to our struggling single mother Ms. Anna Active, introducing a man-eating bear into her world directly conflicts with her intrinsic desire to survive and protect.
3. Lean into the pain. It’s common to fall into the trap of solving a character’s problems quickly and painlessly. But an interesting character is not blameless. They are driven by strong motivations that might make them impulsive. They have blind spots as a result of their ambition. They take risks and engage in confrontations that regular people (especially introverted writers) would shy away from. They care, oftentimes too much. Let the character fail at times, and work hard for their redemption. The path of least resistance keeps them from earning and owning their final triumph.
4. Give your character new goals as they shift and grow. For example, in an effective character introduction, we might focus the first act on Anna’s goal to kill the bear. But when her sister is accidentally killed in the process, a new goal forms in the second act: to punish herself and live in misery, as penance for her mistake. When the village fair is being planned and a shooting competition is announced, including a cash prize Anna desperately needs, she must face ghosts of the past to pick up her gun once more and redeem herself.

Of course, every writing rule comes with exceptions.

I can almost hear the literary folk out there, crying out that their favorite character of all time is a passive protagonist. And they’re right; some great books do feature passive characters, but these works tend to be extremely idiosyncratic, personality-driven narratives by authors who could make munching on an apple seem endlessly interesting. For those of us lesser mortals, creating an active character puts us one big step closer to writing something people actually want to read. Old Pete Passive might be an intriguing man who spends hours each day pondering life’s mysteries, but save his story for when you’ve got some successful books under your belt and you’re ready to break all the rules.

A Reactive Protagonist Doesn’t Have to Be a Passive Protagonist! Discover the Difference

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One of the stickiest questions any writer is likely to face is: What’s the difference between a reactive protagonist and a passive protagonist?

If you’ve been studying story structure with me, then you know I talk a lot about how your protagonist needs to be reactive in the first half of the book. But this idea causes a lot of writers to scratch their heads.

Because isn’t it true that you’re also told (like, all the time) that your protagonist should never be passive?

Isn’t reactive kinda like passive?

And, if so, doesn’t that mean that this passive/reactive protagonist is likely to sink the first half of your book, good story structure or no good story structure?

Good questions, all. So let’s examine the differences between the reactive protagonist (yay!) and the passive protagonist (boo!).

What Is a Reactive Protagonist–and Why Does Your Story Need One?

The first half of your story is all about your protagonist being off-balance. The First Plot Point at the end of the First Act forces him out of his Normal World and into the adventure world of the Second Act. From there, he’s going to spend the next quarter of the story–right up until the Midpoint—reacting to everything that has just happened to him. What does this mean?

The Reactive Protagonist Is…

* Off-Balance

I like to visualize the First Plot Point as something that comes along and physically smacks the protagonist. It literally knocks him off-balance. Some First Plot Points might fling him completely off his feet; others might only make him trip. But he’s shaken up. He’s scrambling to not just regain his feet, but to figure out what just hit him. He’s reacting. He’s not the one who did the hitting; he’s the one who got hit. And now he has to compensate in some way.

* Not in Control of the Conflict

This is probably the most important thing to understand about the reactive protagonist. His reactivity is almost solely the result of the fact that he is not the one who is controlling the conflict. The antagonistic force is firmly in control at this point. Stuff is happening to the protagonist, and he can’t stop it. He can’t even properly combat it, because his balance is compromised. To add to our visual image, it’s like he’s being pelted with rocks while he’s still trying to get back to his feet after that mighty whump at the First Plot Point.

* Not in Possession of a Complete Understanding of the Conflict and the Antagonistic Force

This one is also crucial. Not only is the protagonist not in control of the conflict, but he doesn’t even fully comprehend the conflict. He may not understand what’s happening to him at all or even how it might be possible (such as Wikus’s transformation in Neill Blomkamp’s District 9). At the least, he doesn’t understand why the antagonist is getting in his way or what the antagonist’s motives may be. And he most definitely doesn’t yet understand enough about the conflict to know what the antagonist’s next move might be.

* Not in Possession of a Complete Understanding of Himself and His Own Motives

Particularly if your protagonist is following a change arc, he’s also going to be struggling to understand a lot of his own motives at this point in the story. He’s in the grip of the Lie–and his blindness about himself, just as much as is any other factor, is causing him to get smacked around during this part of the story.

The Reactive Protagonist Isn’t…

* Passive

You saw this one coming. Just because a protagonist is reacting doesn’t mean he’s passive. More on this in a sec.

* Goal-less

This is key. Your protagonist may be reacting–he may not be in control of the conflict–he may not fully understand what’s going on. But he still wants something. He has a goal and he’s moving toward it, or at least protecting his ability to move toward it later. In Steve Miner’s Forever Young, protagonist Danny McCormick is in a totally reactive position when he wakes up after being frozen for fifty years, but he always has the very clear goal of finding his friend and figuring out what happened to him.

* Stupid

We sometimes equate passivity with stupidity. We see this dopey character who’s been knocked off his feet and is now being pelted with rocks–and he’s just sitting there, taking it. Well, if that’s what your character is doing, then he is passive and he is pretty stupid. But a reactive character is doing something: he’s trying to regain his feet, he’s trying to shield himself from the rocks. And even if he’s not being too successful at it yet, that’s most definitely not stupid.

* Defeated

Passivity is also often equated with defeat–and rightfully so. That dopey character who’s just sitting there taking a beating would only be doing that if he’s already given up. But your character is reacting, he’s not passive, and he’s definitely not defeated.

What Is a Passive Protagonist–and Why Doesn’t Your Story Need One

Just by exploring what a good reactive character is and isn’t, we already have a pretty decent idea of what a passive character must be. In Story, Robert McKee writes:

…the truly passive protagonist is a regrettably common mistake. A story cannot be told about a protagonist who doesn’t want anything, who cannot make decisions, whose actions effect no change at any level.

The passive protagonist is one who either has no goal–or is making no effort to achieve his goal. If your character spends most of his time staring out the window or observing as other people do things, that’s a good sign he’s lapsed into passivity. Always ask yourself:

* What does my protagonist want in the overall story?

* What does he want in this scene?

* What he is doing to try to achieve it?

If the answer to any of these is nothing, then you know he’s not reactive, he’s passive. Say goodbye to passive protagonists and let them start reacting instead