This week: Proactive Protagonists Edited by: Jeff  
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Adventure is worthwhile in itself."
— Amelia Earhart
About The Editor: Greetings! My name is Jeff and I'm one of the regular editors of the official Action/Adventure Newsletter! I've been a member of Writing.com since 2003, and have edited more than 400 newsletters across the site in that time. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to email me directly or submit feedback in the comment box at the bottom of this newsletter.
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Proactive Protagonists
In a genre like action/adventure, it's very common to have a reactive protagonist that merely responds to events that happen to them. John Wick is happily minding his own business when young punks steal his car and murder the dog his wife left him when she died. Jack Ryan is just trying to do his job until a world-changing event comes calling and requires him to rise to the occasion. Indiana Jones is a full-time professor doing academic research until someone drops an archaeological mystery on his desk. James Bond gets into his usual shenanigans because he's a secret agent who is assigned to these crazy cases. Ellen Ripley rises to the occasion every time a Xenomorph alien starts terrorizing a particular location. The throughline with all of these famous protagonists is that they're usually not going out looking for stuff to do... stuff happens to them and then they have to respond to it.
Compare those protagonists to the ones that specifically go out and find action/adventure for themselves. Batman occasionally responds to Commissioner Gordon turning on the Bat Signal when one of his rogues' gallery of nemeses surfaces with a scheme, but he also chooses to go out and patrol the city at night, fighting criminals because he chooses to. Many superheroes (Spider-Man, Daredevil, Punisher, etc.) fall into the category of proactive protagonists because they go out in search of the adventures they find. Same for the bounty hunter Boba Fett from the Star Wars universe, who seeks out the contracts he accepts.
In most cases, there's nothing wrong with having a reactive protagonist in an action/adventure story. Many action/adventure stories are about the events that are happening, so it makes sense that the protagonist is just one of many characters who are exerting influence against the narrative that's already in motion. But that's precisely what can lead many action/adventure stories to feeling generic and/or stale; because the protagonist's motivation is just "this is happening to me, so I do something about it." Proactive motivations (where a character chooses to act) are often much more engaging and compelling, because they require us to understand something about the character themselves to understand why they would make a choice to act.
Think about how this plays out in real life...
Would you be more interested in following the day-to-day trials and tribulations of a defense attorney who simply takes whatever high paying client is willing to hire her? Or the day-to-day trials and tribulations of a defense attorney who became a public defender to intentionally fight for the little guy after someone in her family was railroaded by a prosecutor and sent to jail for a crime they didn't commit?
Would you be more interested in a story about a detective investigating a case just because it happens to be the one his captain assigned him? Or a story about a detective investigating a case that he asked be assigned to because the details of the crime remind him of an unsolved case that has haunted him for years?
Proactive and reactive aren't absolute positions; characters can embody both qualities throughout the course of a narrative, especially a lengthy one like those found in a book or a movie. But it's important to understand the differences between starting a narrative as a proactive or reactive character. That can speak not just to the kind of story being told, but the kind of character your reader will be following throughout, and even how much your audience will empathize, sympathize, or engage with.
As you're writing your next action/adventure story, consider whether the narrative calls for an active or reactive protagonist and, if it's the latter, perhaps consider what it would take and what it would mean to have a protagonist take a little more ownership of the story.
Until next time,
Jeff
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Action/Adventure: April 30, 2025 Issue [#13110]
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