Choosing the Lead

One of the biggest challenges when you start plotting a story can be to decide who should be the main character. The lead. The hero. Whatever you want to call them. After all, most of the story will revolve around them. Other characters will mainly be defined by how they play along with the lead. Who should lead, then?

 

A good rule of thumb would be to look out for who has the highest stakes in the plot or is most invested in it. They may have to stop the destruction of their village or they may simply stand to lose most if they don’t get top marks in their finals - it is all down to the story as a such. So ask yourself who is going to lose most if they don’t succeed. This one should be your main character. If you want for someone else to be the main character, either raise their stakes or lower the stakes of that other character.

This is important, because the audience will spot who has the highest stakes and will want to follow that character’s journey. If you make it look early as if character A is going to be the main character, since their whole village is in danger of being destroyed, but then the story is focused on character B who is looking for their long-lost sibling, chances are most of the audience will be disappointed.

Stakes bring tension and the highest tension will always create the highest interest. Thus, a character with high stakes will always be the first choice for the main character. But what, I hear you ask, when I have several characters who have similarly high stakes? What if the stakes are low in general?

 

How relatable a character is can also be a topic. The more the audience can relate to a character, the easier it is to invest interest in them. They want to see what happens with this character, even if the stakes aren’t that high. They want to see that character succeed.

A character will be the more relatable to the audience the more they share with them. That is why in books for children, the main character will usually be a child, in books for teenagers, the main character will usually be a teenager, and why the YA genre has taken off so strongly in recent years. There are more romance novels with a female than with a male point of view, too, but more espionage or action stories with a male one.

A relatable character doesn’t have to have the highest stakes, but the audience must really feel drawn to them in order to root for them during the story and to want to see them succeed.

 

The next question is about the likability of the characters. It is easier to interest the audience in the story of a likable character than in the story of an unlikable character. People care about other people who are likable and don’t want for those to come to any harm, therefore, they’ll be interested in that character.

Likable characters won’t work as anti-heroes, but as long as they’re not doing anything morally questionable or bad, they will stay likable and people will root for them. The audience will follow the story and hope that the likable character will get what they are going for and succeed in their quest.

A character is likable if they’re behaving nicely towards others, if they do display positive traits and come across as someone who one might want to hang out with in real life. They might not be likable for everyone, but they will certainly be likable for most members of a specific audience - and every story has a specific audience in mind.

 

The lowest rank of ‘ideal lead character’ is a character who is interesting. Interesting can encompass a lot of different things, but it must be a character who has a back story people might like to get into, is doing things for interesting reasons, or makes people wonder in a good way why they’re there (not in the ‘why the hell is that character around at all?’ way). How did that foul-mouthed mercenary end up with a group of orphaned children and why is he taking care of them? Why does this space mission include a sentenced con-man? That is the sort of ‘why are they there?’ question which shows you an interesting character.

Audiences follow interesting characters to find out more about them, to see what they’ll do next. Often, an interesting character will do the unexpected, so it is interesting to see where things are going with them.

Yet, the interesting character is the lowest level of ‘good lead characters.’ It’s easy to miss the mark with this one and not make them interesting enough for the audience. That is much easier to do with things like high stakes or likability.

 

If you are looking for a lead character, the four aspects listed here clearly have a hierarchy. It’s always easiest to interest the audience in a character with higher stakes than all others in the story. That is the best character to choose as the lead. If the characters are similar when it comes to stakes - say, you have a story about two or three people who have to do good in the finals, but all have similar reasons to work hard (or cheat) for them -, the most relatable character in the group is usually the best choice. If the characters are similarly easy to relate to, the best choice will be the most likable character, because it’s easier to latch onto a likable person. Finally, if the characters are not likable or similarly likable, the most interesting character (often the ‘odd one out’ or the one with the different background) is the best to choose as the lead. So highest stakes > relatable > likable > interesting. You should always be able to get a group of possible main characters sorted by that.

As mentioned above with the high stakes, it is possible to shift the story by giving the character you want as the main character higher stakes or lowering the stakes of the character you don’t want as the main character. The same, of course, goes for how relatable, likable, or interesting they are.

 

It is important to invest some thought into the question of who should be the main character. Often, female characters or POC characters (WOC have it worst) get the short shrift despite having the highest stakes, simply because the writer or the editor or the publisher thinks that the story must be headed by a white man to be interesting for people. Often, you will know from the beginning whose story it is, but sometimes, especially if beta readers or the editor ask you who the story is really about, you might have to take a step back and ask yourself who should be the lead in the story.