Abandon Your Protagonist at the Side of the Road
By Natalie Hart | April 28, 2023 |
Photo by Hannah Van Houten. Used with permission.
My brother is a counselor. A very good one who won’t tell any of his clients’ stories, even when our dad asks him to strip all identifying features. Dad knows better, but he’s a curious man who’s never been afraid of hearing no (which made him a great entrepreneur). One night, after refusing to answer, my brother kept thinking about how he could honor our dad’s desire to connect with him about his work.
About an hour later, he told us about an image and a corresponding therapeutic technique he’s been using with clients who’ve experienced trauma and cannot directly address what happened to them. They’ve built up so much resistance that they shut down when they try to even name it. He’s given these patients this story:
As you’ve gone through your life, when you experienced something you couldn’t face, you went on, but to survive, you left your pre-trauma self on the side of the road and went on without them. You may have done this a number of times. Let’s invite those abandoned yous to sit around the table with us and talk.
His clients have found this gentle and poignant exercise helpful. They’re able to re-connect with the self/selves who experienced the trauma and begin to deal with their misbeliefs, their unhelpful coping strategies–even if they can’t say what happened to them.
Which made me think of our protagonists.
When building our characters, we usually identify a moment in their past that is the root of the problem that will be solved in the course of our story. Whether we call it the Origin Story, The Wound, a Marker Moment, or something else, we create a before/after: Before this, I believed X, but after I believed D. They build up layers of habits, beliefs, and self-talk to cope. It is the action of the story to get them to face the results of that moment.
Using my brother’s image, the protagonist abandons their old-self on the side of the road and goes on. Instead of a kind therapist guiding them to reconnect with their old-self, we nasty novelists devise conflict after conflict to force them to do what they need to do to become whole again. They might need to mourn, reveal magical thinking, correct misbeliefs, reclaim who they could have been all along, embrace their true nature, stand up to the people who fractured them, or something else. We create events and relationships that keep hauling that abandoned self/selves in front of our protagonist until they have to face it.
I’m currently writing an 11-year-old protagonist whose Origin Story takes place when he’s 8. The sweet kid who feels part of his family and is secure in his father’s love and respect is abandoned on the side of the road. The image of him standing there, watching fractured-Sam go on without him tugs at my heartstrings.
But it’s also helping me identify the coping mechanisms and misbeliefs fractured-Sam will turn to. And how the course of the story will force him to confront the injustice of that moment, correct his misbeliefs about himself, and comfort that abandoned-self.
Sometimes I get hung up on storytelling lingo. I’d written an Origin Story for a course I’m taking, but it was incomplete. This “abandoned on the side of the road” idea is helping me see what I need to do to tell a fuller story. Maybe it might help a few of you out there, too.
Have you borrowed techniques or insights from the therapist’s office for your storytelling?
What storytelling jargon have you gotten hung up on? How did you get past it?
Natalie Hart writes stories for children. Her father was an entrepreneur, so she never intended to be one herself, but she’s become a proud indie author. She is the author of The Giant Slayer, an imaginative retelling of the first eight years of adventure in the life of the boy who would become Israel’s King David.
[coffee]
Hello Natalie. Thank you–and thanks to your brother for giving you a therapeutic technique to apply as a storyteller, and to share with us.
About storytelling lingo that has gotten in my way: I offer the path/arc/trajectory a character traces on the way to redemption/transformation/self-discovery. I have always been skeptical of this formula. In my long life, I’ve seen much more evidence that people don’t change.
True, fiction and life aren’t mirror images. Fiction is compressed and carefully organized. Still, realistic storytelling needs to convince the reader that it’s “true to life.” For that matter, so does all storytelling, but I think you know what I mean. Realism needs to be realistic.
So, I have developed a protagonist who violates conventional wisdom: he doesn’t really change. But if I have succeeded, I have continued revealing him in the course of the novel. As the reader learns more and more, she/he changes, not the character. I see this as a variation in terms of how to imagine the character arc. He doesn’t become more whole, more empathetic. The reader does. At least that’s the plan.
Barry, I love how you’re developing your story — so interesting to play with that most basic expectation. And i love the plan to bring out empathy in the reader. I look forward to hearing more about it as you write.
Brings to mind Tara French’s IN THE WOODS. She solved the outer mystery, but defied reader expectations by not solving the inner mystery of protagonist, and it was a big one, not giving him any kind of positive change arc. Yet it was still a satisfying read.
Your essay brings into focus, for me, that there’s a younger version of the character that is much different than the present one. This is true even if there hasn’t been deep trauma, as we all start innocent and trusting, then change to adapt to reality; to survive.
This could be a source of surprise twists in a story.
Some examples:
-Old friends show up who are not at all like the character.
-The character has an immediate intense love or hate reaction to someone who reminds them of their abandoned self.
-The character reveals knowledge of something surprising for their current personality.
-Flashbacks show a very different character.
Thank you for getting my wheels turning this morning.
I love your list, Ada! Especially a character having an immediate intense love or hate reaction to someone who reminds them of their abandoned self. Lots of scope for imagination there!
Thank you! I was initially attracted to your post because I just wrote a scene in which my character is left without transportation home. I’m such a literal thinker. I get hung up on ALL the jargon because of it. Now I’m off to brainstorm some more mucky middle scenes based on your (and your brother’s) welcome advice. Happy writing to you!
Happy writing and brainstorming right back at you!
Thanks so much, Natalie. My MC threads his way through situations, weighted with history as well as self doubt. He’s so familiar to me, I’ve asked his point of view around my circumstances and actually gained insight, fully aware of the pretzel logic that engages. Your piece confirms the potential in my instinctive approach, and something much more! One of my sons is a counselor, generous in spirit and compassion. We’ve discussed EMDR; after researching I now use that technique occasionally, when under stress. And a writer friend has shared details of childhood abuses restraining her confidence. I was thrilled to share your writing today with both of them, and will invite my MC to gently relax his forward motion at the side of his road for a bit, with me. Wonderful!
Thank you K.D. It’s great to have a counselor in the family :-) I love the sense of intimate connection you have with your MC.
Your fascinating piece rang all the bells for me, as a therapist-turned-novelist. One technique that many therapists use (though I don’t think I ever did) is to sit your nemesis/mother/father/ex-husband/etc. in a chair across from you and tell them all the things you never could say to their face. I have done this with my protagonist, and then had her do it back at me. It’s incredibly revealing! For example, the protagonist of my recent novel told me that I really pissed her off because I kept harping on the same old hangups :-)
Another thing we learn, as therapists, is that people don’t “suddenly” face their Deep Wound, or do so all at once. It comes in pieces. And some of those pieces, because they’re new or scary or seen out of context, may prove to be just as inaccurate as the defenses they’ve built up. It’s often a zigzag, rather than a straight line. As a reader, that’s why I absolutely hate Big Sudden Overwhelming Realizations—and, as a writer, try to avoid it. That’s not how it actually happens—although, for sure, there might be a crucial missing piece that “suddenly” gives meaning and shape to the others.
Whoa, now I’m all energized to go back to my WIP and see if I can enhance this!
Love that conversation between you and your protagonist! And thank you for the reminder that facing the wound happens in pieces and isn’t straightforward. Glad you’re energized :-)
Natalie, I loved everything about this post–you’ve tied the heart of the story so succinctly using your brother’s imagery of being left on the side of the road. It’s why we read stories, no? To heal ourselves. I’m excited to use this in my own fiction. I think the first time I heard the term “misbelief” was in Lisa Cron’s Story Genius and it made so much sense. The stories we tell ourselves shape how we react to things, but when we change those stories, real change can occur. I find human behavior fascinating, why we do the things we do, why we do the things we don’t want to do even (I often remember St. Paul when I struggle with virtue). So yes, everything I’ve learned in psychology or religion or science, I apply to my writing. It happens without thinking because something you’ve studied for a long time becomes a part of you. Thank you for your lovely post. It resonates.
Thank you Vijaya. Human behavior is endlessly fascinating!
Natalie, I was left at the side of the road at age 15. So, in my debut novel the protagonist works through her abandonment issues. Conflict in relationships, she abandons the guy, before he abandons her. Until she meets a man who captures and heals her heart. She puts him through the paces and he almost gives up, thinking she doesn’t want to be with him. So, yes conflict after conflict until she realizes he’s true to her, and she can trust him. But, in the sequel in progress, the old abandonment issue surfaces after seven years of marriage, he might be sick and tired of her and want more in his life. She again works through that, trial after trial, she become stronger, and in the end she takes a bold step to keep the marriage together. I love the idea of the abandoned self talking to the real self. I’ve used it in the context of the protagonist talking to her best friend who is older and wiser. In the sequel she meets women who were in the same situation that she was in, and she helps them, because she’s been there and done that. Thanks for your post, it made me think. 📚🎶 Christine
Thank you, Christine. I didn’t even make a connection between that image and actual abandonment issues, which are so hard to overcome.
First, kudos for a very useful thread, Natalie. And cheers to you, Christine, for surviving. My mind went immediately to actual abandonment, because of a story I will never be able to get out of my head. In brief, I once worked for a man who owned a small publication. He was hard and mean, in every sense of both words. We’ll call him Bob.
I learned from a coworker that when Bob was a kid, his mother took him and his dog and started hitchhiking. I never knew why. A couple of hundred miles from home, his mother flagged down a driver who said he’d take her and Bob, but he wouldn’t take the dog. His mother dragged Bob into the car. Bob told my coworker that he would never forget the sight through the back window of the dog standing by the road as they drove away.
This thread today makes the point that Bob is still there with the dog in some ways. The real Bob, even though he wasn’t left, lost both the dog and his mother at the same moment.
Natalie
Has your brother ever thought of writing a self-help book based on that idea? I’ve never heard it before and it could help traumatised people as well as writers.
Hello Hilary. He’s just recently started using it in his practice, so he’s not thinking about writing about it … yet. I’ll plant a bug in his ear :-)
Thank you Natalie, What a great approach to a character arc!
Thank you, Bob. Happy writing!!
Loved this different approach, Natalie. It inspires me to look at my protagonist with new, fresh eyes. And also to accept, through your post, and the comments of others, that transformation doesn’t have to be (and usually isn’t) linear, or an epiphany. We can come to a realization, a denouement perhaps, where the protagonist is just more whole.
Thank you, Deborah. Glad you found some inspiration.
I’m so intrigued by “Giant Slayer.” Sound like a great read.