Stories Without Protagonists?

questions
#1

Hey all,

I just had a curious thought. Technically, with Dramatica theory, it should be possible to have a complete story with no central protagonist, right? Obviously, the story would require both an MC and IC character, but as we know from To Kill a Mockingbird, both can be present in a complete narrative without either being the protagonist.

So provided all the elements traditionally assigned to the protagonist get assigned to the objective characters, it should be entirely possible to have a complete story wherein the overall throughline is pushed ahead through the tandem efforts of a number of characters, each of whom might possess only one element traditionally granted to the protagonist, right?

Can anyone think of any examples of stories that function like this? I can’t really come up with any off the top of my head, but I’d be fascinated to see how many examples there are. Specifically, I’m thinking of books or movies where there is no clear protagonist, not where once character contains MOST of the elements associated with protagonists, save one or two . . .

#2

Yes theoretically you can do this. I believe Spotlight is like this where one character has Pursuit and another has Consider. Not sure which ones though…(check out the video analysis of Spotlight and FFWD till about 3/4 through. That’s usually where we start talking about character elements)

#3

I can’t think of any split Protagonists, per se, but @jhull gives a good argument for a split Antagonist in Inception, here. A split Protagonist would be similar in that regard.

#4

What about Good Will Hunting? I feel like you wrote an article about this once.

#5

I don’t believe I did, but it’s a great idea for one!

#6

In a case where there is a split protagonist, would you still get the feeling that the character with the Pursuit come across as the Protagonist? They might not exemplify the internal Consider element, but wouldn’t pursuing the story goal be the most closest in terms of Protagonist and feel as such?

#7

This is sort of a shot in the dark, but maybe in Action-Driven stories, the character demonstrating Pursuit feels more protagonist-y, while in a Decision-Driven story, it’s the character demonstrating Consider?

1 Like
#8

That’s actually a really good point. I’ll have to check into it and see…