Let me tell you a secret – that’s exactly the expectation I was referring to. It’s not my fault if a character is boring! I only want to see them work through things so I can sympathize with them! You might even be angry at me for such presumptuous statement.

No matter whether our protagonist is an amnesiac guy with spectacular set of claws and prickly attitude to match, a tough-as-nails girl ready to kill to win but with a surprising soft side, or a bunch of kids lost in the new world they literally stumbled upon by going through the wardrobe, we all have certain expectations of our protagonists, and when they don’t meet them… well, we tend to call them ‘boring’, or ‘uninteresting’.īut hold up Emma, I don’t have any such expectations! Some may cry in indignation. The person whose eyes we borrow to view the world with, and the person we’re supposed to root for – or at least, if not root for, than sympathize with them (not all protagonists are heroes, after all!).

Flat character arc