It was pointed out in a short story that the character starts out as active, in the driver’s seat as it were, propelling toward his quest, and then halfway through becomes reactive, that is, his actions are molded by events.

I thought he well verbalized doubts I had about my WIP novel. Certainly while the protagonist acts and has an agenda of his own (revolving around restoring normalcy and security to his life and family) he finds himself caught up in extraordinary events beyond his control. It becomes more of a story of a life interrupted. He acts, but it may all be reactive for the first quarter or more before he comes to understand what is going on. His reactive actions eventually have repercussions that change the plot in a big way. He thinks he can control his fate, but in the end, he learns sometimes you can’t.

The POV character Hastings always just reacted to Poirot's investigation. But I suppose Poirot was the protagonist . . . and wasn't he just reacting to the murder, and the evidence?

OTOH I think somebody has to make a change (esp in himself) for it to be satisfying. It could be a small change. In The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula LeGuin, the protagonist was aware of what an anti-hero he was, and that he only did one thing that wasn't reaction: he pushed the off switch on a machine.

PIRATES OF CARRIBEAN
SOUND OF MUSIC
SPIDERMAN 2
SABRINA
STAR WARS

The hero's life is interrupted. The character is faced with a problem. Sometimes its with some kind of danger or jeopardy. Sometimes, in mysteries, it's danger once removed.

But in almost all stories it seems something has gone wrong. The hero then REACTS to this.

The rest of the plot is the hero making plans, facing obstacles (people, antagonists, nature, chance, etc.), reacting to obstacles with new plans.

At no point should the hero stop trying. The story is the chronicle of the hero resolving the danger/problem. If they just give up, well, then what kind of a story is that?

There are black moments. Like in Shrek 2 when Shrek figures she "loves" prince charming. But that only lasts for a while--until he figures out how to react to that devestating blow. Then he's off again.

I see heroes as being active and reactive. They certainly can't be passive. I see them REACTING first to some event (a villain's plan being executed as in Die Hard, or some natural disaster or some awful situation or a meeting the romance interest in a romance), then they plan, act, face an obstacle and react with new plans and new actions.

[This message has been edited by johnbrown (edited May 09, 2005).]

Okay, just kidding around

A protagonist should probably remain "active" in the sense of consciously striving to accomplish something rather than being "reactive" in the sense of just doing the first thing a situation suggests without reflecting on it a bit. That may be defining things a bit differently, but I think it's very reasonable.

After all, a character that never paid any attention to basic reality, never "reacting" to what was but only "acting" without reference to external circumstances, could be pretty limiting and pretty limited. Cervantes did it okay, and stories that explore the nature and limits of "insanity" have an accepted place in literature, but not all stories are about people who ignore reality.

I think that "active/reactive" is something we decide by watching the protagonist's decision making process. If it takes place in the conscious mind, and the hero makes a real effort to do the right thing, then we call that character "active". If the character is just acting out the script that nature, nurture, and current events have written, then we call that one "passive". The issue isn't how much actual control the character exercises over external events, many "active" characters end up accomplishing nothing (one thinks of Bruce Willis in Twelve Monkeys, one could say many things about his character, but it is really a stretch to say he wasn't active). The issue is whether the character acts with personal responsibility.

So the fact that the events have gotten beyond your character's ability to control things shouldn't make that character less "active" at all. In fact, being in that situation should cause the character to become even more apt to question first impulses and easy answers, more inclined to think things over. Even if your character can't solve the problems, being confronted by them should make him more of an "active" type of character--one who feels a greater burden of responsibility.

Even the realization that there is nothing the character can do in a situation is an increase in "activity", since before becoming involved the character wasn't doing anything and wasn't even thinking about doing anything about that situation.

Ah, but in GROUNDHOG day he does act. He tries a million ways to kill himself, then tries to make the best of it by trying to get the gal in bed, then...he succeeds in dealing with this problem and busts out of it. He keeps trying until he gets it right.

Here's the summary of sleepless. There's an inciting event--the boy calling. The characters both develop goals from this. They then try to acheieve them working around obstacles, etc.

Tom Hanks stars as widower and single father Sam. When Sam's son, Jonah (Ross Malinger), calls into a talk radio program looking for a new mother, Sam ends up getting on the phone and laments about his lost love. Thousands of miles away, Annie (Meg Ryan) hears the program and immediately falls in love with Sam, despite the fact that she has never met him and that she is engaged to humdrum Walter (Bill Pullman). Believing they are meant to be together, Annie sets out for Seattle to meet Sam, who, meanwhile, contends with an onslaught of letters from available women equally touched by his phone call.

I can't think of any story off-hand where something doesn't interrupt the hero's life, some inciting event that poses some type of loss or threat or problem, then the hero spends the rest of the story trying to fix the problem.

In Sleepless, the problem for Ryan's character is she's engaged to the wrong person. She tries to ignore it a number of times, but her attempts, her action doesn't work.

This is a character story, the resolution of the problem requires the character to change. The problem is the endless loop which is thrust upon him. The solution: he loses himself to get his life back.

One technique in character stories is to thrust a character into new circumstances. This is the external problem. The key to the external problem is solving the inner one.

Groundhog Day is one of those stories. A contrived and funny external problem forces him to deal with his inner issues. We know he's changed when he'd faced with the same situation as before, but he chooses differently. The story starts not when we see him being mean and grumpy, but when he wakes up and repeats the same day. That's the beginning of the problem.