For instance, in SF&F, a story that's about a worldwide scheme, where the main character doesn't/can't do anything, would be called a passive character--a death nail to any story of that genre because the main character MUST drive the plot.
However, if the plot doesn't revolve around these worldwide events, but around the main character, then the story would work. The events can influence the main character's life, but the focus is on his realm of influence, and how he struggles and shapes the story in his realm. He can try and fail--but the main character must put up a fight. And even if he loses in the end, he should be granted to win some small victories along the way, where he wins a battle or so, but not the war. Otherwise there's no story.
A good example of this is the movie Signs. It was the classic alien invasion plot, a worldwide event, but it focused on the impact on one particular family. However, that family didn't sit around and do nothing, they put up a struggle and came off victorious in thier realm of influence. And thier stuggle for survival tied back to the struggles they had as a family before the invasion and it changed them in a profound way.
[This message has been edited by franc li (edited December 11, 2006).]
However, the action may be things going on in this man's life, because of global changes offscreen.
[This message has been edited by wbriggs (edited December 11, 2006).]
It sounds like this could be more of a milieu story than a character story. If the world and events are super compelling, and there is enough going on apart from the character, the reader might forgive that your mc doesn't affect the plot too much. However, I'd make very very certain that you are in fact choosing the correct mc, and you know your reasons for doing so.
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few people want to read about a working class man who can't get sex
I wouldn't mind reading that, actually. There are plenty of books about tough soldiers who get plenty of sex. Those aren't necessarily the interesting characters. A working class man who can't get sex sounds like a much more interesting read to me.
Actually, have you ever read "Odd Thomas" by Dean Koontz? Your description is actually an exact description of the main character of the book, and that book was really good.
Also to be fair, I got about halfway through the book before I decided that, however charmingly odd Odd might be, he had the intellect of a boiled potato. I can't stand stories in which the protagonist does things that are beyond a certain limit of stupidity. Particularly when I know that the writer will bail them out eventually. One of the downfalls of first person, that. You start out knowing that no matter how stupid the POV acts, survival is assured.
Anyway, I love School Rumble. I don't know if Harima Kenji can be called "working class", that seems like a better description of Suoh Mikoto (whom I also love). Harima Kenji is more of a borderline homeless punk (who not only doesn't acknowledge, but doesn't even notice girl's feelings, especially Tenma's feelings, which are not about him). The thing is, despite being a world-class grade-A moron, he's a genuinely nice guy, even when he's doing something completely unforgivable. Which is important, because he does a lot of things which can't realistically be forgiven. I don't even know where to start.
The thing is, he knows just how dumb he is, and he really tries his hardest to do better. The fact that he's so dumb that his efforts usually make things worse is part of his heroic charm, because no matter how bad things get, he never gives up. Okay, he gives up a couple of times, but only in the sense of radically rethinking a failed strategy, not in his overall quest to become a man worthy of Tenma. Even if it means letting her go.
Luckily for us, he always ends up abandoning the "letting her go" strategies, partly because they never work any better than his other plans
Vent warning... Sometimes it becomes TMI. Do I really need to peek into somebody else's bedroom? Or even have a numbers on somebodies 'love' life like it's a sports stat? I want the characters I read about to retain a certain amount of privacy, otherwise it becomes voyeuristic.
I like how Robert Jordan cuts away. Rand or Matt might make certain choices I would not make, but Jordan doesn't drag me through it. Like Simmons did in the scene between Zeus and Hera in Olympus. For what purpose did he do that? Was that scene necessary? How? At best, it was comedic, almost a parody, or a joke on the reader.
Then again, a few weeks ago, I had to get up during a reading of The Song Of Solomon, run outside, and laugh like I was ten years old. I know, some have no problem. Like OSC, who reads Maxim, who I believe said watches certain "sanitized" erotica with his wife. But sometimes enough's enough. Hasn't it be sooo done already? Cliche? Can't we move on?
I don't know that it has anything to do with the current conversation, though.
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I believe said watches certain "sanitized" erotica...
My sister stopped using yahoo mail because she believe a lot of the ads showed naked ladies. I guess the other day there was a read end covered by what looked like some kind of clinical privacy cover, like might be used at a depilatory salon. I think it's the first time I would have agreed with her.
I used to have OCD so bad, I was wondering if Larry the Cucumber was really just a cucumber.
And wondering if Larry the Cucumber is really just a cucumber isn't OCD 
'Sanitized Erotica' was my terminology...
The closet thing I could find is:
http://www.hatrack.com/cgi-bin/print_friendly.cgi?page=/osc/reviews/everything/2004-09-05.shtml
The last section in the article he reviews what is basically soft porn mags. The other bit about the movies I can't find at the moment, perhaps it's a misremembered shadow of a garbled recollection.
Well, Card doesn't read Maxim, though he has read it, which is more than I can say.
I'm simply talking about pictures where the skimpy clothing is so cheap and ugly that the woman would look more dignified by not wearing anything. After all, most ladies are naked pretty often, even if they generally choose not to be photographed in that state. But there are some things that no genuine lady would ever wear, even for the sake of covering herself.
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My sister stopped using yahoo mail because she believe a lot of the ads showed naked ladies.
Suggest to her that she downloads the Firefox and get one of the extensions (I think "Greasemonkey" is the extension manager) that lets you eliminate ads from Web sites. I mostly use IE since the version 7 release -- for compatibility with some of my office applications and because I butchered the FireFox installation a while ago -- but I've used Firefox extensively in the past, and it's a good piece of gear.
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The Great Gatsby is narrated by Nick Carroway, and observer to the actions of the other characters. While he is affected by their actions, his influence is small. Yet The Great Gatsby is a wonderful novel.
It is occasionally possible to have three kinds of "main" characters in a story (and if I remember correctly, OSC talks about all three in CHARACTER AND VIEWPOINT):
1--the protagonist (the person most deeply affected by what happens in the story--the one who changes the most);
2--the point of view character (the one through whose eyes the reader experiences the story);
3--the mover and shaker (the character whose actions are integral to the plot, the one who makes things happen) sometimes aka "the main character."
They can all be the same character, or there can be one character who is a combination of any two of the above, with someone else being the third, or they can be three different characters.
For example, in a Sherlock Holmes mystery, the protagonist could be argued to be the client, the point of view character is (of course) Watson, and the mover and shaker/main character is Sherlock Holmes. Holmes is not the protagonist if protagonist is defined as the character most changed by the events of the story, but he is certainly a "main character."
In THE GREAT GATSBY, Nick Carroway is the point of view character, but he is not the mover and shaker/main character. I'd be inclined to suggest that Jay Gatsby isn't even the main character, at least all by himself. He seems to me to be more like the protagonist, with Daisy Buchanan's husband a possible contender to share the "mover and shaker/main character" role with Gatsby. Daisy could also qualify in an indirect way, I suppose (though she could almost qualify as the "maguffin" as well).
Anyway, if you consider that Tolkien always used as his point of view characters in LORD OF THE RINGS the characters in each scene who were closest to ordinary people, and when a character moved into "mover and shaker" mode, he never entered that character's point of view again, you can perhaps see why it isn't always necessary to have the point of view character be the mover and shaker or the protagonist.
I think Tolkien did it that way, just as Doyle did it that way with his Sherlock Holmes stories, in order to make the "mover and shaker" characters more awe-inspiring to the reader.
That said, these are not my favorite types of story. The world has to be really, really interesting in some way.
I think that the way Kathleen put it is more accurate -- the millieu itself is the main character and the characters that crawl around it just show us why it's so important. That was the first thing I thought of when I saw the original post, but perhaps I misunderstood the intent. It is difficult to get a good picture in a paragraph.
LOTR starts basically when Bilbo passes along the ring to Frodo and ends when the ring is destroyed. Well, there is also the whole Scouring of the Shire subplot, where the hobbits, now seasoned by thier trails are able to handle thier own problems without outside intervention. But then, modern novels might not be able to get away with that much story after the main event is concluded.
The Hobbit isn't simply a milieu story either, of course. But it definitely is one, and Lord of the Rings is definitely not, despite having a far more developed setting.
I'd say the story ends, appropriately, in the final scene, where Frodo sails with the elven lords to the undying lands. The theme wasn't the destruction of the Ring...as stated about three pages before the end by Gandalf, it's that "some people must give everything up so that others might have them." [Quoted from memory---you should go look for yourself.]
And setting aside what, exactly a millieu story is for a minute and how you implement that, let's just say that not all stories are character stories, even in part. When a story is not at all about a character then, IMHO, there is no need for them to drive the plot. The character need only serve a purpose.
I would add, though, that in this case two things must be true:
1. The character needs to totally get out of the way for whatever it is in the story that is important. They should have only enough development to tell the story.
2. Whatever it is that is the center of the story had better be VERY interesting.
But, to throw out something else...I've been rereading some of the stories of the late Jack Williamson over the last month. It seems I can figure out things about the stories I hadn't noticed when I last read them, which, in some cases, must be up to thirty years ago.
One thing, appropriate to this discussion, is that several stories have a main, narrating character, who seems incidental to the action---he's there on the scene, describing what happened, he witnesses the other characters acting and reacting, but he, essentially, does little or nothing himself. On reflection, it seems an odd quirk of writing. It's not always present in Williamson's writing, but it seems a constant theme. (Try "With Folded Hands," "The Equalizer," "The Crucible of Power," and the (later) novel The Moon Children.)