We’ve all read a book featuring the now-famous YA protagonist trope. She’s determined and mature beyond her years. Always an orphan, skilled in some sort of combat, and thrust into positions of power and influence beyond her years. She faces a confusing love triangle, and navigates complicated romantic conflicts as well as political or physical ones. These traits have become so common that they’re almost cliche, or at the very least a highly recognizable trope.
And a lot of people trace her back to characters like Katniss.
Katniss is highly skilled with the bow and arrow, after all. She’s made the leader of a rebellion at only seventeen. She faces a complicated love triangle and wrestles with significant romantic conflict throughout the trilogy.
But past these surface-level parallels, Katniss is fundamentally different from other “YA protagonists.” Today we’re going to investigate why that is, look at the elements that make her unique, and explore how you can write characters just like her, so that your YA novel stands out — even if it shares similarities with other works in the genre.
The Hunger Games: Katniss Everdeen
Katniss is a teenager living under the oppression of a futuristic dystopia. In a world where resources are hoarded by the powerful Capitol and the twelve districts surrounding it struggle to survive, she helps her family make ends meet by using a contraband bow and arrow to hunt. But everything changes when her sister is selected for the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death that she has no chance of surviving. In a desperate attempt to save her sister’s life, Katniss takes her place and enters the arena.
The Antithesis to the YA Protagonist
If you take the traits of the typical YA protagonist and boil them down, each YA protagonist is essentially made of two aspects: an average (or nonexistent) personality and unique circumstances. Their approach to everything from their romantic situation to their skillset is just about how anyone would respond. And this applies to nearly every aspect of their personality. Every emotional reaction, every plan, every response is exactly how any other person would respond, making them essentially a self-insert for the book’s vast readership.
On the other hand, the character’s circumstances are both out of their control and highly unusual. Whether they’re unexpectedly thrust into a position of power or given a set of highly developed skills with little effort or struggle involved, in both cases the character is put in a situation that almost no one would experience.
The reason why this happens makes sense. Their simple, undefined personality makes it easy for almost everyone to relate to them. Their specialized skills or position of power makes it enjoyable to relate to them, since it gives the reader a chance to escape to a world where they have skills, power, or opportunities that they wouldn’t have otherwise. As a consequence, these characters are extremely entertaining to read about.
But they don’t make for good protagonists. They might be compelling, but they aren’t unique or impactful and for that reason lack the nuance and depth necessary to carry a profound theme. In short, these characters make for great entertainment but mediocre storytelling.
Katniss, on the other hand, defies both of these characteristics. Her personality, on the one hand, is clearly defined, unyielding, and in some cases even divisive. She’s brusque, rough around the edges, bad at communication, and dead set on protecting her family. For people who have ambitions outside of their family or prefer individuals with a more winsome tone and persona, she can be alienating. That’s because she wasn’t created to please everyone. She was created to carry a story with a profound theme, and that couldn’t happen if she had a more generic personality.
Her circumstances, on the other hand, are surprisingly average. She’s a girl from a poor family with experience with suffering. Sure, she can handle herself with a bow and arrow. But her backstory makes it clear why she’s had to, and that skill doesn’t make her life instantly easier. The only thing out of her control that truly makes her circumstances unique is the fact that she ends up in the Hunger Games, but even then it’s her sister who’s chosen — not her. Her decision to sacrifice herself for her sister is a decision all her own, grown out of the personality that is completely unique to her.
Everything else that happens to her is a result of her own personality and choices. She chose to lead the rebellion to protect the people she cared about, not because she was an especially gifted or charismatic leader. She decided to lead the charge into the capital. She ultimately made the decision to kill Coin. Snow would not have pursued her with such vengeance if her personality did not indicate she could become a significant threat to him. A protagonist with an average persona would not have made half of the choices she did, and that’s what makes her a powerful protagonist.
So if you want to write characters like Katniss, there are two things I would recommend.
First of all, give them unique, unapologetic, potentially divisive characteristics. You can win over the rest of your audience with your side characters. Allow your protagonist to be themselves: boldly, truly, and authentically. You can’t please everyone, and you don’t have to. Your protagonist is there to carry the story, to communicate a theme, and be unique. There are enough average, blank-slate protagonists out there. Let yours be something different.
Secondly, avoid unusual circumstances that are out of their control. If they made a series of unusual but characteristic decisions to get where they are, that’s fine. But if at all possible, don’t write your lead as the secret lost heir to the kingdom. Don’t have your pauper be the prodigy sorcerer discovered and praised for his talent. Avoid writing characters that are given success, wealth, or power, through means that are outside their control. There’s a time and a place for the Chosen One trope, but at this point it’s so overdone that your readers will appreciate a character who isn’t one like a breath of fresh air.
Instead, allow your characters to earn what they have on their own right. Consider writing your “lost heir” protagonist as an expert strategist instead, who got into the palace through hard work and much study of politics, diplomacy, and ancient battle tactics. What if your sorcerer spent years trying to impress his possible mentor for the chance to become his apprentice, instead of having innate skill with magic? It will not only avoid making your character yet another self-insert opportunity, but also give them a chance to put their unique characteristics on full, tangible display.
Readers love average people with unusual personalities who take their unique traits and use them like superpowers to achieve what other writers would have just handed them on a silver platter. So give your protagonists bold, controversial personalities. Then allow them to put that personality on display by forcing them to earn their opportunities and advantages. Just those two changes will make a far more deep and nuanced character, giving you a protagonist much like Katniss.
Let us know:
What other YA characters have you noticed escape this trope?
Hi! My name is Mara, and I’m a Christian artist, violinist, and blogger. I remember the day that I decided that I would learn something new about what makes a good story from every book I picked up — whether it was good, bad, or a mixture of both. I use this blog as a way of sharing some of the tips and tricks I’ve learned, and highlight which books, cartoons, and movies have taught me the most about writing an awesome story.