Have you ever made your protagonist a coward?
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I mostly write poetry, not prose so it isn’t a question I can really answer. But I like the idea of other writers making their protagonist a coward. Sometimes it’s refreshing to have a main character who isn’t the hero – someone that we can relate do on our low self-esteem days. I’m not sure what proportion of readers would admit that they could relate to it, though ;-)
I think it would have a split audience – those who could secretly relate to and were cheering on the cowardly protagonist, and those who use the opportunity to feel superiorly non-cowardly.
It depends on how we want to see ourselves.
Then again, I think maybe in some of my poems the ‘protagonist’ of the poem has been in the position of losing or giving up. I wonder if you find that more in poetry than in prose? I gather that novel-writing has some ‘rules’ about what does and doesn’t attract and engage readers, whereas there is a cliché of people who like poetry being melancholic and the like.