# Authors With a Protagonist Pattern **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 25, 2012, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-with-a-protagonist-pattern/619929 "2012-04-25T17:42:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Imago](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/85e7bf/32.png) [@Imago](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Imago)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2012, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-with-a-protagonist-pattern/619929/1 "2012-04-25T17:42:12Z")
Alright, so there’s no shortage of writers who in different books use different main characters that all have significant similarities. I love reading books by those kinds of writers. Actually, I think I might actually love the bullshit armchair psychoanalysis I can then do, but hey, guilty pleasures. Sadly, I can only name maybe three published authors who bring a core protagonist type to the table, and I’ve read them to death. Who else is there? ---
**Author:** ![GargoyleWB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gargoylewb/32/199_2.png) [@GargoyleWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GargoyleWB)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2012, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-with-a-protagonist-pattern/619929/2 "2012-04-25T18:16:27Z")
I assume you’ve read all of Robert Heinlein then? He doesn’t really write diverse characters, only templates to wear various philosophical poster boards. The main protagonist is usually the “dear reader” expounder of the core philosophy that everything else spins around. ---
**Author:** ![Imago](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/85e7bf/32.png) [@Imago](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Imago)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2012, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-with-a-protagonist-pattern/619929/3 "2012-04-25T18:19:00Z")
I have! ---
**Author:** ![jordanr2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/838e76/32.png) [@jordanr2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jordanr2)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2012, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-with-a-protagonist-pattern/619929/4 "2012-04-25T18:23:32Z")
Anita Brookner immediately jumps to mind - drawing-room novels about quietly tormented, lonely middle-aged women (occasionally men). I like her work a lot but I don’t think she’ll ever be accused of radically changing from one book to another. ---
**Author:** ![Speak\_to\_me\_Maddie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Speak\_to\_me\_Maddie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Speak_to_me_Maddie)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2012, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-with-a-protagonist-pattern/619929/5 "2012-04-25T18:24:37Z")
**Dick Francis**. He wrote more than 40 novels, all crime thrillers. The protagonists are often former jockeys who quit due to injury and were forced to take up another profession. (Guess what Francis’s profession was and why he began writing novels). They all have the same personality too: quiet single-guy who keeps to himself and eats egg-white omelets for dinner. Good books though. ---
**Author:** ![Imago](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/85e7bf/32.png) [@Imago](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Imago)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2012, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-with-a-protagonist-pattern/619929/6 "2012-04-25T18:40:26Z")
Ah-ha! These are exactly the kinds of things I’m looking for. Thanks for the recommendations, both of you. I’d like to add that I get the absolute most excited about this when it’s done in fantasy and sci-fi, there it’s harder to make it directly autobiographical. And non-fantasy writers where it isn’t autobiographical would, I assume, hold my interest the same way. But of course, when it’s plainly autobiographical I’m still pretty eager to read it. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_A.Robrin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sam_a.robrin/32/14497_2.png) [@Sam\_A.Robrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_A.Robrin)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2012, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-with-a-protagonist-pattern/619929/7 "2012-04-25T18:49:27Z")
Fredric Brown’s protagonists tend to be bookish _mensches_ who drink excessively. Ayn Rand’s are rabid individualists given to speechifying, and, just incidentally, smoking and rough sex. Sinclair Lewis’s are people who have some essential characteristic or ability that differentiates them enough that they don’t quite fit with the world around them. “Write what you know,” it’s said… ---
**Author:** ![Imago](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/85e7bf/32.png) [@Imago](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Imago)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2012, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-with-a-protagonist-pattern/619929/8 "2012-04-25T19:25:15Z")
> [@Sam\_A.Robrin](#): > > Fredric Brown’s protagonists tend to be bookish _mensches_ who drink excessively. Ayn Rand’s are rabid individualists given to speechifying, and, just incidentally, smoking and rough sex. Sinclair Lewis’s are people who have some essential characteristic or ability that differentiates them enough that they don’t quite fit with the world around them. > “Write what you know,” it’s said… I hadn’t heard of Fredric Brown at all- awesome. Though I detest Ayn Rand, I’ve just made a mental note to check out Sinclair Lewis. Got any more? ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2012, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-with-a-protagonist-pattern/619929/9 "2012-04-25T19:34:46Z")
Isaac Asimov favored protagonists who talked and thought about problems. It was unusual for them to do anything physical; many of his short stories consisted of nothing but a conversation. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2012, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-with-a-protagonist-pattern/619929/10 "2012-04-25T20:03:50Z")
> [@GargoyleWB](#): > > I assume you’ve read all of Robert Heinlein then? He doesn’t really write diverse characters, only templates to wear various philosophical poster boards. [hijack]This is total bullshit, of course.[/hijack] ---
**Author:** ![Imago](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/85e7bf/32.png) [@Imago](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Imago)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2012, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-with-a-protagonist-pattern/619929/11 "2012-04-25T20:27:08Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Isaac Asimov favored protagonists who talked and thought about problems. It was unusual for them to do anything physical; many of his short stories consisted of nothing but a conversation. And he did it well, too. > [@silenus](#): > > [hijack]This is total bullshit, of course.[/hijack] There’s a case to be made either way; but, I will say that having read him, I didn’t include him when I said I could name maybe three authors at most who did this. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2012, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-with-a-protagonist-pattern/619929/12 "2012-04-25T20:51:22Z")
Stephen King, of course, writes about writers a lot. Somebody, I forget who (maybe a comedian?) said that every Amy Tan book can be summed up as “My husband, he bad man.” ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2012, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-with-a-protagonist-pattern/619929/13 "2012-04-25T21:28:57Z")
If you extend the concept to television, every show created by Donald Bellisario follows a pattern. The hero is always an exceptionally competent military (or pseudo-military) alpha male. The supporting characters are competent and desirable women, younger flawed (womanizer, geek) men, and occasionally an older eccentric man. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2012, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-with-a-protagonist-pattern/619929/14 "2012-04-25T21:43:29Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > If you extend the concept to television, every show created by Donald Bellisario follows a pattern. The hero is always an exceptionally competent military (or pseudo-military) alpha male. The supporting characters are competent and desirable women, younger flawed (womanizer, geek) men, and occasionally an older eccentric man. **Quantum Leap** didn’t have a military man and Sam Beckett was hardly an alpha male. There were no desirable women (no women at all as regulars), no younger men. Al did fit the eccentric older man. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2012, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-with-a-protagonist-pattern/619929/15 "2012-04-25T21:54:49Z")
David Weber does aggressive, assertive military/warrior women a _lot_. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2012, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-with-a-protagonist-pattern/619929/16 "2012-04-25T22:09:55Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > **Quantum Leap** didn’t have a military man and Sam Beckett was hardly an alpha male. There were no desirable women (no women at all as regulars), no younger men. Al did fit the eccentric older man. Not military, but Sam was the leader of the group, and in a job that provided lots of adventure and peril. And alpha in the sense of being good at what he did. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2012, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-with-a-protagonist-pattern/619929/17 "2012-04-25T23:57:58Z")
I love Brandon Sanderson’s work, but it’s becoming increasingly obvious that he likes to populate his novels with the same stable of characters. ---
**Author:** ![Imago](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/85e7bf/32.png) [@Imago](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Imago)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-with-a-protagonist-pattern/619929/18 "2012-04-26T12:07:17Z")
Aaah. Awesome, guys. ---
**Author:** ![Speak\_to\_me\_Maddie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Speak\_to\_me\_Maddie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Speak_to_me_Maddie)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-with-a-protagonist-pattern/619929/19 "2012-04-26T16:34:00Z")
If sci-fi/fantasy is your thing consider **Orson Scott Card**. He keeps going back to a protagonist type: an intelligent young boy who has a considerable talent, super-ability, or magical power. Yet in spite of, or perhaps because of this ability the boy is an outcast and pariah, even from his own family at times. This comes up in the Ender series, the Mithermages series, Alvin Maker series, and in Lost Boys and Space Boy. Those are just the ones off the top of my head. ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2012, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-with-a-protagonist-pattern/619929/20 "2012-04-26T23:11:21Z")
If we include children’s books, Noel Streatfeild’s work fits right in. Her supporting characters, too. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-with-a-protagonist-pattern/619929.md?page=2)