Kill the Protagonist!

Any amateur writer would be familiar with the godsend that is called ‘a writing prompt’. For the uninitiated, a writing prompt is a short story idea meant to get your creative juices flowing and to make you eager to write. I must confess that they have yet to overpower my laziness and propel me towards actually writing but they never fail to amaze me, challenge my imagination and question the boundaries I might draw to an idea or story.

Recently I found this writing prompt entitled, ‘KILL THE PROTAGONIST’. It went on, “Kill off your main character. Please. Not as a cheap ending, or right at the beginning for shock value. Kill them in the middle, and do it well. Leave every character reeling and unable to comprehend what happens next… When you shatter the heart of a story, a thousand tiny shards will split away and grow. Focus on the side characters… Think about how they would change, break and reform… If your story stops with a single character, your story is weak. Kill the protagonist.”

Now, this prompt shocked me at first. But as I ventured into wondering what would happen if the protagonist of my stories was killed, I realized, He was.

I saw the beauty of this prompt unraveled in the pages of my Bible, where smack in the middle of this brilliantly built up story, the Author (the protagonist’s Father, no less) kills off the Protagonist. Not only does it leave every other character reeling, it sends the whole universe into some kind of hysteria – the sun fails to shine at noon, the foundations of the earth can’t seem to hold anymore, tombs struggle to hold back the dead - like an impeccably coordinated army that scrambles in utter confusion when their Commander is slain. This was perhaps Nature’s way of testifying that it had just encountered the most significant and consequential event in all history.

Today, you and I sit here questioning why something that happened to one Man, about 2000 years ago, should have any bearing on your life or mine. But tell me, friend, doesn’t it seem only fair that we perceive, weigh and judge every character in the story by how he chooses to respond to the death of the Protagonist? And even more so, if that same Protagonist then rises from the dead and in the end returns to rule, as King.

So, friend, choose your response. Pick your side. And know that you can no more affect the story-line of our world by stubbornly shaking your fist at God, than a character in a novel can, as the author pens its glorious, last page.