Are the events of the story inescapable: or can the protagonist walk away? The answer tells you whether the story is compelling enough. If the protagonist can walk away, then so can the reader. And they probably will.
If the protagonist has a choice, if they can turn away from the path the plot dictates, then the story lacks sufficient stakes. The quest, the job interview, the move to a different city. If its merely a whim, with nothing to gain or lose, then the character lacks motive and the story lacks engaging stakes.
If it doesn’t matter to them whether they go or not, then it doesn’t matter to us. The protagonist needs a good reason to stay on the path.
Frodo carries the One Ring initially out of loyalty to Gandalf. Once he experiences the terror of the Ring Wraiths and sees what the ring has done to Bilbo, his moral compass points him unerringly toward Mordor.
The first Jack Reacher novel opens with Reacher’s arrest. What was a simple road trip becomes a fight against corruption, trying to find justice for his friend.
In both cases, the quest becomes personal. It’s not just a job someone pays them to do. They can’t simply resign or hand it over to someone in authority.
They can’t walk away.
Even the Greats
You’ll find hundreds of examples throughout literature.
Attitus Finch is driven to root out injustice, no matter the personal cost or his place in his community. Nick Carroway might walk away from The Great Gatsby, but he’s the narrator, not the protagonist. Jay Gatsby is driven to pursue the girl he left behind. His dubious wealth is worth nothing beside the hole in his heart.
Pip in Great Expectations cleaves to the wealth and status offered by his benefactor. That glittering prize defies a life at the forge on the marshes. Pip is a staggeringly shallow protagonist, but that’s a whole different argument.
Flat arc, but life on the edge
Even ‘flat’ protagonists have their inner motivation.
James Bond? Service and duty be damned, Bond is an adrenaline junkie, a lost boy addicted to danger and licensed to do what ordinary men cannot, without consequences. Each mission is an undeniable challenge.
Sherlock Holmes? Addicted to puzzles and problem solving. It’s the challenge of the unsovable case. And he goes off the rails on opium benders when he doesn’t have one.
Lizzie Bennett in Pride and Prejudice? On her path to being true to herself, she’s torn between family loyalty and the search for true happiness. She turns down Darcy for his pride – and for interfering with her sister’s happiness. She turns down Mr. Collins because, well, he’s Mr. Collins, even though the family’s future riding on her marriage.
Marriage to either man solves the family’s problems. But not Lizzie’s. She can’t bring herself to do it, to sell herself body and soul to either.
The path less taken
At the beginning of The Ghost and the Vipers, Jovanka sees no other choice. The future in her Second Sight is fixed and unavoidable. By the time that future cracks, there is no other path. Justice demands she defy the Empire, whatever the cost.
An for the upcoming YA novel, Yari Tamm has no one else to investigate her father’s disappearance. She’s on a mission that no one else can or will do.
My protagonists walk the path of life and death. They can’t simply walk away.