To understand the purpose of this post and the notations in this diagram, please read the Introduction.

While good Characters are all unique in some way, Characters can largely be divided into three groups: protagonists (Characters the reader is expected to sympathize with); antagonists (Characters who oppose the protagonists); and minor characters whose role in the Story is limited to what the protagonists and antagonists see of them. Minor characters may have Motivations and face Challenges, but we don’t see that in this Story. (They may have Stories of their own somewhere else.)

Figure 4. Characters, Protagonists, and Antagonists

Here are some common types of protagonists and antagonists. These lists are by no means exhaustive. You should view these as roles, where a given Character may play multiple roles over the course of a Story. A Character may even be both protagonist and antagonist within the same Story.

Protagonists

Expanding on our definition above, protagonist Characters are Characters who help a main Character (theProtagonist) to face Challenges. Except for Protagonists, these all may be minor characters.

Protagonist

This is the main Character in all or part of the Story. This might be the hero or heroine; but in some Stories, the Protagonist isn’t very heroic. A Story may have a single Protagonist, or a group of Protagonists (sometimes called an ensemble). In some Stories, the Protagonist role may shift from one Character to another.

Ally

This is a Character who shares some of the same Motivations or faces some of the same Challenges as the Protagonist, and collaborates with him or her to overcome the Challenges.

Friend

This is a Character who helps the Protagonist to face Challenges due primarily to friendship or loyalty,

Contact

This is a Character who helps the Character because of some past debt or obligation or some prior working relationship.

Informant

This is a Character who provides information to the Protagonist.

Mentor

This is a Character who teaches the Protagonist a lesson.

Resource

This is a Character who does some work or provides some service to the Protagonist.

Counselor

This is a Character who listens to the Protagonist and gives him or her some advice on dealing with Challenges.

Antagonists

Expanding on our definition above, antagonist Characters are Characters who in some way add to the Challenges that a Protagonist faces. They may not dislike the Protagonist; perhaps they even like him or her. But in some way, they make the Protagonist’s task more difficult. Except for Antagonists, these all may be minor characters.

Antagonist

This is a Character who actively seeks to defeat the Protagonist, or whose Motivations create the Protagonist’s Challenges. For the Protagonist to succeed, the Antagonist must fail, and vice versa. Not all Stories will have an Antagonist. For instance, if the Protagonist’s Challenge is to survive a storm, there’s probably no Antagonist causing the storm.

Rival

This is a Character who shares the same Motivations as the Protagonist, and who wants to beat the Protagonist at the Challenges. The rivalry may be friendly or hostile.

Peer

This is a Character who may support the Protagonist in his or her Challenges, but who also contributes Challenges as a result. For instance, a Protagonist’s coworkers may (as part of their jobs) create new work for him or her.

Client

This is a Character who hires or contracts the Protagonist to face certain Challenges, often as a way of dealing with other Challenges. For instance, if the Protagonist has a Challenge of “Needs to pay the rent,” a Client may pay him or her money to perform some job that entails new Challenges.

Official

This is a Character who judges or evaluates the work that the Protagonist does, or who creates and enforces rules that he or she must follow. Satisfying the Official and complying with the rules (or evading them) becomes a new set of Challenges.

Romantic Interest

While it may seem odd to categorize Romantic Interest as an “antagonist”, in many Stories the Challenge is for the Protagonist to win the Romantic Interest’s affections. Thus the Romantic Interest is an integral part of the Challenge.

Impediment

This is a Character who in some way, likely some innocent way, creates or amplifies a Challenge. If the Protagonist tries to chase an Antagonist through a crowd, the people in the crowd can be Impediments.

Dependent

This is a Character who needs help of some sort from the Protagonist; and procuring and providing that help creates or complicates a Challenge. A parent with children may not be free to chase an Antagonist to some distant locale, as one example.

This will be the first in an ongoing series of posts in which I use UML to model and explore the structure of a story. This series started with a simple question: What constitutes a science fiction story? There are many answers to this question, including one very pragmatic definition: Science fiction is any story that a science fiction editor buys.

But I wanted a definition that would guide me in writing science fiction. In particular, I wanted guidance to avoid writing hackneyed stories, especially stories that editors hate: stories which are really non-SF stories dressed up in science fiction trappings. The classic bad example of these is stories which are western stories or pirate stories or gothic horror, but set in space or the future. And yes, that describes a few science fiction classics; but it also describes a lot of dreck.

So my working definition became: A science fiction story is a story where at least one element of the story could not exist or happen outside of a science fiction setting. The element might be a character or an event. It might be a setting, but probably shouldn’t, because that takes us back to Space Westerns. It might even be a motivation: if a character’s goal is to avoid being cloned, that goal makes little sense outside of a setting where cloning exists. (Of course, cloning could be a metaphor for loss of individuality; but metaphor and theme are in some ways “above” the layer of story elements.)

I like that definition. It’s practical. If I can’t identify the elements that can only exist in science fiction, then I should rewrite the story as straight fiction (or as a western, or a pirate story, or…). But to apply that definition, I realized that I need a good, fairly exhaustive model of the elements in a story. I could then use that to analyze my ideas and look for the SF elements.

And being that I’m The UML Guy, I built that model as UML diagrams.

This is an ongoing work in progress, so it has lots of holes. And though it is influenced by my readings on the theory and construction of stories, it reflects my own idiosyncratic views of story construction as well. And since I’ve only published a couple of stories and won some small awards so far, there may be really largeholes in my model. But I’m finding it useful, so I’m sharing it with you here.

Special thanks to Curtis Gray for asking me to share it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be elaborating it this thoroughly.

Just Enough UML to Follow Along

I want to start by introducing just enough UML to help you follow along with the model.

The stick figure (an “actor”) represents someone or something that takes an active part in the model. It might be a person, an animal, a monster, a computer, a demon, a god, a ghost, etc. The important thing is that it acts (hence the name).

The rectangle (a “class”) represents a thing within the model that is used by or affects actors.

The arrow with a plain head (an “association”) means “has” or “uses”. The “0..*” means “0 or more”. So this diagram can be read as: “A Character has 0 or more Motivations.”

The arrow with the triangle head (a “generalization”) means a specific and a general case relation. So this diagram can be read as “A Book is a specific kind of a Publication.”

This “activity diagram” shows a set of steps in a process.

The black dot shows where the process starts. The “target” (black dot in a circle) shows where it ends.

The rounded rectangles (activities) show steps in the process. If the rounded rectangle has a link symbol (like Pick Up Food in this example), it is a complex step made up of sub-steps. You can show the sub-steps (as in this example) or hide them for a simpler diagram.

The arrows (“transitions”) take you from step to step.

And that’s all the UML you’ll need to know for now. I’ll introduce more as needed.

Of course, if you’d like to know more about UML, I’m happy to teach you through the world’s first UML comic strip.