Determining Your Character's Fighting Style

     Action scenes can get boring very quickly if done wrong, particularly when all is uniform.  One way to keep things spicy, and add some realism while you're at it, is to vary the fighting styles of your characters.

     The form that a character studied is part of this--someone who studied Tai Chi in college is going to be very different from a small-time Krav Maga master and a scrapper from the streets with ten years under their belt.  Tai Chi prizes fluid movements and the practice of avoiding violence and redirecting energy, while Krav Maga focuses on brutal efficiency, completely neutralizing the threat as quickly as possible.  Someone who learned to fight on the streets, on the other hand, is probably going to fight dirty, and while they'll try to end a fight as fast as they can, they probably won't be as quick or efficient in their attempts.

     Take a look at your characters--what kind of fighting experience do they have?  Were they formally trained, or self-taught?  How they were trained is going to be a huge influence on how they approach real-world fights.

     This goes beyond just the range of the actual techniques--what kind of relationship did they have with their teacher?  If they disliked her, they may ignore her advice out of spite, but if they loved him and treasured his opinion they'll be more likely to do as he would've liked them to.

     Was their trainer a pacifist that taught these techniques only to stem the flow of violence, or were they the kind of bloodthirsty warmonger that encouraged their students to get their swords bloody whenever they got the chance?  Do they prize mercy or revenge?  And what did mercy mean to them?  Letting an enemy live, or dispatching them as quickly as possible?

     If your character is self-taught, how did they teach themselves?  Did they read books and look up internet tutorials?  If so, which ones?  Who did they see as their "mentor?"  What did they take away from the advice?

     Or did they learn solely through experience, throwing themselves into fistfights and sword duels with reckless abandon and learning by trial and error?  What fights taught them the most, and why?  Did they learn the most by winning or by losing?  (Hint: you usually learn more from losing and then figuring out where you went wrong)  How did these attempts, wins, and losses effect them?

     Also, consider your character's personality; are they aggressive or more passive?  Are they friendly or stand-offish?  Cowardly or brave?  Are they more likely to leap into battle head-first or slide into battle only when their back's against the wall and they have no other choice?

     A character that's head-strong and aggressive is more likely to strike first.  They'll always be on the offense and avoid defense whenever they can, trying to be the first to draw blood.  This can be advantageous, since history teaches us that the offensive side is almost always the triumphant one, but can also leave the offensive party open to counter-attacks they may not be expecting,

     On the other hand, a character that's more timid and less sure of their skill may depend almost completely on defensive tactics.  These characters are focused more on surviving than on winning, and it's a dangerous game they're playing, since without striking out there's almost no way to disarm or eliminate the enemy, though by luring the opponent into a state of false safety and confidence, Mr. Defensive may be able to land a killer gut-punch at a key moment that Mr. Offense doesn't expect.

     Most of the time, your characters are going to be a mish-mash of offensive and defensive, but based on training level and personality, decide which way your characters lean; very few are going to be exactly in the middle of the spectrum.

     Characters may even find creative juxtapositions of training and personality; in my current work-in-progress, Sará, a half-demon half-angel princess, was trained in swordplay mostly as a defensive measure, since it was never expected that she would really have to fight anyone.  But Sará is a haughty, aggressive eighteen-year-old, demanding authority and fear even when she looks like a dirty little ten-year-old human girl.  Her training is defense but her personality is offense, so she uses defensive tactics in an offensive manner, which leads to more diverse fight scenes.

     You can also ask yourself what your character's range of environmental awareness is--someone with tunnel-vision will be less easily distracted and more concentrated in their fury, but can be easily attacked from the rear.  Someone that's constantly on the lookout for what's going on around them, however, is more easily distracted, which can lead to more injuries and even death, but is also less likely to be fooled by an attack from their flanks and will be able to use the environment to their advantage, perhaps by luring the enemy off of cliffs or snaring them in bramble patches.


     Take out a few of your main characters and look them over.  Ask yourself some of the questions from above.  Now assign each a different style of fighting, and think--how often to they thrust or slash?  Do they punch more or kick more?  How does their height or weight affect the way they attack or defend?  Are they a statue when they fight, staying in one place, or are they constantly on the move?  Forward or backward or side-to-side, or do they dodge and weave like the famed and acclaimed Basil Staghare?

     Do they all have a different fighting style now?  It's okay if traits overlap, but chances are good that no two characters will ever fight exactly alike.

     Okay.  Now using those styles as a guideline, go back and edit your fight scene to reflect your character's style.  Doesn't that inject so much more life and variety?  Does it open up new passageways and opportunities?  Great!  Now do that with all your fight scenes--remembering of course that as your story progresses, your character's fighting style may change to reflect the trials they've weathered.



     If you have any of your own tips on how to assign a character's fighting style, or want to share how your characters fight, drop a comment in the section below!  I'd love to hear from you!

4 Common Problems With An Everyman

1.  No personality

     One of the top issues with an everyman is that they have no real personality; their entire personality is "I'm an average Joe just like everyone else," but that's not enough.  There has to be something to them, flesh to add to bone.

     Having a character that's average is fine.  In fact, in literature, that's practically an act of rebellion against the status quo.  But you can't allow that character to become boring.  Average doesn't have to be boring--some very interesting people are perfectly average, just in ways you wouldn't expect.

     Maybe they have an eclectic interest, they're just not very good at it, or they know a little bit about a lot of things, or a lot about a very few things; maybe they have skills which were never top notch, but they still love to practice.  Whatever it is, just don't make them a boring bland personalityless nobody.

     Make them into someone we'd want to travel with (or someone we'd hate to travel with), not just someone we tolerate.

2.  Mouthpiece

     An everyman, being that they're our touchstone to reality in this journey through the cosmos or elven lands or what have you, can sometimes serve as an author stand-in, revealing to us all their thoughts about the new places, people, events, and the old people, places, events that we're used to.

     This is all well and good, but be careful you don't go running away with it and turn the character into just another mouthpiece trying to spread an agenda; commentary is great!  We love commentary!  But commentary is sometimes just a hair's breadth away from preaching, and once you get to preaching it's a steep descent down into moralizing bluffs, and no one likes being moralized.

     TL;DR:  Speak, don't preach.  Comment, don't vomit.  We're not here for a sermon, we're here to have fun.

3.  No purpose in the plot

     Other than providing us with information about our new environment and giving us a running commentary on how the nature of whatever's going on relates to the nature of whatever's going on in real life, does your character have a purpose in the plot?

     And I mean a real purpose; look at what's happening in your story.  If you took your everyman out of it, would any of the action change?  If not, you either need to scrap that character, or give them a reason to be on the scene.  Give them something to do, something important, don't just let them laze around observing things; that's how they get flat and boring, and boring is the enemy here!  Boring is the reason people hate everymen!

     Don't subject your everyman to everyman hell; let him have agency.

4.  Stock Personality

     Often, when an everyman does have a personality, it's one of the stock personalities that three hundred other everymen are loaded with.  They're flat cardboard characters with no real backstory that just show up to drive home the author's point or reveal information to us.

     Don't fall into that trap; make your everyman a well-rounded person, with interests, talents, flaws!  If I wanted a stock character, I'd read comedia del'arte.

9 Suggestions For Remodeling The ReaderX Fic

     A while back I posted an essay in defense of reader insert fanfiction in which I stated at least twice that many, if not most, reader inserts are not well-written (but that everyone needed to calm their tits anyway).
   
     Other than reader insert writers practicing more, reading up on writing techniques, and improving their skills bit by bit (or more experienced writers jumping into the tidepool), there's not much that can solve the most prevalent issue with self inserts, which is, as I stated, lackluster technical skills in writing and story-telling.  With practice and with time, those things will come, but for now I do have a few suggestions that could improve the quality of ReaderX fics by restructuring some of the conventions of the genre.

     So now, for your consideration, I suggest to you:

1.  Do away with (y/n), (f/c), etc.

     Y/N, Your Name, F/C, Favorite Color, E/C, Eye Color, H/C, Hair color, F/F, Favorite Food, the list goes on; this vague parenthetical command is meant to draw the reader deeper into the narrative by allowing them to insert their own name, appearance, and various favorite things.

     The goal is noble, but the result is more distancing; having to read the clinical projection cues time after time only serves to remind us that we're reading a story, not experiencing it first-hand.  That's why Pokemon has you input your name before the game and then inserts it into the coding, rather than leaving a blank space or a (y/n) in the game text.

     In place of the parentheticals, a short description works better.  Because these stories are written in the second person, we're already experiencing the story as ourselves; it's okay to say, "You give them your name," or something like that.

     Doesn't, "You told them your name and they repeated it joyfully, thrusting their glasses in the air" flow better than, "'My name is (y/n).'  '(y/n)!' they shouted joyfully, thrusting their glasses in the air"?

     If something is going on that your character's name is said so often that it's necessary for it to be included in quotations rather than just in narration, an easy out is to have one of the other characters give "you" a nickname--either something cutesy/related to the fanwork, or something that has to do with the plot of your AU.  I'd be hard-pressed to find a place where a (y/n) is ever strictly necessary.

     There are a lot of places where the details are entirely superfluous anyway--because the author is already projecting their own tastes when they do things like design costumes, it seems silly to bring the audience out of the spell for the sake of a color.  Still, "She handed you a dress in your favorite color, much to your delight" is more seamless than "She handed you a (f/c) dress, much to your delight," and as I've discussed before, making sure your audience stays trapped in the reality of your story is The Most Important Thing, ESPECIALLY for a reader insert story.

2.  Fewer protagonists in default white

     As a white girl, I see myself reflected much more prevalently than any other race in pretty much every form of media.  The tides are turning of course, and many of us creative types are doing our damnedest to see more representation find its way into the public eye, but it's been hard work trying to break the back of this institution.

     But ReaderX fics are all about making sure that the audience is as absorbed as possible in the reality before them, right?  That's why we have the (y/n) (f/c) convention in the first place.  So it's extremely jarring to me when the author, who will be hard-pressed to describe concretely something as relatively inconsequential as an eye color or favorite type of burger, describes the POV character's skin color--invariably something along the lines of, "your peaches-and-cream complexion" or "the contrast between your white hand and his gray one."

     The white default is a setting that a lot of people haven't yet unlearned; we're taught from a young age that white skin is "normal," and the rest of the spectrum is "other," so when we go to read fiction a lot of people just assume that their characters are, of course, white!  And writers will do the same thing, which leads to entire series of books where the only characters who get a description of skin color are the ones that aren't white, because they are Not The Default.

     This is harmful for a lot of reasons, not least of all because it alienates people who aren't white and reinforces the idea that they are Not Normal.  In a reader insert story, it also reads as a statement from the author to any non-white person reading it that it wasn't meant for them to enjoy.  I know most people don't mean for it to come across that way, you just did what so many people do and went along with what you think of as the default skin tone, the same way we think of 5'4 as a default height for a woman or pizza as a default meal for Americans, but it can still hurt.

     If you had blue eyes and every ReaderX story you read had brown-eyed protagonists, you might feel excluded, right?  Like you were being ignored or worse, singled out--like you didn't belong in that fic, that "space."

     The best thing to do with a ReaderX fic in regards to skin color is just--don't mention it.  Unless race is super important (or you're some kind of alien creature with a canon skin color), leave it completely out of the equation.  Don't default to white; default to blank slate, the same way you did with the eye and hair colors.

3.  Give the character a stronger background/personality

     A lot of characters are these mostly blank slates with a tiny bit of personality and a smidgen of backstory.  Blank slate is great and all, especially with reader inserts, but part of the fun of imaging that you're in a different world is imagining yourself as having lived a different life.  In a lot of stories this is already a prerequisite--most of us don't live in the city that the story takes place in (if any of us do), and sometimes we're placed on entirely different planets, or in universes in which magic is real, etc.

     Don't be afraid to let the character have a bit of history.  Any detail you include in a story is going to make it so someone isn't going to be able to project themselves fully into that character without some cognitive dissonance, so you might as well make them interesting and less cardboard while you're at it.

     Giving a character a strong personality is also a risky business in this situation; you don't want it so strong that it's overpowering, because then people are going to be constantly saying, "I would never do that!"  Then again, the reason you read a ReaderX is because you'd never do what you're reading about doing.

     So go ahead and give us a strong, interesting personality.  Just make sure the character the audience is playing isn't too obnoxious; this is one of those times that a protagonist pretty much has to be likeable.  Otherwise the audience will feel like they're being insulted and will piss off.

4.  Less blushing please

     One thing that really gets my goat is how much blushing goes on in these stories; you'd think everyone had rosacea!  One blush for every three chapters should be the max, I'd say.  Some people may blush a lot in real life, but reading about it gets old. Especially when it's in almost every ReaderX.  

     Blushing is boring.  Blushing is the status quo.  It's time we break free of that.  And this is more than just about the blushing.  This is about a specific type of personality that we've seen a thousand million times, and maybe it's just person taste, but as a reader insert reader I am sick to death of blushing and stumbling over myself every other sentence.  I've been that person IRL; I don't need to read about being that way.

     Let your characters be confident, charmed and charming in return; let them be flustered when flustered is appropriate, sure, but don't make the protagonist go all stupid every time they accidentally touch the main love interest.  Most of us in real life hold our lives together pretty well, no matter how punchdrunk we are around our special someone, and don't let ourselves fall to pieces just because they know our name.

     We're not the stereotype that Disney created, and I think it's time that reader inserts explored a fuller range of emotion.

5.  More realistic flaws

      ReaderXes suffer from a lot of the same problems as OC fanfiction, because every reader insert is an OC on top of being a more-or-less blank slate.  One of those problems is the Mary Sue issue; no flaws.  Or, if there are flaws, only those which don't impact the plot.
 
     Problems are never their fault, they may stumble around cutely, but they're not going to do something like embarrass their date because they have no table manners, or become possessive or something of the like.  Try to give your characters flaws that will influence and even drive the plot; we're not perfect.  The protagonist doesn't have to be perfect, either.

     Alternatively, we see characters that are just walking Flaw-Bombs waiting to go off.  They're obnoxious, they make unnecessary drama, and no one should like them, yet for some reason everyone does.  Make sure your other characters are responding accordingly to the stimuli provided them, no matter how pretty your protagonist is.

6.  Fewer miscommunication plots

     Rule of thumb; if your plot can be resolved in under two minutes if your characters just sat and talked, it's not enough of a plot to warrant a serious story.  Miscommunication is great for comedy, but in serious plots it gets frustrating.

     The whole "This isn't what it looks like!" storyline, for example:  if a character can say, "Tom, he's my cousin," and the whole thing is resolved?  Not worth more than five hundred words as conflicts go.  If a character says "Tom, he's my cousin," but she's lying, on the other hand, or it's not the whole story, then that warrants a fuller investigation.

     Also, if your character is so jealous they can't even wait around for someone to explain themselves after being caught in a compromising position, they clearly don't trust their partner, which is a red flag as far as the health of the relationship goes.  In fact, if they're walking out on them without an explanation, they clearly don't respect their partner, and to me that's a "break the camel's back" kind of straw.

     Be careful with your melodrama.

7.  More male POV characters

     Or better yet; more characters with no specified gender.

     There may not be as many men/boys who read reader inserts as there are girls, but that may also just be a confirmation bias; how do you know they wouldn't like it if they aren't given a chance?  Plus, there are many girls who wouldn't mind adopting a male persona over the course of your story, and a lot of people who don't fit into the gender binary who would like to see themselves reflected in the story.

     More stories written with a broader audience focus would be beneficial; anyone can write a story from a male perspective now and again, and you can easily write a story in the second person without using gendered pronouns for the POV character.

     Give it a shot; let's make the protagonists a little more diversely applicable.

8.  More female love interests

     Male love interests are the default in ReaderX land, but there are a lot of people interested in the female characters of a given work, whether boys who like girls, girls who like girls, nonbinary folks who like girls, etc.

    Even outside the context of romance there's a dearth of female characters.  I'd like to see more involvement of the female characters in these types of works, not just as love interests but as friends, colleagues, even siblings.  Don't turn them into strawman bitches "getting in the way" of your self ship or ignore them altogether; give them a chance to get in the mix, too.

     I guess the title of number eight should really be More strong female characters, not just as love interests.

     And as a side note, friends in general are always good!  Too many ReaderX protagonists are lone wolves who have no one to talk to except the person they love; people need friends outside of a romantic relationship.  Whether it's a character or characters in the cast or an OC, let the insert have some companionship.

9.  More choose-your-own-adventure type stories

     These needn't be the complex type you see on the shelves of your local library, but I'm a sucker for a  ReaderX that sets me up with a storyline, then veers off into different paths that I can choose from.  Do I want to pursue this character, or this character?  (I'll probably choose one, then go back and read the other bc I'm a fiction ho, shhh ;) )

      This semblance of interaction makes the audience feel like a part of the story, and wraps them up further in the protagonist's skin; it gives us agency, and we all love to feel like our choices matter.  After all, if our choices matter it serves to reason that we matter, right?

   

     So there you have it folks; my take on how to improve the ReaderX genre as it stands.  Do you have any opinions on the ReaderX genre?  Do you have any suggestions I might be missing?  Or am I the only self-indulgent asshole with a writing blog?  Leave a comment below, so that I might one day embark a journey to become self-aware.  ;)

5 Things I Learned Writing/Editing/Re-Reading My First-Ever "Novel"

1. A notebook of words does not a novel make

My first-ever “novel” was a 42 page book about a Mary Sue superhero getting powers and defeating a dragon.  In between all that, though, lots of bullshit happens that doesn’t have anything to do with the plot, and is mostly just 9-year-old wish fulfillment.  It was, more or less, a notebook full of vaguely connected words and ideas.

But that’s not what a novel is.  First of all, this 42-page story, at around 10,000 words, wouldn’t even qualify as a novella.  It would be more like a novelette at best; a novella is 18,000-40,000 words, and a novel is 40,000 words or more (though most publishing companies prefer that your wordcount be at least 60,000, and often nearer to 80,000, to consider publishing it as a novel).  

Not only is a wordcount required, but a novel has to have a cohesive plot, compelling characters that are more than self-indulgent caricatures of real-life people or cardboard cut-outs, and villains with realistic motives.  You could have a novel that was more anthological, too, as long as all the pieces were woven together to form an overarching narrative, but it still has to say something.  

A bunch of pieces smashed together isn’t a novel just because you want it to be.  Kaleidoscopes are pretty, but there’s a reason we don’t call them paintings.  

2. Tangents Must Go

As I mentioned above, my first “novel” had a TON of tangents.  There was a cringe-worthy sequence where my trio of main characters went off and discovered a new species of weasel that were rainbow colored just … because???  They could???

 

As I said, it was very self-indulgent.  

And it was painfully evident, re-reading it, that it did. not. work.  It didn’t matter, it was a dumb stand-in for conflict, it wasn’t interesting, and it contributed nothing to the plot, such as it was.  

Bottom line; tangents--by which I mean, tangents that contribute no value or actively detract from the audience’s understanding or enjoyment of a piece--have no place in your novel.  In your first draft, sure, stick in as many tangents as you want, they may turn out to have little pockets of information or entertainment you could later rework into something saleable, but when you go back to edit, cut that shit down.  Hack the jungle down to a garden and breathe deep the fruits of your labors.

Then choke, because you can’t breathe fruit.  Why were you trying to breathe fruit?  Who do you think you are, Fruit-Breathing Man?

3. Daydreaming isn’t the best way to write a book

Again; I was basically day-dreaming when nine-year-old-me wrote this.  And I should probably state, if it wasn’t clear already, that while I’m posting this for the education of all, this post is primarily a letter to kid me about what she could have done better.  

Namely, written a fucking BOOK instead of an IMAGINATIVE DIARY.

Little me had a lot of passion, but she was thin on the execution.  (Don’t worry, she’ll learn ;) )

4. Demonizing childhood bullies isn’t a recipe for a compelling villain

Honey, this is a lesson we all have to learn someday, and you’re learning it *checks watch* ten years ago.  You may have some unresolved issues with the kids that are bullying you right now, and demonizing them in writing can be cathartic, but if you want this book to be great, you need a better villain than a strawman.

Your villains have to be every bit as three dimensional as your protagonists; they need to have realistic reasons for having the goals they do; they need motivation, and even if their goal is to use a dragon to kill someone because they just don’t like her, they need to have a reason not to like her in the first place.  It doesn’t have to be the character’s fault (though it’s often more interesting a story if it is), but the villain needs to be able to see it that way.  

Every character is the protagonist of their own story; find the ways that your villains are the protagonists of theirs.

5. Paragraph usage

This is one thing that school never taught me, which I thank my eldest brother for.  One day, as I was typing away, he stopped behind me, reading over my shoulder, and gave me a piece of advice that forever changed the way I write.

“Include a new paragraph every time a new character speaks.”

And then he disappeared in a puff of dragon smoke and blood-orange incense, never to be seen again until dinner.  

It’s a very simple thing, so obvious a rule that schools don’t even bother telling you to do it (because they teach technical writing, so they don’t bother thinking about what the conventions of creative writing are until you’re already expected to know them all), so I see a lot of young writers making the same mistake.

So.  Every time a new character speaks; new paragraph.  It makes it so much easier to keep track of who’s saying what.  Trust me, you’ll love it.  And so will your readers. :)

A Few Notes on Details

     Recently, I published a post on using specificity in your writing.  On that same note, here are a few scattered notes about how specificity can hurt or help you.

1.  Rough Estimates

     Rough estimates are a natural part of life--you look out at a crowd and you say, "Oh, that looks like about two hundred people."  Unless you're some kind of magic, or actually have the sales numbers in front of you, there's pretty much no way you could ken that at a glance.  That doesn't stop some characters from managing it, but excluding those, estimates are a necessary part of life and of writing.

     There does come a point, though, where estimates become unrealistic.  It takes me out of the story, for example, when someone says something like, "four or five people walked down the street."  For me, that's an automatic, "Wait, what?"  Maybe if the person's view is obstructed, or they're going by a sense other than sight, or the POV character has a problem with processing numbers or something I can understand it, but if you have a clear view of the street, the difference between four and five people should be easily told at a glance by most.

     It's difficult to say when numbers can be given over to estimation, and it does depend on the person, but I would be much more likely, myself, to accept an estimation of "five or six" than "four or five," but probably wouldn't estimate until at least "seven or eight."

     Every character, author, and reader is different, but be careful when estimating that it's realistic for someone to be confused over the number of something.  If someone flashed a picture at me, then burned it and asked me to tell them how many things were in it, I'd have a much harder time telling four from five than if I was sitting in detention with a bunch of stationary students.  I'd also have a much harder time telling four from five if it were dots I was meant to be counting, or even dogs--our brains block out information they don't see as important, which is one of the reasons estimation is necessary in the first place, so the smaller something is (and the less personable or important), the more difficult it becomes to count.

2.  Brands

     My specific grievance here is more of a pet peeve, I guess (or rather, my mother's pet peeve, which I am here to voice on her behalf) concerning clothing in particular, but it could apply just as well to other types of brands.

     One of the things my mother often complains about with books is being bombarded with descriptions of clothing using brand names like "Armani" and "Gucci" and "Leviathan All Hail, All Hail Leviathan."

     Being working class tomboys by birth, and for the most part having lifestyle tastes which match our income, the term "Gucci handbag" means nothing to us; I have a picture in my head of a leather purse.  But you could say "Armani handbag" or "Prada handbag" or some made up company, and it won't change anything; a handbag is a handbag unless you tell me what it actually looks like.  My entire thought process when you start throwing brand names around is "Clothes are happening.  This character has money."

     Most books aren't written for working class women with no taste in clothing, of course--unlike my mother, I have simply become accustomed to this reality.  Still, there's a lesson to be learned here; when you include brand names, will your audience know what you're talking about?  And more importantly, does your character?

     If your character is a rich woman who's never so much as been inside a laundry room, is she really likely to know the difference between Tide and All?  Pinesol and Spic And Span?  If your character is a twelve-year-old girl who spends most of her time biking around town and antagonizing bullies, is she likely to know the difference between a Periwinkle diamond, a Kay diamond, and a rhinestone?

     When you use a Brand Name in your work, take a moment to think about these things.  If your narrator/POV character would know what it is, and your target audience would know what it is, great!  You're all set!  If your character/narrator know what it is but your audience wouldn't, then think about what it is you want to convey with the use of the brand name.

     If you just want to show that the character is rich and has expensive tastes, "Gucci handbag" might be the way to go, but if this handbag is important, or is supposed to tell us something about the character, maybe throw in an adjective or two.  If your character is mopping the floor with Pinesol, is it because she likes the smell?  Does it mean something to her?  And if your rebellious preteen finds a handful of diamonds, does it matter what brand they are?  Or does it matter more what they look like, and whether or not they're real?

Your Protagonist Should Be Popping Pills

     I like pills.
     No, not those kinds of pills; I like ibuprofen and my gabapentin and, when I need it, some good old 'cillin for those pesky hard-to-kill bacteria!
     I don't abuse anything prescription, or OTC (okay, maybe I take a little too much ibuprofen, but I do what I can to get by), but when I need them I need them. Some people think they make you weak (they don't), and I totally understand choosing not to medicate--if you've read my series on Tourette's, you know I chose not to medicate for that--but popping amoxacillin, tossing back some ondansetron, or chugging some cough syrup makes me feel like I'm doing something.  I can't get down on a germ's level to get my pathogenicide on, so I do the next best thing and drop some poison down my gullet (It's bacteria poison, not people poison, don't worry).
     Taking pills is an active measure--reactive, in a sense, but certainly not passive.
     So your protagonist should be popping pills, too--sometimes it's reactive pills, like a revenge plot, or a murder mystery, or a typical *shudder* Chosen One prophecy.  Sometimes your protagonist will be popping vitamins (or "vitamins") instead, a proactive measure, like when little kids go exploring in the attic, or a troubled youth starts plotting his first Get Rich Quick scheme, or a suspicious dude decides to stake out a sketchy guy's house just to see what the hell his deal is.
     Sometimes they'll have to procure the pills themselves (the pills are metaphors for options at this point) like when any character ever goes after meds for their grandmother (not-so-metaphorical), and sometimes they'll be handed them, like Neo in The Matrix (also not really a metaphor... Well, it was a metaphor in the movie, so I guess it's like a meta metaphor?).
     Neo ostensibly has two options--take the red pill, find out what all his shit's about, take the blue pill, pretend it never happened.  I think we can all agree that watching a blue-pill Neo would have been a really boring movie, which brings me to my next point--your character has to take the right pills--which are often actually the wrong pills.
     This is getting confusing and way too meta metaphorical, so I'm going to take a step back and stop talking about pills for a minute.
     The point is:  An active protagonist will, ninety nine percent of the time, make a much more interesting protagonist.  The actions they take may be the ones that destroy them, or the ones that eventually lift them up, but the active pursuit of something is far more interesting than passive acceptance.  If a character makes no decisions, or makes decisions only because they have literally no other choice ("I am the only person in the entire world that can stop the bad guy from killing literally everyone"), it's going to be much harder to make them sympathetic.
     Remember the friend you had in high school that always complained about their life, but never took steps to make things better, never took your advice, and did only what they had to to just barely skirt by?  You may have loved the hell out of them, but I bet they weren't a ton of fun to be around for any length of time; a passive protagonist is a lot like that friend, and unfortunately, a novel necessitates that a LOT of time be spent with them.
     We, as an audience, care more about the character that self-medicates with drugs or shrinks themselves down to microscopic size to murder their own parasites or goes on a murder spree when they find out their pharmaceutical company is screwing over people with cancer than we do about the one that finds out they're dying and just accepts it, rolls over, and waits for death or a savior.
     We like protagonists that, for good or ill, for better or worse, in intellect and stupidity and both sickness and health, have a goal in mind, even if it's a vague or reactive one, and take risks to try to accomplish that goal.
     Your audience, whether they know it or not, wants pill-poppers, and gosh darn it, they want those pills to be as red as a baboon's ass.

Dynamic vs. Static Protagonists

     In case you forgot about that one English class where your teacher prattled on about the difference between a Static and Dynamic character, a Dynamic character is one who changes throughout the course of the novel, while a Static character is one that doesn't.
     It's a common misconception that a character has to change throughout the course of a novel in order to be the protagonist of said novel.  While it's always nice to see a character growing or devolving, sometimes it isn't necessary; there's a time and a place for everything, and this is no exception.
     So how do you know which approach is best for your book?

1.  What's your genre?

     Obviously, if your genre is bildungsroman, your protagonist is going to have to change throughout the course of the novel (that's essentially the entire point of a bildungsroman--from the Wikipedia page, "In a Bildungsroman, the goal is maturity, and the protagonist achieves it gradually and with difficulty."), but in an action or thriller, a change in your protagonist is anything but required--sometimes having your character change along the way would get in the way of the storyline, or use up too much time we could be using to see anti-heroes wailing on bad guys.  
     Take a look at anything starring Liam Neeson, or any long-standing, episodic or mostly episodic book series (Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Encyclopedia Brown, Sherlock Holmes, The Boxcar--Um.  Huh.  Maybe this is a Mystery Thing, too)--not only does having a static protagonist work, but one could argue that having these characters become dynamic could harm the storyline--Taken is successful because Liam Neeson kills human traffickers, not because his character is interesting or particularly compelling (he's not, he's just JustifiableMurderer!Liam Neeson), and the rest are popular because the same person, or group of people, solve mysteries in a manner which always re-establishes the status quo, meaning that, much like most television shows, they can be read in almost any order with very little background in order to be understood.  
     If you can somehow find a way to go against convention when deciding on whether to make your character dynamic or static, by all means, try--just keep in mind that it can be difficult to pull off, especially when the genre hinges upon change.

2.  As they are at the beginning of your story, can your character overcome what's been placed before them?

     Take a look at your protagonist; who are they at the beginning of your novel?  Now take a look at where you plan to have them end up.  Can they, as they are at the inciting incident, tackle the book's climax and come out with the same result that you intend them to achieve?  Are they strong enough, fast enough, smart enough?  Do they lack dedication or willpower?  Or do they possess too much?  Do they need to crash and burn before they can crawl to the finish line you have devised?
     Take a look at two recent icons of the twenty-first century, Harry Potter and Liam  Neeson's Taken character; at the inciting incident of Taken, when the daughter is stolen, Liam Neeson has everything he needs to destroy the bad guys, namely his ass-kicking skills.  However, upon first receiving his admissions letter Harry Potter, young and ignorant to the ways of magic, has none of the skills necessary to win against Voldemort--or even Quirrel.  Thus, Liam Neeson works as a static protagonist, but Harry Potter, unless he was designed to lose, does not.
     If you don't yet know what the outcome of your ending will be, think of what you do know--
what are their goals and obstacles?  What will they need to overcome them?  Who are their friends?  Do their friends change, and must they change in order to keep up?  Or must they fall behind, and allow their friends to leave?
     What about the antagonist?  Can they beat the antagonist as they are?  Does the antagonist change?  Are they meant to defeat or be defeated?  Is nature one of the antagonists?  Usually when a character goes up against nature, the character is forced to change, since it would take an enormous feat of strength to bend nature to one's whims--strength which few protagonists possess.  However, if nature is controlled by a God with which the protagonist might, as they are, be able to strike a deal with, character change may still be unnecessary.

          Whatever suits your novel best, literature has long been littered with protagonists of both the dynamic and static varieties--whatever is best for your novel is ultimately what should be done.  If you're not sure what that best thing is, you can always ask for advice.  If you absolutely cannot find one way or the other, eenie-meenie-mihnie-moe it and seek the advice of your critique partners once it's finished.  Just don't let anyone tell you that either method is inherently wrong.
     Unless you're trying to turn a bildungsroman protagonist into a static character.  I don't think that can be done (but please correct me if im wrong id love to see how that would work).