Have you felt a certain sense of predictability while reading a book or watching a movie? Even though storytelling is a highly creative process, certain rules are hard to break, like telling a story through the protagonist’s eyes. Take the case of two big movie franchises from two different decades. Harry Potter and Star Wars involved an orphan boy rising from their shortcomings to fight against the greatest evil. There are many common threads in these two franchises. Some might even call them cliches. And yet, they went on to become multi-billion-dollar media properties.
What made these stories appeal to the audience was not the protagonists, really. It was the world in which these characters existed, a secret magical world, or a galaxy where one can travel faster than light speed to reach planets far away. It is not that the role of the protagonist is not important. In fact, stepping into the shoes of these characters makes stories rich and compelling. That is why a biography on Hitler could be a more compelling read than a history book on World War II. It is not just war tactics or the number of countries one has conquered that piques reader interest. It is the motivation, the driving force behind the characters’ decisions that helps make sense of the world we are living in.
At The MMS, we strive to tell stories from the lens of a protagonist. If you are a long-time reader, you must have noticed many stories told from the lens of a particular company or a startup, or even a founder sometimes.
