Tips for Creating Strong Female Protagonists

by Nicole Souza 

What is strength? What is female strength specifically?

It’s a complex question and must be answered by every writer individually. However, exchanging insights is helpful, so here are my top 5 tips for creating a strong female protagonist:

1. Borrow Strengths from Real Women

In real life, women are strong for different reasons. I encourage writers to consider the women in their circle and pinpoint their most admirable strengths. For me, this exercise yielded the creation of Lyratelle Faith, the protagonist in Sins of Our Mothers. If ever a character of mine embodied my understanding of female strength, it’s her.

Between my mom, four sisters, three grandmothers, nine aunts, too many female cousins to count, my mother-in-law, five sisters-in-law, and six nieces (so far), female strength has manifested in countless ways in my life.

I admit, I’m uniquely blessed with female role models. Among these women are over ten ethnicities, at least eight languages I can count off the top of my head, and a wide range of financial statuses and religious beliefs. Many were born in, moved to, currently live in, or immigrated to the states from, various countries around the globe. Each woman enriches my life with her own talents, struggles, dreams, and wisdom.

Each woman’s connection to me, whether through blood, adoption, or marriage, is a mere drop in her ocean of life experience. Each has her own origin story, personal demons, and ultimate end goal.

If you’re like me, and you have a plethora of amazing women in your life, borrowing their strengths may be an overwhelming exercise. I suggest choosing five women at a time and writing down the first thing that comes to mind that you admire about them. Here’s a quick example of strengths I’ve borrowed for characters from my mom and four sisters:

• I found one of my sister’s walking the halls of the hospital mere hours after delivering her first child. Before you assume an easy delivery, let me say that, among other complications, she tore terribly—like, all the way. Yet, there she was, freshly stitched, pushing a walker around the delivery floor, trembling while insisting the best way to heal was to get moving.
• Another sister is a survivor of an abusive marriage and suffered four out of ten pregnancy losses between that and her current marriage. Despite such trials, she finished school, runs a successful business, and flourishes in her personal life.
• I witnessed another sister be tremendously hurt by someone close to her—someone who should’ve been in her corner unquestionably. For most people (certainly for me), the situation would’ve been irreconcilable. The offense occurred just days after she suffered an agonizing loss. Though many encouraged her to remove the offender from her life, she chose to forgive and has shown indescribable fortitude, humility, and maturity in her dealings with them since.
• My fourth sister, with the exception of Antarctica, has traveled to every continent on this gorgeous globe, learning of the world’s beautiful cultures, peoples, and languages. She’s currently learning her third language.
• My mom, aside from teaching five daughters and three sons to be strong adults, embodies hard work, altruism, and divine patience—strengths by any standard. She grew up in the simplest of households, with nothing beyond life’s most basic necessities. She honors her upbringing as a pathway to resilience and devotion to those few things that bear real meaning in this life, particularly her family.

Borrowing such real-world examples is an excellent start. After all, a protagonist should be a nonfictional character in a fictional world—a woman real women relate to. Be mindful, however, that strength may need to be defined anew according to the world you’ve created for your heroine. Often, her strength is not found in a list of abilities or character traits, but rather, in her relationship to your other characters, which brings me to the second tip.

2. Discover Your Protagonist’s Strengths by Viewing Her through Other Characters’ Eyes

How is your protagonist viewed by the other characters? Is she reliable? Stable? An anchor of sorts? Is she feared? Revered? What makes her stand out? Is she respected by those who know her? Why? Is she a source of comfort or hope? Do they consider her strong?

What is her relationship to the antagonist? Is your protagonist a legitimate threat? How does she make her enemies feel? What similarities does she share with them? What are the choices that led her down a different path?

When fleshing out Lyratelle’s character, I realized she lacks many abilities needed to achieve her goals. I also knew she needed to be real. I couldn’t just remove her weaknesses or the personal issues she was working through. So, I utilized two of her greatest strengths: humility and observation. By exercising these traits, Lyratelle was able to surround herself with women whose strengths bridged the gaps between her and her goals. This elevated both her character development, and the overarching message of the book, that human relationships are the most enduring strengths we can acquire.

3. Acting Versus Reacting

Do things merely happen to your protagonist? Or does she make things happen?

Is she in constant “react and respond” mode? Or is she making waves to which other characters must react?

A good story, in my opinion, is rife with both. And the balance between the two shifts as the heroine acquires and maximizes her strengths. Of course things out of your protagonist’s control will happen to her. This serves as the foundation for a story’s birth. What makes a character a protagonist is her ability to progress from reacting to what happens, to making things happen that other characters can’t ignore. It’s in those characters responding to her actions that deepens or changes character relationships and develops the story beyond what you imagined in the beginning.

In short, your protagonist must learn throughout her journey to make waves that will cause the undesirable things happening to her to reroute.

4. SPEMPARFS

If you’re not totally sold on your own definitions of female strength and are thus struggling to create a strong female protagonist, go back to the basics. Use my character development cheat sheet, or what I call SPEMPARFS, as a starting line. In each trait category, consider how your character might be stand out from the crowd. How might she be uniquely strong in each aspect of her life? What trials led her to develop that strength?

For me, SPEMPARFS is in an important order. When getting to know a character, I like to flesh them out in a way that’s easy to track. But I encourage every writer to develop a system that works with their personality and writing style.

SPEMPARFS is an acronym that stands for:

• Spiritual: Define your protagonist’s spiritual beliefs. Is she steady in her beliefs or still figuring things out? Is her spirituality relevant to the story? What aspects of her belief system need to be included? How do her beliefs inform her behavior? Is she honest? What’s her inner purpose? What drives her? Does that change throughout the story? What deities exist in her world? I sort out a character’s spiritual beliefs first because it will inform many of her other attributes.
• Physical: What does she look like? How tall is she? What is she physically capable of? Does she struggle with her health? Does she have a healthy relationship to food? Does she eat to live or live to eat? Does her physical health inform her talents? What are her physical goals? What color are her eyes? Does she have any scars? How did she get them? What is her lineage and ethnicity?
• Emotional: Understand early on the emotional state of your protagonist. What sets her off? What excites her? What makes her cry? Does she cry often? Does she struggle to express emotion? Does she act on emotion? Does her emotion drive most of her choices? Does she have control of her emotions? Is she balanced? Temperate? Which are her most common emotions? What’s her typical daily mood?
• Mental: In what ways is your protagonist smart? Is she well educated? What did she study in school? What other academic interests does she have? Is she street smart? Does she know more than one language? Is she a good teacher? Does she enjoy learning? Does she thirst for knowledge? Does she care how the world works? Is technological progression important to her? If your story is fantasy, and school as we know it doesn’t exist, what programs have helped her gain her knowledge and experience? Is she a master in those programs? Did she fall behind the average learner?
• Psychological: Is your protagonist straightforward or manipulative? What mental illnesses run in her family? Does she experience paranoia? Why? What happened in her past that informs her psyche? Is she stable in her relationships? Is she sure of herself? What gives her confidence when she’s scared or alone? Can she be trusted with the tasks required to reach the story’s end goal? Could her psychological struggles end up being strengths she uses to achieve her goals? What terrifies her?
• Artistic: Everyone is an artist. Everyone creates something, even if just a concept. How is your protagonist artistic? Is she an architect? A painter? A songwriter? Does she play an instrument? Does she express herself through dance? Is she a mental mathematician? Don’t forget that arts and sciences are related! Does your heroine want to the change the world somehow? What talents does she have that might help? What are her dreams? What keeps her up at night?
• Romantic: What is her romantic status? What kinds of characteristics does she look for in a mate? Is she in a stable marriage? What bothers her about her current romantic situation? Is she afraid of romance? Get deep into why she feels the way she does about this topic. Make sure you know how her body reacts to attractive potential partners. Is she driven by sexual desire? Is she a virgin? Is sex sacred to her?
• Financial: How does your protagonist make money? What’s her home like? Her neighborhood? Does she rent? Are there new forms of currency in your story? What’s her status in her society? Is she comfortable where she’s at? Is she ashamed of her poverty? Is she prideful about her wealth? Is she embarrassed of how she’s made money in the past? Is she honest in her financial dealings?
• Social: Who’s in her inner circle? Is she outgoing? Shy? Insecure? What’s her favorite place to meet up with friends? Does she trust her friends? Does she hang around shady people? How do her friends influence her decisions? Does peer pressure sway her? Does she get along with her coworkers? Her boss? Neighbors? Family? Is she important in her society? Is she respected? Is she a nobody? How does this change throughout the story?

5. Strengthen Your Protagonist with the Plot

If you want your protagonist to be strong, but can’t quite figure out how to do it, or what it means exactly, give her challenges to overcome. Strengthen her with, and throughout, the story. Be specific about what kinds of strengths you want her to develop and how you’d like her to end up.

Do you picture her being emotionally strong? What trials fortify emotions? Is she starting from a weak emotional place? Or is emotional strength natural for her?

If you can’t break your character out of failure, whether your attempts feel disingenuous for the story, or you need her to struggle more before she figures things out, try strengthening her through dialogue with other characters. Is there a character that’s strong in the ways you’d like your protagonist to be stronger? Set up a scene where advice can be shared.

There’s no limit to the ways in which a character can change and improve. Give yourself creative space to find what works for her.

Creating a protagonist is fun but daunting. Keep at it! Flesh her out, slowly if needed. Don’t force it. Allow her to show you who she is. Interview her. Discover her motivations. And if she needs a little kick in the pants to become the strong character you envision, don’t hesitate to administer one.

                                                                              ***

It has been fifteen hundred years since the solar flare devastation of the Global Catastrophe. Due to the radioactivity in the harvesting fields, society dismisses its defective children as nothing more than flawed products of the malfunctioned seeds in the field.

     But Lyratelle, a hyper-observant musical prodigy, believes these “defects” are intelligent, particularly her own sibling, the youngest child of her impervious mother. Abandoning her dream career, Lyratelle climbs the bureaucratic ladder to run the Defect Research Center, where she can safeguard the child.

     With an underground team of women who share her uncertainties, Lyratelle unearths the Old History truth that womankind’s survival actually hinges on the existence of these defects.

     When General Sarah Love, the city’s most powerful advocate against the defects, detects Lyratelle’s sympathy toward the creatures, she threatens the life of Lyratelle’s sibling.

     Now Lyratelle’s desperate attempt to save this child endangers everyone she loves—her team, her family, even the existence of the defects themselves.

SINS OF OUR MOTHERS is available at AMAZON * Barnes & Noble * WiDo Publishing. Also, be sure to add it to your TBR List on Goodreads.

Meet the
Author

As the third of eight siblings, Nicole has always been surrounded by people. Among her immediate family are spoken seven languages. Her favorite thing is hearing her nieces and nephews speak French, Tongan, or Mandarin. It’s no surprise she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Languages, as language is one of her greatest passions, topped only by music and Beat Saber.

Nicole minored in Women Studies and continues to take a particular interest in both women’s history and their individual stories. She’s grateful for her ancestors and other women who paved the way for her to pursue her dream of publishing stories and strives to create new avenues for the coming generations to pursue their dreams.

Though she’s lived-in various states in the U.S. and Brazil, Nicole considers Utah “home base” and continuously finds herself returning, even when previous moves were intended to be permanent. She attributes her love of Utah to the beauty of the Wasatch Mountains and the incredible people who make it feel like home, even when she’s been away for long periods of time. Recently, however, after visiting her sister’s family overseas, she’s been dreaming of a quiet beach house in Taiwan.

Connect with Nicole on her website nicolesouzabooks.com
Facebook@nicolesouzabooks
Instagram@nicolesouzabooks

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