No Main Character?

Is it possible to have a show with no main character? Final Fantasy VI (I cannot think of any other examples) did it but its a game so its handwaved. Even so, can it done without anyone character being at the center of a story? Even change the dynamics a bit?

Yes, it's been done a lot. Anything with a strong, interesting ensemble cast can survive without one main character.

A Song Of Ice And Fire, for example. Many works have no central protagonist.

I'm pretty much trying to achieve that with my current work even though it's written in the first person (don't know if that's actually logically possible or if the narrator, being a character in the story, by default becomes the main character) - as there are no conventional heroes in it, just a bunch of everyday folk (including the narrator) doing the best they can in the situation and each doing their own bit and meeting the challenges in their own ways (reported by the narrator).

There will be a core of primary characters but I hope to give them all equal weight in the story so that no one of them is "The Main Character".

Um, being a video game doesn't really change anything.

Yes, it's called having multiple protagonists.

Quite a few stories do it, actually. Ren and Stimpy, Pinky and the Brain, The Powerpuff Girls, Tales of the Otori does it with the main dude and the main lady (forget their names), and Snow Crash comes pretty close with Hiro Protagonist and YT. The story torch is handed about so heavily in Twin Peaks that Twin Peaks is pretty close, too.

Oh and HBO's Rome, which has a lot of simultaneous character arcs involving a large cast of characters.

Oh, and Animorphs and the Babysitter's Club, each considered as an entire series. (though each individual volume in these series has one protagonist as a central character, but that character's part of a group.)

Oh and the Fantastic Four, too.

edited 24th Apr '11 11:31:49 PM by annebeeche

That's pretty much Ensemble Cast word for word, so yeah. That's totally doable.

I have a story set in a Zombie Apocalypse where the story follows several unconnected plotlines of various people reacting to the zombies. (Including several zombie characters.)

I see that your avatar is Rena from Higurashi, so there's another example for you.

@Wolf 1066: The narrator isn't always the main character (that's also a trope, The Ishmael). I can't think of any examples of an Ishmael narrator in a work with no main character, but then again, I can't see why it can't be done. (In fact, the Higurashi fanfic I'm working on attempts this, but my narrator is only the narrator for three out of ten story arcs, the others being in third-person narrative.)

As mentioned on my troper page, pretty much NONE of my stories have one single main character. I don't like limiting myself to one main character because I like stories with Ensemble Casts and Loads And Loads Of Characters so that's what I write. So it's definitely possible. Another good example of a series with no single "main character" could possibly be Azumanga Daioh, which is one of the reasons I like it (Chiyo is kind of the series "mascot" but the other characters get in the spotlight too a lot).

edited 25th Apr '11 7:22:01 PM by Rainbow

Many thanks, Vilui.

An example I can think of with a first person narrator entrenched in the action but an Ensemble Cast is the "Tomorrow" series ("Tomorrow, When The War Began" etc) by John Marsden. Ellie's definitely a major player but so are the others and their arcs sometimes take them away from the group as they get injured/separated/captured etc.

"Ensemble Cast" is a great description for what I want to portray.

Screenwriting guru Syd Field looked at the movie Network and surmised that the network itself was the main character given that none of the individual people were.

Due to following the link in Rainbow's post and rambling through interesting links from there (as one does on TV Tropes), I determined that for my current work (which does have Loads And Loads Of Characters) I had instinctively broken the characters up into Cast Herds.

I'm still trying to see if the groups of characters fit any of the traditional team dynamics listed in Cast Calculus.

When I add up everyone who could be considered a main character for my comics, the total is somewhere around twenty, and I wouldn't say any of them are obviously more "main" then others. (Mind you, at last count there's over 700 characters). So yes, it's entirely possible, especially with a large cast (as others have said). As one of them suggested, just go read Ensemble Cast.

Really, if anything, I have trouble writing a work with just one main character.

Yes. Often, I don't have much of a main character, and it's because I have far too many perspective characters for any one to take control. It may not be the best way to do it, though.

Thomas Ligotti's "The Red Tower" is basically an exercise in writing a story with no characters at all, at least until the end. It's quite exceptional, even without the conclusion.

Also, anthology shows. Outer Limits, Twilight Zone... seeing anyone twice in these shows is the exception, not the rule. And there's a comic book that's also like an anthology - in H-E-R-O, the dial from Dial H For Hero is passed down from one person to another, each thinking they'll solve all their problems with it, but failing to do so (always in a manner that logically flows from their own human failings, never from Diabolus ex Machina effects. That part is especially awesome, because so often, when the plot is "you can't take the easy way out" or "Be Yourself," fate bends over backwards to punish the protagonist until it's a type-two Broken Aesop. But this is different.) and losing or surrendering the dial at the end, and on it goes to the next person and the next and the next.

Baccano! Just sayin'.

edited 21st Sep '11 4:24:47 PM by MechaJesus

Who's the main character on CSI?

More seriously, this is something that is often remembered in literature better than other forms of story, and perversely even better in fanworks that delve into shipping. Why? They're explicitly about two people and how they interact.

edited 22nd Sep '11 1:17:37 AM by Night