“As you all know, there are different aspects for filmmaking but today, I really want to focus on someone who is the main part of the story – The protagonist.”

Sean Hunting said as he looked at his class. Everyone was focusing on him, a thing he liked whenever he was in class. A few people had their laptops out to type out notes for after studies.

While others were simply listening to what he was saying. 

One of them was Aiden who was simply sitting in the back, looking like just another student. It was already January and it had been a while since he had started attending these classes. 

At first, the other students would still find it a bit odd but they are now used to it. 

When the news first broke out about it, it was mayhem. Everyone wanted to take selfies with him. It was hard for him to go around the campus as cameras would be everywhere. 

Even in a disguise, people would know it was him and would start to take photos and videos. He would check them on Skygram after that and he won’t even know how a few of those photos have been taken. 

But it was something that he had to deal with no matter what. 

He had just tried to ignore it and now he could say that he had nicely integrated into the class and had learned a lot from Sean’s lecture. Even today’s topic was pretty unique. 

It was about something that Aiden had often played. A protagonist, the central character of any story. 

“The protagonist could be of many types but the story mostly focuses on his character. Think of him as the viewer’s way of looking into the story. As the story goes, the audience finds more about the world through the protagonist interaction with it but that’s something you already know.”

Sean smiled saying that and asked. 

“Do you know how many types of protagonists there are?”

One of the students raised their hand and replied. 

“Three. Hero, villain, anti hero.”

“Correct but do you know the 4th kind?”

When Sean asked that question, all of his students looked in confusion. They didn’t know the answer to this question. 

They have only focused on the three main protagonists and never went beyond that, so this was new to them. 

Knowing that they didn’t know the answer, Sean looked at Aiden. 

“Do you know the answer, Aiden?”

“I think it’s uh, supporting protagonist, right?”

“A character that’s not a big part of the story but the story is told from his perspective, making him the protagonist. Think of it like a story about a war being told from the perspective of a common soldier. He didn’t get a lot of accolades and achievements, so he would mostly talk about the events from the sidelines. The story could be more about him surviving those battles.”

Aiden explained as he thought more about it. 

If he was being honest, this type of protagonist was someone he really liked. There was a sense of connection he always felt towards these types of characters. 

“Correct.”

Sean nodded his head in satisfaction and turned towards his students. 

“So, these types of protagonists may not be on the centre stage or have a lot of roles but as you could see, they are extremely interesting due to their nature. They have less powers, they are less special, they have more restrictions.”

He kept explaining and Aiden just listened. 

Sean went on, talking about different movies and other forms of media that have taken the supporting protagonist as their main protagonist. There was one movie in which the whole plot was narrated by the supporting protagonist, him talking about the events of his life and how the real main character influenced it. 

Overall, he has very few roles in it but it was because of his narration and perspective, the movie was so good. 

Then, there was a thriller in which a crime was narrated by multiple people. All of them only have small portions in the crime but their perspectives were all different, giving the police a lot of work as they didn’t know who to believe. 

In the end, there was even one book in which the supporting protagonist just narrates the event of him meeting the actual protagonist and their adventures together. 

Hearing all of this, Aiden’s mind was working a lot. 

He wondered if he could conceive a story like this. One on a supporting protagonist becoming so much more in a world that didn’t revolve around him. 

He decided to talk about it with Sean after the class. 

***

“Sean, are you free?”

Aiden opened the door of Sean’s office a bit and asked. Sean seemed to be alone and was writing something on a paper. 

Hearing that, he nodded his head. 

“Yeah, come in. What are you still doing in college? Aren’t the other students hunting you?”

Aiden laughed hearing that. It was true that it was a hard job to reach Sean’s office. 

*They are but I had something to discuss with you.”

“What is it?”

“About your lesson today. A supporting protagonist. Do you think there’s a potential for a story like that currently?”

“Depends on the type of story. What do you have in mind?’

Sean raised his eyebrow and gestured to Aiden to sit. He sat down and talked about the story that was brewing in his mind. 

“Well, the idea came to my mind recently…”

Aiden said and started talking about the idea that was sitting in his mind for a while now. 

He had been meaning to write something again for a few months as his last book had been <Archer’s Ascension> and after he had lost out on ‘Project Dream’, this seemed like his best bet to do something. 

Maybe he would even be able to increase his skill level in writing. 

He had a lot of story ideas in his mind but nothing had clicked until he had sat in Sean’s class about the supporting protagonist. It mixed with the conversation that he had with him when he had first met him. 

A conversation about time travel movies and how they were so interesting because every movie follows its own set of rules and regulations.

“It’s basically about a guy who had been just living his life peacefully until he found a device that could help him go back to the past and by that, change the future. The thing is, he’s not the protagonist. The protagonist is his friend who gets to know everything about what he had done and in the changed world, he wasn’t able to fit in. It was until that he decided to make his own time travel device. The world in my story is set in an alternate universe with robots, underwater cities and deserts. “

Aiden explained as he formed the crux of the story in his mind. 

With time travel in the middle, he felt like it would be a great story if he could pull it off. Though, the thing was that time travel was just too hard to use in a setting. 

Even his world was not simple. Aiden had fiddled around with a few philosophical thoughts and concepts in his mind and the world was basically built on that. 

A lot of it didn’t even make sense to him but the abstract feeling was the best part of his world. 

Hearing his explanation, Sean looked very intrigued. He had heard a lot of stories from his students as a few of them would often write scripts and discuss it with him but those scripts would often be very rough and immature. 

But Aiden looked like he knew what he was talking about. 

“That’s a very interesting plotline.” Sean said. “Though, I think it will be very hard to conceive as an idea. The exposition of the world would need to make sense and it would need a tight script line.”

“I know that. Time travel is always confusing, especially when I have never done it before.”

“Well, if you are actually focused on the idea, then will it be a book or a script?”

Sean suddenly asked, curious. 

From what he knew, Aiden was more of a novelist. He had mentioned that he worked a bit on a script before but that wasn’t his own work. 

He didn’t know if Aiden was even interested in writing a script. 

“Well, I have not thought about that. I just thought about the story. Now that you say it, what format do you think I should write it in?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think. It’s your story, Aiden. You need to think of it. From a filmmaker’s perspective, are you writing it as a movie?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Then, it’s going to be a script, I guess.”

Sean shrugged his shoulders and Aiden just smiled. 

He did have thought the story as a movie in his head. But he has never really written a script from the beginning. 

Guess this was the time to try.