Protagonist, Antagonist and others

As a writer, the person whom you think of before even thinking of the story of him, about him, surrounding him is a protagonist. He or she may be a hero or a common man. Don’t get confused with Hero as your protagonist. A protagonist may or may not be a hero. Hero possess some extra ordinary qualities however a protagonist may not. Consider in Mahabharat, Arjun was protagonist however Krishna was a hero.

Recognizing your protagonist beforehand is crucial as you have to build your story around it. We all have read Julius Caesar and a popular question - who was the protagonist, Cassius or Brutus?

The answer is simple - Caesar. The story kept revolving round him only; even after his death his spirit was driving the story. There was no time in the story when Caesar did not create an impact. Brutus was a good character misguided by Cassius and later by Antony. He had created an impact on story but never was the center point.

Focus on your protagonist and strengthen him with at least one quality. It could be mental or physical or even spiritual. Demonstrate his quality and associated power in the initial few pages of your story.

Do find some flaws also to make him human, more real and interesting. Create a conflict and grow him with the story. Demonstrate the flaws also in initial few pages of the story.

Write about his values, beliefs and reasons to have certain conflicting beliefs. It is not necessary to make your protagonist great. He could be a common man. 

There might be other great character in your story having an impact on your protagonist. Create that great character carefully. Make his greatness having an impact on society and therefore visibly respected. Create a conflict with his greatness and protagonist beliefs or values in some part of your story. Challenge his greatness for that he might have lived his life in a certain more disciplined way. For instance, Bhism was great character but he was also challenged for not having an objection at Dropadi's traumatic insult at the royal court. This great character might be teacher, saint or friend.

Write about specific places, time and include the dialogues. Create scenes to demonstrate their actions forced by their qualities and beliefs.

Now is the time to focus on antagonist. Antagonist should not be wrong always. Don’t make him stereotype evil; try to make him real with a mixture of good and bad qualities. Justify his conflict with protagonist. Create a time when his views and beliefs are right. Raise his character and create good competition with protagonist. Create a case for ever conflicting debate on right and wrong sides of both. Observe the character of Ravan or Duryodhana from Indian Mythology.

Don’t treat others as ordinary characters while penning them down. Most of the successful stories have strong sidekicks. Despite having less role to play, create scene to have a great impact because of them. Have these ordinaries influence protagonist’s actions and change their beliefs. 

A lot depends on POV (point of view); there are broadly 3 points of view stories are written using:  protagonist’s POV, A character's POV already there in the story, Omniscient’s POV.

No matter what POV you follow, follow consistently in the entire story. Don’t change the POV randomly. POV can turn a protagonist to antagonist and vice versa. I will elaborate on it in the detail. 

Seeds of thoughts:

Write a love story of a student where the girl is the daughter of a peon. Create a scene where peon has beaten the student with iron rod. His friends have taken him to hospital. Doctor there tries to kill the student because he wants to marry his mother who is also willing but the student is opposing. Boy’s father had already died many years ago and mother is nurse in the same hospital. Grow the story and decide your protagonist, antagonist and others.

 

- Amit Roop

Writing Business Proposals

In business, it is essential to persuade your client that you offer exactly what he requires. Irrespective of the size of business, it is important to make client aware about your skill areas both with verbal and written communication. In business to business scenarios, the client is not a one person rather it will be a team of experts and similarly there will be competitor companies capable to offer same services.

Business proposals are the documents written to create a case of client’s requirement mapped with your offerings. There might be two reasons to send proposals to your client:

1) Client sends RFP Request for proposal

2) You know client's current way of working and associated pain points that you can address with you solution

The chances of your proposal getting approved depends on how well you have put your points and how competitive it is in terms of charges as well as quality.

Create a business story starting with attractive punch line or slogan. Like every other written document, this should also be interesting. The proposal should highlight your strength areas e.g. experience in delivering similar solutions to various organizations across geographies.

It should focus on client's pain points and specialty of your solution with respect to competition. Focus on client's actual problems and needs rather than the requirements he has written in the document. Many times, they don’t even know what is causing them problem and how it can be solved in a better way.

Two years ago, when I got a business requirement document from one of my client and after analyzing I realized that there could be better ways to work on his current problem. I called him up and asked do you exactly want the same way you have asked in your RFP? He said, 'Yes'. I along with one of my senior worked on the proposal on the same lines. We have finalized our proposal and send it to him. Later we got to know that ours was rejected as they didn’t want the same and they got some better solution from one of our competitor.

Give them the key points and enable them to compare you with your competitors e.g. write about your quality, the time-frame in which you will deliver the service, the cost that will be competitive the additional features and ease of use.

Don't bluff the client, rather provide the concrete information about you previous success while delivering similar services.

Create a good balance between the technical details of the approach you are going to adopt.  Too little will confuse him and he will doubt your capability to deliver; too much of sharing might enable client to get his own team work on that and develop the solution on his own. Though there are less evidences of the later but still it happens.

It’s good to have a cost benefit analyze if your service is going to replace the existing one. Provide the actual data to back your points.

Create sections for important information, attach logo of your organization, prepare the template and get it reviewed from your senior. Create all the proposal documents in the same format. It will help client to understand and remember the key things.

Template must have below sections:

- Title

This section should have the name of the document, RFP number if any, date, Author.

- Index

If the document is below 5 pages, it is not necessary to have index but in case of big documents do include the index so that reader can directly get to his area of interest.

- Analysis of requirement or problem

This section should have thorough analysis of current pain points the user is having.

- Proposed solution

The approach should be clearly stated to give confidence to your client. Remember too much detail is risky to have.

- Cost benefit analysis
The estimated cost versus the benefits of having the solution implemented should be provided in detail. This section draws most of the attention so should be reviewed properly.

- Miscellaneous

This section should have information about licenses, patents etc. and other infrastructure required to be in place to implement you proposed solution.

Seeds of thoughts:

You are a team leader in a software company and ‘Manufacture India’ a manufacturing company wants to tracks its employees’ coming and leaving time along with attendance and duration inside office premises etc. You have one product 'Attendance Management System' but it lacks some of the features ‘Manufacture India’ wants however have some more features that are not required. You know some competitor companies also have similar software product. Write the proposal to persuade your client to buy your software.

- Amit Roop