Brandon Sanderson is an insanely popular author who gives talks on writing. You can find them on YouTube, the home of all contemporary learning. Although I am unlikely to read any of his books, the important thing to me is that Sanderson has a knack for punchy summaries of how fiction works.

In one of his talks, he said that the characters people love and want to follow generally share three characteristics:

• They are proactive.
• They are capable.
• They are relatable.

But not equally so. A protagonist, in Sanderson’s view, is good at one, so-so at a second, not good at a third. Mr. or Ms. Protagonist might even believe he or she is good at something when, in truth, they suck the phone.

I’m not sure I buy this, but it’s as good a place as any to start a discussion. I have two examples, one for, one against. Let’s see how they stack up.

Fails the Sanderson test: Aragorn, the heir of Isildur.

Proactive: Are you joking? Aragorn, when The Fellowship of the Ring opens, is not a king, he’s a Ranger. His only job responsibilities are smoking a pipe and hanging in pubs. When he’s finally kicked into motion, he can’t even find a clean shirt or a barber.

Capable: Yes. He’s the greatest fighter of the Third Age of Middle-Earth, capable of defeating orcs, ghosts, witch kings, Uruk-hai, octopi, and various other beasties.

Relatable: No again. The man is not only handsome, he’s invincible and irresistible. If he wanted to, he could have not one but two girlfriends: Arwen, and, as a back-up singer, Éowyn. The man who is wary of commitments will always attract the women who want one.

Aces the Sanderson test: Me!

Proactive: Yes. I’m a chess player. I wanted to get better at chess, so I studied with a chess master.

Capable: After two sessions my teacher told me, “You have no shortage of ideas, all of them bad.”

Relatable: I am admitting this.

So would I make a better protagonist than Aragorn? Despite my good looks and my boyish mop of hair, the answer is no. Tolkien humanized Aragorn by surrounding him with a team of dimwits, wannabes, and party animals. (Except for Legolas, Aragorn’s sexless, elven shadow. Why not one of the half-wild, funky elves who join the humans for the Battle of Helms Deep? Those elves rocked.)

If I were your protagonist, you’d have to go the other way and surround me with a team of people who know what they’re doing. For example, my wife and our dogs. I don’t know how many people would read such a book. I know my wife would refuse to be in it.

I mention this because I have begun the revision of the first draft of my novel. My first task is to do something about my hero. Critics from the American Federation of Protagonists have described him as “insufficiently involving,” “an emotional mystery,” and “what the heck was he thinking?”

While I was writing the first draft, this thought from Jane Smiley pulled me through:

“Every first draft is perfect because all the first draft has to do is exist. It’s perfect in its existence. The only way it could be imperfect would be to NOT exist.”

Now that I’m working on the revision, I am holding to these words from Judy Blume:

“I’m a rewriter. If I died during a first draft, nobody would know what I was trying to do, including me. I’m learning with my first draft.”

Remember: The rewriting is the fun part. As Crash Davis tells Nuke LaLoosh in Bull Durham, “Let’s have some fun out here! This game’s fun, OK? Fun goddammit!”