Who are we watching?
Google Says: “Protagonist: The central character. All (or most) of the important events in the story relate to this person.”
Not wrong, but it’s going at it a little backwards since you first need to clarify what the important events of the story are.
An easier way to think about your protagonist is they’re the person in your story who wants the thing the audience is tracking. Save the world, steal the diamond, sell the inherited family home, etc. If someone else gets in the way of that person getting the thing they want, that’s the antagonist.
Story #1: A boy meets a girl. The boy likes the girl and wants to date her. The boy asks the girl out on a date in a week.
The protagonist is the boy.
Story #2: A mother wants to move her family to Portland in the next two days. Her son refuses to move because he has just met a girl that he likes, and they have a date planned in a week. Now the mother needs to figure out how to get her son to give up on his date and move to Portland within the next two days.
The protagonist is now the mother, not the boy. He’s the antagonist, since he’s getting in the way of the family moving to Portland, which is what the protagonist (his mom) wants. And we as the audience no longer care whether the boy and girl get together, except in terms of how that impacts the family moving to Portland.
In its simplest form, a story begins when the person (or people) that we’re following starts to actively want and go after something that matters to them. The story is over when they get or don’t get that thing. And the person who wants that thing is our protagonist.
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