The Danger Side: Discovering your antagonist

Hey everybody, and welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m so glad you stopped by. As you know, all month long we’re talking about those first drafts. We all have to write them, and we all know the struggle of doing it well. This series, however, is slightly geared toward the newer writers out there (or, toward the experienced writers who might feel like they need a bit of a refresher). This month, we’re talking about the checklist of things you’ll need to work on while you’re writing your first draft.

So far, we’ve talked about choosing a genre, really locking down the setting of your world, figuring out whether you’re going to outline or write by the seat of your pants, knowing where to start your story, and meeting your protagonist. Today? The logical continuation…

The Danger Side: Discovering your antagonist

While protagonists are (usually) the characters that come to us from the very start, antagonists generally take a little bit of doing. They’re not always the easiest to work on, not always the simplest to come up with from the beginning—and sometimes, that’s completely okay. There are times when the primary antagonist won’t show up until over halfway through the book, though they’ve always been around and mentioned offhandedly through the first half.

So, how do we come up with them?

It always starts by knowing your protagonist. If you haven’t already, make sure to go back and read Tuesday’s post to work on that part. Why? Because if you don’t know your protagonist, then it’s really difficult to shape the character they’re working against. Antagonists tend toward being the opposite, in many ways, of the protagonist—even if it’s in subtle ways that most readers won’t pick up on immediately. So if you don’t know your protagonist, it’s much more difficult to create an antagonist out of nothing.

That’s what makes creating the antagonist a little bit harder to quantify. You’ll need to decide what the antagonist is doing, and why they’re the antagonist. Who are they antagonizing? Why? What drew them into this life? Why do they think they’re the hero of the story?

Yes, that’s the thing that really makes an antagonist. Every antagonist is the hero in his or her own mind. They really believe that they’re doing the right thing, that they’re fighting on the side of good and that the protagonist is the evil one. That’s what makes a really good antagonist. They’re not evil just to be evil—that’s boring. So, what’s their reasoning for doing what they’re doing? That's one of the first questions you need to ask yourself.

From there, you’ll be able to work backward, just like we did with our protagonist, to come up with a character that completely fits your purposes. Yeah, it’s a little bit roundabout. Yeah, it’ll take you a little longer to come up with your antagonist this way, but I promise that you’ll end up with an antagonist who’s more believable and fluid than any other you’ve written.

Why? Because this one was tailor-made for the story you’re writing, of course.

[love]

{Rani Divine}