Tuesday, September 11, 2012

TTYU Retro: Develop Your Antagonist

Do you have a great antagonist?

I've seen a lot of posts about antagonists, and they always make me think (I love to think).

One of the things that makes a great baddie is the sense that this person might have been a good guy if not for certain small details of backstory. Some prime motivating event, perhaps, or a key element of character. This I find plausible because it makes sense for the antagonist to have quite a lot of strengths.

Another key element for an antagonist is a sense of vulnerability. I always loved that the dragon Smaug had a single scale missing in the middle of his chest - and was in denial about it. I mean, hey, that little flaw is awfully convenient for the good guys, right? But a good vulnerable point for an antagonist can be more than just convenient. It can be a major driver for that person's evil deeds: I know that I have this flaw, and that it may end me (whether a soothsayer has detected this depends on the story!) so I have to protect myself in whatever unethical way I can! Another possibility is to give your antagonist a flaw that also gives them strength. My character Nekantor is obsessive compulsive, and this is a real problem for him, but it also makes him very good at certain things like pattern detection (something of a bad guy version of Adrian Monk's situation).

But say you've got all this. Say your antagonist rocks in the evil, backstory, and vulnerability departments. Don't just set her loose in the story and let that be it! Not when you could be doing so much more.

This is what I mean by develop your antagonist.

Your antagonist deserves to have a fully developed character arc, as much as anyone else. Don't let her, or him, sit back in a corner and just do the same thing over and over to cause everyone trouble. Let your antagonist learn from mistakes. You've designed a creature of great power. Let it grow.

One way to grow an antagonist is the more common one: to let your antagonist react to ongoing events and have that change their attitude, their level of desperation, etc. We watched Kung Fu Panda 2 yesterday and it was a lot of fun to see Shen get more frustrated, angry and desperate as time went by, because that made his reactions more extreme and exposed his not-so-noble side. This is a great way to raise the stakes, because the antagonist will go farther and father in the attempt to prevail, making the task of the protagonists more and more difficult.

Lately though, I've been exploring another way to develop my antagonist - by letting story events increase his propensity for evil. This opportunity has come up because I'm working with a prequel-like situation, which is part of a much much larger story arc. So I'm actually in the middle of what was once my antagonist's backstory, and what it's teaching me is that antagonists don't need to be entirely reactive. They should be proactive, and they should be flexible in developing their strategies.

After all, how would the bad guys get to be so powerful if they couldn't grow and learn? Do they simply get to have other older bad guys willing to set them up in positions of power (how convenient for them)? But why in the world would big bad guys with power be interested in a new bad guy who could potentially cause trouble for them? There must be something awfully compelling about this small shark's characteristics that would make the bigger ones feel ready to risk meeting its teeth themselves. Why, and how, does an antagonist develop his skills at deception? Is it easy for him, or is it difficult?

If you can consider these questions, you may be able to bring an entirely new and exciting dimension to your antagonist.

It's something to think about.

10 comments:

  1. Good post! I've been making my antagonists more proactive as I revise my WIP, and this makes my plot more interesting (IMO, at least).

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    1. It generally does, Sandra. Good luck with it, and thanks for your comment!

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  2. Thanks for the post! Very thought-engendering.

    While it's nice to be a person who thinks, you've taken that to the next level: you're a person who causes thought in others!

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    1. Thank you, Writer Chick! I'm so glad you liked it.

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  3. My favorite antagonist right now is a soon-to-be protagonist: a priest who's about to realize that he's no longer the sort of priest he'd once the joined priesthood to be and will believe himself fallen because of it. He'll be given a chance for redemption by the very girl he'd thought he was rescuing from dangerous heretics (i.e. kidnapped from her protectors/friends). He just won't realize on his own that he'd been manipulated by the main villain for a long time, the very person who'd sent him after the girl.

    I still don't think I've got the priest properly set up in what I've written out, but I'm running with what I've got so far. I think part of why he's so much fun is because of his intended role in the main villain's plans.

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    1. That sounds cool, Jaleh! Good luck developing him. :)

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  4. There's a danger in this though...my critters of one of my books wanted to read the antagonist's story first. She really is the protag of her story, and so now I have to write a prequel :).

    Great thoughts as usual, and I'm putting this one in the cue for my interesting links. It's important to think about.

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  5. To help illustrate your point I would direct people to compared Malcolm Reynolds to the Operative in Serenity. Mal is a likeable, sometimes dark guy that reacts with emotion and has a lingering sense of honor. The Op is mysterious, calculating, cold, and emotionless. He's the perfect shadow for Mal. The big showdown is when Mal has to be calculating and driven toward a goal regardless of who stands in his way. The Op suddenly allows emotion to take over his reactions. Great great pairing!

    But I see what you mean about little things making the bad guy bad. Take Hitler for instance. He wanted to be a painter, but was rejected because he wasn't very good. At that time Germany needed a charismatic leader. Say what you will about ol Adolf, but he could get a crowd on their feet and eating from his hand. History was timed perfectly to allow him to be such a villain. His hubris was his downfall. I hear he was also a very insecure little man with quite the mommy issues.

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    1. Realmwright, thanks for commenting! It's an interesting comparison between Mal and the Operative, so thanks. As far as Hitler goes, I think he's over-brandished, and I encourage people wanting to use him as an example to read actual in-depth biographies (which it seems you have). I appreciate your contributions.

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  6. Thank you for this great information, you write very well which I like very much. I really impressed by your post.

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