Creating great antagonists

[Louanne Learning]

"You -have- to love your monster."

~ Philippa Dowding, Everton Miles Is Stranger Than Me: The Night Flyer's Handbook

Is the above quote true? If a writer doesn't love their antagonist, how can they make them multi-dimensional?

How do you avoid creating one-dimensional caricatures?

What drives the best antagonists?

Tell us about your favourite antagonist from one of your works and why you think they were a good character.

Do you have a favourite antagonist from a book that you have read? What made them impactful?

What is your best advice about creating antagonists?

 

[Trish]

When I was a kid there was a girl who hated me. Like hated me hated me. She lived in our neighborhood and I'd spoken to her maybe twice in passing on the bus. I didn't know her, didn't talk about her, but she just spewed vitriol about me to everyone, often when I could hear her lol. I never really understood why she hated me, and it doesn't matter. I was talking to my grandmother about it and she said "We're all the villain in someone's story, honey." I was a kid, so it took a while for that to make sense, but it did eventually.

There's another thing my dad always used to say about people he instantly disliked (We're from the south, so... sorry if it sounds weird) "There's something about that good ol' boy I don't like about me." That added another layer to my understanding.

Villains are people too (even if they aren't lol). They have motivations, reasons, beliefs, and their own pain. Rational or irrational, it makes sense to them, and not all villains are inherently bad. That's what my grandmother taught me.

Villains also affect us the most when they have characteristics or faults we don't like about ourselves - and no one likes everything about themselves. Those characteristics or faults may be much more pronounced in the villain, but they still are something people can see a little of themselves in. It really only takes one small bit of connection for someone to hate or understand a villain so a well developed character should be able to resonate with a large portion of readers with one characteristic or another. That's what my dad taught me.

As to your first quote - for me, no, I don't have to love my monsters, but I do have to understand them and why they are who they are. If I don't, I don't know how I could expect anyone else to.

 

[wearywanderer64]

In every evil person there's something good about them. In Game of Thrones Sandor 'The Hound' Clegane kills the baker's son. He is seen as evil for many episodes. Then he teams up with Arya Stark, a friend of the baker's son. He explains why he had to do it and justifies his other killings, even if it's just bloodlust. There are a lot of grey/dark characters there who do have a nice side to them. I always find the baddies more interesting than the heroes who can be pretty boring. Superhero films being the case in point.

 

[Louanne Learning]

I was talking to my grandmother about it and she said "We're all the villain in someone's story, honey."

Your grandmother was a wise woman. That girl? It was her, not you.

Villains are people too

This is a really important thing to remember when writing an antagonist. No-one thinks they are the bad guy.

a villain so a well developed character should be able to resonate with a large portion of readers with one characteristic or another.

I do think it is important to understand the villain.

I don't have to love my monsters, but I do have to understand them and why they are who they are. If I don't, I don't know how I could expect anyone else to.

Good way to approach it.

Thanks so much for the thoughtful response!

 

[Louanne Learning]

In every evil person there's something good about them.

And remembering this is a way to keep them from being one-dimensional

 

[JFB]

I'm not sure you have to love them. With apologies to Raymond Carver, I'm not sure you even have to forgive them.

What you do need is a grounded understanding of why they are the way they are and how they got that way. Lesser throwaway antagonists don't require this so much. A Big Bad can't function effectively without it.

Point is, a break towards evil is a string, not a point. Barring perhaps alcohol, certain narcotics, or traumatic brain injury, readers should be able to chart a coherent course that goes beyond Well, I need an opponent for the hero, so this cardboard cutout is going to violently oppose them because...plot reasons, I guess.

In mine, the early enemy is the second husband of the protag's mother. He is, frankly, a violent, intemperate asshole direly needing to meet someone bigger, tougher, and meaner than himself - but unknown to our protag (until Part III of a four-stage arc) there's an entire backstory as to how he came to be that way. And, surprise of surprises, it's not entirely one-sided. Not all the trouble started with him, nor do all the miscalculations and transgressions bear his signature. Won't save him a beating...but he didn't just pop into the world and set about ruining lives. That his is a story of bad decisions does not negate the fact it's still a story replete with missed opportunities and at least the chance things might have gone different.

Is he an angry has-been who watched his youthful potential turn to dust and slip through his fingers? Yup. Did he once put our then-preadolescent protag in the hospital with life-threatening injuries? That, too. Does he live with the constant stress of knowing he could have been something if he'd handled it better, and now he's tied to the consequences of poor judgment? Yeah. And as a bonus, even that lousy bastard rugrat who came with his former high school sweetheart/current wife has a couple of relatives who will, in moderation, beat the ever-loving shit out of him to protect their own.

He's decently connected and borderline untouchable in his hometown. But by turns he can never be anything else, anywhere else. What life he can get he has to get on the side. The rest he just bears, much in the same way his wife occasionally has to wear long sleeves in the summer and the kid used to lie to his classmates about bike wrecks and falling out of trees.

He's the reason the protag effectively spends the first two books running. He's why the kid will, immediately after high school, push himself to the ragged edge to get away, and why his first move is buying a pawnshop shotgun and a carton of buckshot. He's the kid's rationale that maybe going to a foreign country and getting lit up by angry people with automatic weaponry is preferable to staying around the old family homestead. And he's critical to the larger story because, despite the fact he's pretty well irredeemable, he is the primary defining factor in setting the initial trajectory of the kid's life.

His fundamental sin is less his wrath than his laziness. He never made a hard decision. Never thought outside himself. Nothing he's ever lost has been a sacrifice for anything much past his own wants. A dozen times he had chances. Instead he coasted, and now it's everybody's fault but his own.

He's why the kid is what he is - and more importantly, what he's not.

Long way around saying that 'multi-dimensional' doesn't necessarily hinge on giving your hero's enemies a legitimate point so much as making sure they aren't just evil because the plot demands it, I expect.

 

[Louanne Learning]

His fundamental sin is less his wrath than his laziness. He never made a hard decision. Never thought outside himself. Nothing he's ever lost has been a sacrifice for anything much past his own wants. A dozen times he had chances. Instead he coasted, and now it's everybody's fault but his own.

And in exploring this, gives a writer opportunity to write a character with depth.

Thanks so much for the enlightening response!

 

[Stuart Dren]

Sometimes the only way a villain fits into his world is as what most people would regard as a villain. That asks a different kind of sympathy than cause-effect kicking puppies. In real life I've become more ambivalent about deferring to nurture in general as I get older.

Daniel—admittedly the protagonist—from There Will be Blood, I think is the most sympathetic villain I've ever encountered. He hadn't been tempted by luxury. He hadn't been neglected. His ambition was all he ever had and all he ever would, and it made him lonely. Given his brief mention of envy, I wonder if they were going for narcissism.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Daniel—admittedly the protagonist—from There Will be Blood

I thought about him, too, as I was posting this thread. The character really blurs the line between protagonist and antagonist.

Maybe the division has always been too neat.

 

[wearywanderer64]

Oh, just remembered. The characters in Breaking Bad were good-bad.

 

[Rigor Mortis]

“I think about my education sometimes. I went to the University of Chicago for awhile after the Second World War. I was a student in the Department of Anthropology. At that time they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody.​

They may be teaching that still.​

Another thing they taught was that no one was ridiculous or bad or disgusting. Shortly before my father died, he said to me, ‘You know – you never wrote a story with a villain in it.’​

I told him that was one of the things I learned in college after the war.”​

So said Kurt Vonnegut, and an interesting perspective. I think the aim is to write characters. If people interpret some as villains, that's their prerogative, but above all else they must be characters to the story with all that that involves.

 

[Louanne Learning]

I think if a writer can write an antagonist that elicits empathy from the reader, that comes closer to reality.

 

[Rigor Mortis]

I think if a writer can write an antagonist that elicits empathy from the reader, that comes closer to reality.

Can you flip that coin?

 

[GlitterRain]

"You -have- to love your monster."

~ Philippa Dowding, Everton Miles Is Stranger Than Me: The Night Flyer's Handbook

Is the above quote true? If a writer doesn't love their antagonist, how can they make them multi-dimensional?

I think it’s true, with the caveat that it depends on how you interpret the word “love.”

I absolutely don’t think you have to be routing for the antagonist and only want to see good come about for them (wouldn’t that confuse readers for traditionally set-up books?). I don’t think if someone asks you who your favorite character in your or any other book is, you have to answer “the antagonist,” or they even need to be on a list of favorite characters you provide. But I do think you need to believe in them, which will in give them that spark of humanity and make them believable and further in turn make them a good antagonist.

How do you avoid creating one-dimensional caricatures?

Like I said above, I think the key is believing in them and recognizing that they are just on the other side of the protagonist’s pendulum.

I have to admit, I may not have been the best with this up to this point. I can think of a villain character from my triology that I need to apply this to. I think the antagonist from my standalone could be worked on more to make her less one dimensional (she’s kind of a unlikable typical rich snobby blonde right now). I think both the characters ended up being how they are right now because I didn’t know to what extent they needed to be antagonizing the main characters when I was actively writing them.

What drives the best antagonists?

Personally, I think relatability, humanity, and again, believability, probably especially in their flaws, drive the best antagonists. I don’t want to read about characters who are bad for the sake of being bad, the same as I don’t want to read about characters who are perfect just because the author loves them too much.

Tell us about your favourite antagonist from one of your works and why you think they were a good character.

So, not gonna lie, but my protagonist of my trilogy is (or is supposed to be) a villain protagonist. There are other villains and antagonists throughout the series, but the MC is my favorite.

He’s my favorite for a multitude of reasons, but I also think he hits all the traits I listed above (relatability, humanity, and believability). My goal with this trilogy is to blur the thin line between right and wrong and ask the reader to draw that line in their own minds and play judge as to is the main character a bad guy or not. The MC has to sometimes feel like the hero in order to do that, to bring the readers’ guards down so that they are surprised when he does criminal or morally wrong things. And in that, I feel like that alone provides for all three points I suggested.

“Do you have a favourite antagonist from a book that you have read? What made them impactful?” (For some reason, I can’t quote anymore. I’m on an iPad.)

I don’t really know who my favorite antagonist would be. However, I have been thinking about Tom Buchanan from The Great Gatsby lately. I think he also has these three traits I have talked about. While I ultimately don’t agree with what he does / how he acts in the novel, I think he acts believably for someone in his position. I could probably argue that he feigns humanity to some extent to Daisy by giving empty promises and such (or at least ideas to the reader that his promises are empty; it’s been a minute since I’ve read it), I do think it’s good human nature (although sometimes horrible for the parties involved and ultimately not a good/viable idea) to try to keep your family together (and we don’t technically know if he quit cheating on her after the book concludes, because he could’ve). I don’t personally have anything really similar to him or even live in a similar time period, so I can’t relate to him in that way, but I think it’s universally relatable to mess around taking good things for granted and then freak out when you’re threatened with losing those things.

“What is your best advice about creating antagonists?” (Quotes still not working)

I guess I’d suggest making sure your character is believable, relatable, and has humanity. The humanity part may be less of a given for other characters, but I think it’s important we as writers make all characters, regardless of their role in a story, believable and relatable. I’m sure there are other things, too, but those three things really stick out for me.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Can you flip that coin?

I'm not sure what you mean.

 

[Louanne Learning]

the caveat that it depends on how you interpret the word “love.”

This brings to mind another thought: there are writers who love their characters, and other writers who do not.

relatability, humanity, and again, believability, probably especially in their flaws, drive the best antagonists.

perfectly summarized.

Thank you for the very thoughtful post.

 

[Luxuria]

Is the above quote true?

Yes and no. This quote is well-meaning, but I feel an author can hate their antagonist, if they wish. I think the concept of loving them, is fine. But I think you can love and hate them. You can love how well a character is crafted, but also dislike them as a character.

If a writer doesn't love their antagonist, how can they make them multi-dimensional?

I think a writer needs to think about 'what if this character was the main character?' If the author flips the story and writes the antagonist as the protagonist, what happens? The antagonist to me can't just be a menacing force, it has to be something with meaning and dimension. I think writers gain that when they are not afraid to think about the story from the other character's POV.

How do you avoid creating one-dimensional caricatures?

I look at both the antagonist and protagonist as if they are the opposite of what they are. Like, if I was writing a Batman Story, I would think about what Batman wanted, and what the Joker wanted and why. Why are they opposed to one another? What makes it impossible for them to understand and work together? If The Joker was the protagonist, what would he do? What would Batman do? Looking at both character equally allows me to create a more meaningful plot.

What drives the best antagonists?

Their own interests. They are a hero in their own stories.

Tell us about your favourite antagonist from one of your works and why you think they were a good character.

...this is a hard one. I love all my antagonists, who actually end up as the protagonist. But that doesn't suddenly make them good. In one of my current stories, the two main characters just shot an airplane out of the sky and are out to find and kill all the survivors, because they can't let anyone live for plot reason. I think all my characters are good characters, because I feel they are complex and morally gray, if not straight up evil, but have good intentions. I think that's the difference between my protagonists and antagonists. The antagonists are more selfish, but my protagonists are more concerned for the greater good. But both will use the same methods to create the outcome they want.

Do you have a favourite antagonist from a book that you have read?

I am currently reading the Pendragon Series by D.J. MacHale and I am actually scared of Nevva Winter. I hate her more than Saint Dane and she's one of the only book villains that terrifies me.

What made them impactful?

I am not sure. But Nevva Winter is... she's so manipulative, and I don't understand what's going on her head. Which is rare for me, because I can usually understand evil characters and what goes on in their minds. But I can't read her. Which freaks me out.

What is your best advice about creating antagonists?

I feel I specialize in writing villains, honestly. So I have a LOT of advice. But the main piece I have is: Flip the script. The book is only as good as its antagonist. Think about your story from the antagonist's POV and don't make him or her stupid just so the heroes will win. Make him or her smart and a threat they are meant to be. Also, if you like the villain more than the heroes, just write a book from the villain's POV. I have had that happen to me and it's great. (But I am honestly struggling to make the new? villain believable at the moment.) Also, there is nothing scarier than a realistic villain who a reader can believe. I also think to write a good antagonist, don't be afraid of the dark. Do it. Ring that bell and don't regret it.

 

[Rigor Mortis]

I think if a writer can write an antagonist that elicits empathy from the reader, that comes closer to reality.

Can you flip that coin?

I'm not sure what you mean.

Sorry, I admit it was a bit oblique. Essentially, the antagonist eliciting empathy from the reader is a similar achievement to the protagonist eliciting revulsion, or an absence of empathy. Two sides of the coin. If the antagonist doesn't elicit some understanding of their humanity, which is close enough to empathy by definition, I'd consider that a dereliction on the part of the author unless they're doing so to probe something else that's worth the effort, like fate or the existence of objective evil. No Country for Old Men comes to mind.

I'll admit that I struggle with the hero/villian dichotomy as a generality. In my lived experience, very many people are their own villians. The conflict can be written allegorically by externalising the villiany, but that doesn't interest me to the same extent. When I first read the opening query on this thread, I struggled to recall any character I'd written as "villian". I thought back to "929" that I posted on the old site, but even there the mc does more damage to himself than any external actor.

If it's an effort to humanise the antagonist, then the character has not been fully drawn to start with.

 

[Louanne Learning]

@Luxuria - thanks for the great response!

 

[Luxuria]

@Luxuria - thanks for the great response!

You’re welcome. As Obi-wan says, Sith Lords are our specialty.