Emma Stewart Writes

Writer, Proofreader, Editor and Cat Lady

Month: September 2023

lunar eclipse

Antagonists: The Bad Guy?

September 7, 2023 / / 0 Comments
lunar eclipse

Antagonists: Always the Villain?

On Monday we talked about the protagonist of the story. Today we look at their opposition, the antagonist. Villains are always antagonists, but not every antagonist is a villain. Essentially the antagonist is the one who is working against your protagonist and getting in their way.

The antagonist does not need to be a person, you can see other things creating obstacles for your protagonist, whether it is rules or a force of nature or something like that. If it is a person, then generally they’ll do something to affect your protagonist, whether on purpose or not. Essentially they are involved in the challenge your protagonist needs to overcome.

Villain

The classic antagonist is the villain of the piece. The tyrannical leader, the arch-enemy of your hero or a criminal who is doing something morally reprehensible. Not all villains are pure evil, though. Some are, for the sake of power, hatred, greed or pure chaos and destruction. You know the kind who tend to go: “Bwahahahaha, you’ll never beat me, hero!”

However, some villains are not so clear cut. We can even end up feeling sympathy for them. They could have a reason for doing what they do, and their actions might well be understandable. We may not be able to justify their actions, but we can perhaps understand their reasons for making the choices they do. This is what’s known as a ‘sympathetic villain’ and a good example is Magneto from X-Men. His experiences in a concentration camp taught him how evil humans were, and convinced him that mutants were always going to be worth saving over humans.

Non-Human Antagonists

As mentioned, not all antagonists are people. A force of nature or even fate itself can be the antagonist. Your protagonist may need to get an artifact from a hidden cave, but when he gets there the cave has collapsed. This could be natural deterioration or an earthquake that has made the task more difficult. Then nature itself is playing the role of the antagonist.

It could also be a creature or beast of some kind that is just trying to do what it does. Godzilla is a classic example. Society itself makes for a good antagonist, as seen in the Hunger Games trilogy. We see President Snow as the villain, but really, it’s the entire society and setting that is the real problem. We see Katniss realise this at the end, which is why she chooses to walk away from it all.

Be Your Own Antagonist

One of the most interesting versions is where the protagonist is their own antagonist. It’s quite common in storytelling, where the conflict is internal within the protagonist. They are holding themselves back in some way, be it due to their own grief or some flaw of theirs that they need to learn to overcome. You can see this in the narrator in the Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe.

Of course, you’ll find that usually this type of antagonist isn’t the only antagonist of the story. There may well be external forces as well, and it forces your protagonist to deal with their own internal conflict while also facing an external problem.

Conclusion

So that covers antagonists and the different kinds you might encounter in stories. I hope that it was helpful. On Friday we’ll take a look at secondary characters, those that support your protagonist and antagonist and give more life to your stories. I hope you’ll join me for that. Until next time!

woman holding black flag
Photo by Engin Akyurt on Pexels.com

Protagonist: I Need A Hero!

September 4, 2023 / / 0 Comments
woman holding black flag
Photo by Engin Akyurt on Pexels.com

What is a ‘protagonist’?

The main character is called the protagonist. This is the main focus of the story, it is their journey we are reading about. We learn the most about the protagonist, and we witness their development as they navigate the plot. You can have more than one protagonist, of course, that’s perfectly okay to do. Especially if it’s a romance novel or if romance is a big part of the storyline, you will generally have two protagonists in your story.

So, the protagonist is the hero? Not always. Every hero is a protagonist in their own story, but not every protagonist is a hero. A hero is a specific kind of protagonist. Typically their actions save the girl/town/world/galaxy or whatever setting you have going on. Some of the best stories have a clear hero, from Odysseus and Beowulf to Luke Skywalker and Katniss Everdeen.

Of course, there has been a surge in comic book movies in the last 15 years, with Marvel and DC both bringing many of their superheroes onto the silver screen. Each of their heroes has their own stories going on, with the larger group movies intersecting these stories at different points to tie them all together.

Anti-Hero Protagonist

Not every protagonist has the typical qualities that make them a hero. Indeed, some of them actively don’t want to be seen as a hero (looking at you, Deadpool.) This is referred to as an ‘anti-hero’ protagonist, see the Wikipedia page here. An antihero will have qualities that are considered less than heroic, where they do the morally right thing but for reasons that are morally ambiguous. They often have traits associated with the ‘Dark Triad’ of personality traits.

The Dark Triad is a set of personality traits that are considered non-pathological but offensive in psychology. This includes aspects of narcissism (pride, a lack of empathy), Machiavellianism (manipulation and exploitation) and psychopathy (impulsivity, selfishness.) Some psychologists even add a fourth trait, sadism, the enjoyment of cruelty and the suffering of others.

The antihero is very popular in modern media, a lot of people will root for the antihero and it can be seen in the success of a number of movies and TV series. Modern anti-heroes include Deadpool, but characters like Tony Soprano, Dr Gregory House and Walter White are all antihero protagonists as well.

A Step Too Far? The Villain Protagonist

The next step up is to make the protagonist the villain. This is where the morally questionable actions are not justified in any way so it is clear that they are the ‘bad guy’. A good modern example is in the video game Undertale, which has a great meta-narrative about video game protagonists in general.

Usually in an RPG, you assume you fight monsters to gain experience and money. Undertale rewards you for not doing this and remaining pacifist throughout the game. You can complete a ‘Genocide’ run where you kill everything you come across and eventually no monsters come near you.

Choose to do this, and you become the villain of the story. To the point where the main antagonist supports you, and one of the major characters calls you out on it and tries to stop you. I won’t go into too much detail to spoil it, although I imagine most people know the story by now. But the game punishes you for becoming the villain, with a lot of the best content gone.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading about protagonists with me. On Wednesday we’ll look at antagonists and their functions in fictional narrative, and why they can be the more interesting characters at times. I hope you’ll join me for that. Subscribe below to get notified when a post goes live, and find me on my social media channels. If you want to read more on characters, take a look at this post here. Until next time!

green trees on cliff

Character Relationships: No Man Is An Island

September 2, 2023 / / 0 Comments
green trees on cliff

Character Relationships

Let’s talk about character relationships. As the quote in the title says: ‘No man is an island.’ What does that mean? Every single person has some kind of relationship that connects them to other people. Even a hermit living in a cave in the middle of nowhere will have relatives or something somewhere in the world. It takes two people to make a baby, so everyone has biological parents.

That’s not to say everyone has relationships with their biological parents. Adoption, being orphaned or just cutting them out of your life because they were horrible people, there’s many reasons. Outside blood relatives, we have friends, partners, people we work with, all kinds of connections with people. For many of us, the people we choose to keep around us are the most important.

“The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.”

Remember that? Most people know the shortened version which is supposed to tell us that familial bonds are more important than those we make ourselves, but the true quote has the opposite meaning. So, when it comes to your character, relationships are important. We need to know the kind of people they associate with and why. So it’s an important aspect of character creation.

Family

Consider your characters family. Who are their parents? Do they have siblings? Is there another family member important to them, like a grandparent or aunt or cousin? What is the relationship like now, and is that different from when the character was younger? What kind of influence did these relatives have on the character and how has it helped shape their personality?

It’s worth detailing this in the early history section, but I also like to add a section dedicated to important relationships in my character profiles. For example Shaine, my protagonist in my current novel, had a great relationship with her parents. Her upbringing was full of love and support and she learned a lot from both of her parents. Alonso on the other hand, never met his parents at all. His father was a ‘client’ of his mothers, and his mother died shortly after he was born. Another character introduced later on has a sibling he has lost contact with and wants to find.

I’m not suggesting you build a huge family tree and go back ten generations (unless this is important to your plot!) but if you really want to, you can. At the very least though, you should have at least the relatives your character has met during their lifetime and a little bit about the relationship, how they got along, if there was any conflict there, that kind of thing.

Friends

Friends are important. They are the family we choose, in a way. Even the most introverted person will have a couple of people they consider friends. Most of us will have different kinds of friends. Close friends we can trust with anything, work friends we get on well with at our jobs, more casual friends we hang out with in groups. Your characters should have the same thing. At least a couple of people who really matter to them.

Depending on your plot, you might not include these friends within the story but they could be there in the background. If they are involved, it’s a good way to demonstrate certain aspects of your main characters. Of course, there’s always room for your main character to make new friends along the way, and also for them to outgrow old friends as the plot changes them and makes them shift their priorities.

It’s okay to let go of old friendships if they no longer work for you. That applies in real life as well as in your characters lives. People change, life happens and sometimes you need to move on. I have had to make this decision in the past, and it’s tough but sometimes it’s best for both of you.

Romance and Love

Not everyone has to have a romantic partner. The single life can work perfectly well for some people. Others will have a partner, or have had long term partners in their past. Some people may have had a number of short casual relationships. All of these are valid. Bear in mind that not every relationship is going to be what some people consider ‘conventional’. Polyamory is a thing in real life, so it can absolutely exist in fiction. Different sexualities and relationship types are always a good thing to incorporate but make sure you understand what you’re doing so that you can represent these relationships accurately. Polyamorous relationships, where there are more than two partners, are built on trust and open communication. It should not be used as an excuse to cheat without getting into trouble for it.

It’s okay for your main character to have an established romantic relationship of some kind at the start of the book. Even if you are writing a romance. It’s also okay for them to be single and looking for a romance, or not looking. It all depends on the genre and plot. Obviously for romance stories, the development of a relationship is the whole point of the plot. In other genres, a romantic subplot of some kind adds some interest for the reader and it’s realistic. Even in a fantasy novel, a group of adventurers spending weeks together travelling for example, feelings can develop and it gives your readers something to root for.

Back to my current novel in progress, I haven’t decided if Shaine is going to find a romance subplot or not, but Alonso’s history comes back to bite them. He is pansexual, and he was in a long term relationship with another assassin. They had quite a messy breakup, and Alonso moved on, but his ex comes back to surprise him. It’s a minor detail, but it impacts how the surprise is handled and affects the characters. He may also find himself interested in a strapping young man they stumble across. We’ll have to see!

Conclusion

So remember to have a think about some of the important relationships in your characters life and include it in your characters profile as well as dropping it into the story where it makes sense to do so. These character relationships are important. The key thing for your readers is relatability and realism. Characters that are like real people, respond in ways that while maybe not optimal, are understandable and are relatable are the ones your reader will get really excited about.

That’s all for this week. Apologies that this one is a day late, but starting next week, I’d like to look in depth at some character archetypes and what they can bring to your stories, so hopefully you’ll join me for that. Subscribe below to get an email when a new post is live and follow me on social media for updates and behind the scenes. Until next time!

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