Novel Update #4 - Antagonists
It's been a while since I did one of these. The novel is coming along, albeit much slower than I'd hoped. But, progress is being made and I can't discount that. With this being still the first real draft, I often find myself changing things as I get better ideas or decide there needs to be a scene inserted that I just thought of.
The big thing right now I'm facing is a major change to one of my antagonists.
I remember in grade 10, during our creative writing section of English class, my teacher telling us about how some of literature's most effective villains were people who believed they were doing the right thing. Whether or not these characters were really doing the right thing, and regardless of the sometimes very immoral way in which they carried out their plans, these people don't see themselves as the villain.
We were encouraged to think about the villains in the story, look at their perspective, and think critically about how they could perceive the hero's actions. It really pushed me to think in terms of protagonist and antagonist, as opposed to hero and villain.
Obviously this does not track through all of literature. There are many great examples of villains that were really and truly evil, with no redeeming qualities. A good example is Ramsay Bolton in ASOIAF. There's really no redeeming qualities and while he might think he's totally fine, I think most people would argue he is just evil. Contrast that with a character like Cersei Lannister (I'm aware the argument can be made that her love of her children ends up twisted and actually not a redeeming quality but stay with me). One way to read her character is that Cersei loves her children and would do anything for them. At the same time, she is an antagonist to many of the POV characters in ASOIAF.
In my own writing I love the idea of morally grey characters taking up the majority of the "antagonist" slots. Which is why I generally refer to them as antagonists.
The first real antagonist to appear in my book is someone who believes he is in the right. When I was creating him as a character, I had a plan for him and I'd say he was a lot closer to a villain then anything else. He was evil and that was the end of it. As the story progressed and I fleshed out his motivations, I realized that he became a more compelling character. He has goals, not all of which are entirely selfish. He'd be the hero of his own story, so to speak.
I think that often leads to the best antagonists.
Richard Siken wrote in an essay,
“Imagine that the world is made out of love. Now imagine that it isn’t. Imagine a story where everything goes wrong, where everyone has their back against the wall, where everyone is in pain and acting selfishly because if they don’t, they’ll die. Imagine a story, not of good against evil, but of need against need against need, where everyone is at cross-purposes and everyone is to blame.”
While this quote is slightly out of context, it has stuck with me for a while. There's so much complexity in the world and in our stories if we care to look for it. This is something I try to explore in my writing. The heroes have some trappings often associated with more traditional stories, good vs evil. Maybe my work is the same, a good versus evil story, except I'd disagree that these antagonists are pure evil (most of them at least).
My novel started as a relatively safe good versus evil with a few subversions. But it has changed drastically because I couldn't bring myself to not flesh these villains out. As I wrote them, they became antagonists working against what my main characters want and stand for. Yet, to call them evil or villains is to miss the complexity. It is an intricacy I think resides in all of us to one degree or another.
In the end, one thing that's taken me a while is revamping the antagonists of my story. I think in making them more complex, it has forced my protagonists to reflect on their own actions. It's been incredibly interesting to work on and I hope it is something I continue to remember to work on as I write.
