Ramblings of a Samurai and his Duct Tape

Heroes/Villains

Am I going about things wrong?





I've known for a while now that creating antagonists has been a strength of mine, while it's pretty difficult for me to bring my heroes to that nice round point where they seem to have a life of their own. Now I'm wondering if I'm going about creating each of them wrong.





I'm starting to get a handle on my current protagonist, but in looking at him, his world, and the story that is starting to crop up around him, I'm finding something interesting with my antagonists. Every time I create one, I realize something is missing, and then realize this is a much higher level antagonist than my hero can deal with at this point. If I were to compare it to a video game, I think I've found the end boss of the first or second game. But what about all the level bosses that take my hero from one act to another?





Ok, I don't really think that works yet. Taking a different tact, think of the show Buffy. I think the main antagonist I've found is kind of like that god like woman, Grace or whatever she was called, in season 5. He's very powerful, has minions and magic and all that. But he's much farther into the game than my hero can get to. Buffy couldn't have defeated Grace in her first year at Sunnydale. She needed to fight the master, Spike, Angelis, and maybe even that cyborg demon thing before she would be ready for Grace.





So yeah, I'm finding my villains for the second or third book in my character's series, should I end up writing that far, but I'm having heavy difficulties with the villains for the first book, the one I'm trying to write.





While driving I had a thought that maybe I should write a story from an antagonist's PoV, and how he goes about fighting the hero and how he fails in the end. I think that's gonna be next after my current story.