October Novel Prep Challenge

The next 2 days are my all time favorite.

What makes a good story great? THE ANTAGONIST!!!

If your antagonist is poorly developed, at best your story will be "good". But none of us are okay with just being "good", right? You're not prepping for 31 days and writing your heart out for another 30 for "good". You want great. And if you want great, your antagonist needs to be great.

As the author, you should not hate the antagonist. If you're writing them right, you should probably love them as much as your protagonist. They need to have strong motivation for everything they do. They should be firmly convinced what they are doing is the right thing, for whatever reason.

I think of one of my all time favorite video games, Dragon Age Origins. The antagonist essentially kills the king, outlaws the only group of people that could stop the deadly horde of demons, and sells people into slavery. All of it has solid, non-evil motives. Because he sacrificed so much at a young age to free the kingdom from the control of the neighboring empire, he fears anything that might give them a foothold in his home (and in all fairness, the king planned to divorce the antagonist's daughter and marry the empress, giving her much more than just a foothold). He IS doing it for the good of the kingdom in his eyes.

So, I leave you with a few quotes to get you into the antagonist spirit:

"You have to love your monsters" - Philippa Dowding

"Every village is a hero in his own mind" - Tom Hiddleston (and several others)

"No villain ever saw himself a villain: he only saw himself a hero; and this goes just as no hero ever saw himself a hero: he simply did what he had to do. No true hero initially sets out with intentions of being deemed a hero." - Criss Jami

"In a lot of ways, I guess Satan was the first superhero.”
“Don’t you mean supervillain?”
“Nah. Hero, for sure. Think about it. In his first adventure, he took the form of a snake to free two prisoners being held naked in a Third World jungle prison by an all-powerful megalomaniac. At the same time, he broadened their diet and introduced them to their own sexuality" - Joe Hill

“You need to love the villain as much as you need to love the hero if you’re going to have a great story.” - Andrew Scott

So, your task over the next few days? Fall in love with your antagonist.