Characters are the beating heart of a story, with the protagonist as the most vital component of that organ. Here are a collection of posts we've written about protagonists and antagonists.   One Method of Creating Characters in Fiction Pat Stoltey Friday, April 23, 2010 I once heard mystery author Diane Mott Davidson speak at a convention. She said her fictional victims were often based on annoying people she met in real life. [ Read more ]   Busted!—Janet Fitch caught championing an unlikable protagonist Kathryn Craft Friday, April 1, 2011 Unlikeable protagonists are commonplace these days. Why? Maybe writers took the advice that their characters should be flawed and ran away with it. Or maybe, with so many of the educated middle class out of work, losing their homes, or in over their heads in credit card debt, we writers are looking for a new kind of hero. Some...

Slim Randles is back again this month with an update on how Dud is doing with his book - or not doing. Dud seems to be having trouble with his protagonists and antagonists, and keeping them straight. Maybe he needs to subscribe to this blog for some help. Poor guy has been slaving away for too long on one book. Dud rounded the corner on his block and headed for the edge of town at an easy jog. Well, easy for an Olympic miler, he thought. It was making him breathe hard and he wasn’t even a block from the house. But this is the price. Oh yes, the price I must pay for my goal, as Doc had reminded him a few weeks ago. “Dud,” said Doc, “I worry about you spending so much time agonizing over that book of yours.” “I have to do it, Doc,” Dud said. “There are still so many things to plan in the book. Things like the duchess’s daughter and her relationship with the truck driver on special assignment …” “I know that, Dudley,” Doc said, giving Dud a friendly arm squeeze, “but what you ...

In literature, an antagonist is a character or a group of characters which stand in opposition to the protagonist or the main character. The term antagonist comes from Greek word “ antagonistēs ” that means opponent, competitor or rival. We commonly think of antagonists as villains, the evil people (bad guys) who try to thwart our heroes at every turn. But that’s not necessarily the case. Sometimes the hero is his own worst enemy. Maybe he or she has an addiction or a dark phobia or some character flaw that keeps tripping him/her up and prevents success in reaching the goal. A pilot with a drinking problem might create a whole lot of problems for himself and his passengers. A young woman with self-esteem issues and no father-figure might look for love in all the wrong places. An antagonist doesn’t even need to be a person. It can be an animal, a la Moby Dick . Or it can be the weather. In Ray Bradbury’s story “The Long Rain”, the four characters are driven insane by the inc...

Some actors have reportedly said they’d rather play the bad guy than the good guy because it’s more fun. The same might be said about some writers: it can be more fun to write about antagonists than protagonists. While this probably doesn’t hold true for all of us, I have found the creation of antagonists to be an unexpectedly interesting facet of fiction writing. “Fun” may not always be appropriately descriptive, however. Complicated, damaged, mentally or emotionally unbalanced, narcissistic, or even terrifying might better categorize them. No matter how they are described, I like to uncover their issues, figure out what makes them tick. Why do they do what they do? Antagonists may grow out of personal experience, be composites or people we’ve known or read about, or be products of our imagination. All of us have a dark side, but society doesn’t smile on our displaying that part of our personality. If this is the case, we writers have an advantage if we care to use it: we can vic...

Ever heard someone say, Write what you know? It sounds logical, but what does it really mean? To me, it means write what you are familiar with or what you can research. Even if you really know something, you want to weave your knowledge into the characters without the reader feeling like the author is doing the talking or spending too much time presenting minutiae. In my first fiction book, Angel Sometimes , I gave Angel the job of swimming as a mermaid. That was easy since I'd swam as a mermaid for four years. My second fiction book, Dismembering the Past is different. Matti McAllister, a Private Investigator, is the protagonist. But I've never been a PI, so I had to do a lot of research and, as I wrote, I found myself getting inside her head. You may base characters on people you know or people you've seen around town or people you've met online. The trick is to choose something from that person and give that fear or favorite song or way of talking, or wh...

About a month ago, I came across the following quote online by screenwriter, comedian, film producer, and comic book writer John Rogers: You don't really understand an antagonist until you understand why he's a protagonist in his own version of the world. I found the quote intriguing. Not to say we discard antagonists, but often in writing, especially in that developmental stage of a story where we're trying to get the bones of it down, we think about our main character, the protagonist. We write an elaborate backstory for this "good guy" or "gal" and flesh the character out into a living, breathing person complete with yearning and laden with obstacles and burdens. Speaking of obstacles, when we get to the stage where we ask what obstacles or conflicts meet our protagonist, this is where we typically start to think of our antagonist(s). We know that our main character (MC) has wants and needs, and we know there must be things and people to preven...

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.   Last month, my husband and I were invited to participate in the Once Upon a Time art show, which gave artists the opportunity to illustrate their favorite children’s stories. Our friends at Green Horse Gallery in Manitou Springs, Colorado, hosted the show and it was a wonderful trip, returning to our old home and creative stomping grounds. We saw lots of friends, visited favorite restaurants, and enjoyed the cool pleasantness of this charming community at the base of Pikes Peak. Then it all came near to burning to the ground last week. In a horrendous firestorm that started in Waldo Canyon, just down Ute Pass from our honeymoon cabin, the wind-fueled hell fires descended not only toward Manitou Springs, but shifted east and north into the city of Colorado Springs where our families live. By the time it was controlled, 30,000 people had evacuated their homes including residents of the venerable Air Force A...