Latest / Story Magic / 63 - Convincing antagonists

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63 - Convincing antagonists · Story Magic

2:28
Rachel: Hey, writers.
2:28
Rachel: Welcome back to story magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're damn proud of.
2:33
Emily: I'm Emily.
2:34
Rachel: And I'm Rachel.
2:35
Emily: And today we are going to talk about antagonists.
2:40
Emily: This is one of those terms that when I was first started out writing, I was like, oh, protagonist equals hero.
2:46
Emily: Antagonist equals villain.
2:48
Emily: And that's a, not true, and b, it's not that simple.
2:52
Rachel: It's not that simple.
2:53
Rachel: Like in the notebook.
2:55
Rachel: It's not that simple.
2:56
Rachel: It's just not that simple.
2:59
Emily: I love that movie.
3:00
Emily: I watched it recently.
3:00
Emily: I know.
3:03
Emily: Anyway, so we.
3:06
Emily: I wanted to talk about antagonists because I think it's a really interesting.
3:09
Emily: Just once you start to define it and break it down and talk about what it is and how you can do it successfully, how you can build an antagonist successfully, you get into some juicy stuff about what makes an interesting story an interesting conflict, and just.
3:24
Emily: I'm excited to nerd out about it.
3:26
Emily: So maybe we can start by just defining, like, protagonist and antagonistic.
3:31
Emily: What are they?
3:32
Emily: Actually?
3:33
Rachel: Yes. Cool. So protagonist is usually.
3:37
Rachel: This is usually, like, the, quote, main character role.
3:41
Rachel: But all that it means is that it's, like, the central character that we're following in the story with goals that we are understanding and behind.
3:48
Rachel: Like, if we're gonna have.
3:49
Rachel: If we're gonna read a story, this is the main character in the sense that they are the through line, the front and center of what is happening.
3:57
Rachel: Like you said, people often equate that to, like, the hero, and that's not necessarily always true.
4:02
Rachel: But many times, the protagonist is.
4:05
Rachel: Is the hero, is the main focus of what is going on the plot.
4:10
Rachel: On the flip side, the antagonist is the person who opposes the protagonists goals.
4:17
Rachel: So they are just standing in the way of the protagonist getting what they want.
4:23
Emily: Yeah. So they're like, the conflict of the story.
4:26
Emily: And so you can have an antagonist that's not sentient, like a circumstance or a social structure or, like, oftentimes you see it as, like, weather.
4:38
Emily: There was that, like, phase where we had all those, like, the world is ending.
4:42
Emily: Yes.
4:43
Rachel: 2012. Yeah. Uh huh.
4:45
Rachel: Which, by the way.
4:48
Rachel: Okay, so I'm gonna go on a little bit of a tangent.
4:50
Rachel: Do you remember the movie the day after tomorrow?
4:53
Emily: I was just.
4:54
Emily: I was trying to think of the name of it.
4:55
Emily: Yep.
4:55
Rachel: Okay. So, like, when that movie came out and you know how we grew up.
5:00
Rachel: So, like, I grew up in a conservative environment.
5:03
Rachel: I went to christian school.
5:04
Rachel: And so, like, when that movie came out, people were like, al Gore is the worst.
5:09
Rachel: Climate change is not true.
5:10
Rachel: And so, like, we watched that movie with, like, oh, ha ha, this will never happen.
5:15
Rachel: And then all of a sudden, I'm like, oh, my God, there's tornadoes everywhere.
5:18
Rachel: It's day after tomorrow is happening.
5:20
Rachel: But what I love about that movie is that the villain is not the weather.
5:25
Rachel: The villain is the people who denied climate change.
5:29
Rachel: So, like, anyway, yes, that's so funny.
5:32
Emily: Cause meanwhile, I'm on the other side of the country with my grandfather being like, this is the future if we don't get our shit together.
5:41
Emily: I'm like, that seems a little extreme, grandpa.
5:45
Rachel: I know.
5:46
Rachel: No, I watch it now.
5:47
Rachel: Cause I love that movie.
5:48
Rachel: I adore how campy it is.
5:51
Rachel: I love Emmy Rossum as an actress.
5:54
Rachel: I love the day after tomorrow.
5:56
Rachel: And I watch it now and I'm like, I remember when I watched this the first time and thought this was impossible.
6:01
Rachel: And now I watch it and I'm like, oh, my God, we're living it.
6:06
Emily: I know.
6:06
Emily: Literally as we're speaking, guys, I don't have ac yet.
6:10
Emily: It's getting installed today.
6:12
Emily: It's like 96.
6:14
Emily: I'm in the dark.
6:15
Emily: Rachel was.
6:17
Emily: I told her, I was like, I have, like, no clothes on.
6:19
Emily: No, it's.
6:20
Emily: I'm not age.
6:25
Emily: We're breaking records as we speak.
6:26
Emily: Anyway, the point is, it could be.
6:29
Rachel: Your antagonist, man versus weather, man versus wild.
6:32
Rachel: Like, there's.
6:33
Rachel: There's, like, four of them that are like, man versus man, man versus society, man versus wild, and man versus weather.
6:40
Rachel: Like, it's something like that.
6:41
Rachel: I forget.
6:41
Rachel: Yeah.
6:44
Emily: We'Re going to talk mostly about man versus man or, like, man versus sentient things if you don't have, you know, humans in your story.
6:54
Emily: But you can.
6:55
Emily: Just to clarify, you can have antagonists that are not a sentient being of some kind.
7:02
Emily: So. So the thing that I love about this is antagonist gets used oftentimes interchangeably with, like, villain or Morley Gray or, like, just the bad.
7:18
Emily: All of these terms that are.
7:19
Emily: Yeah, the bad.
7:21
Emily: But it's not that simple.
7:23
Emily: Like Rachel said, the protagonist is whoever we're following in the story.
7:26
Emily: So if you have, like, a villain origin story or, um, something very morally gray where it's like, you know, everybody's terrible.
7:36
Emily: Like, succession.
7:37
Emily: Yeah, the.
7:38
Emily: The show succession.
7:39
Emily: Or, um, what's the other one?
7:39
Emily: Succession in the.
7:42
Emily: In the wild.
7:45
Rachel: Oh, Yellowstone.
7:47
Rachel: Succession in the wild.
7:51
Emily: I see.
7:52
Rachel: We're just discussing Yellowstone last week.
7:54
Rachel: Yes.
7:59
Emily: You know, you don't really have any heroes, or they're just, like, all villains.
8:04
Emily: And so it's the folks that we're following the protagonists of those stories are the families that we're following.
8:12
Emily: And so that I feel like, is the first point I wanted to pull apart.
8:19
Emily: But regardless of whether you know the morals of your story and who they lie with, it's important to think about how your antagonist is serving your protagonist's story, because your antagonist is the embodiment of the conflict of your story.
8:42
Emily: And like we talked about or will have talked about in our shape of character arcs, class, you want to set your conflict up, your plot up to test your protagonist's arc.
8:56
Emily: You want to test what journey they're going through internally and what you want to, like, use it to say something about the story.
9:03
Rachel: Yeah. This is why it's important to differentiate between this terminology.
9:08
Rachel: Because as you're talking, I'm thinking of, like, a romance where there's not a villain but the two romantic interests often play a protagonist and an antagonist role, where all that means is that they have conflicting goals or they stand in each other's way.
9:26
Rachel: And the conflict in a romance can stem from how do they get in each other's way?
9:31
Rachel: You know, like, if you picture a typical hallmark movie, I'm going to broadly generalize, but you have, like, you know, the girl farmer with the farm who's, like, losing her farm to the bank, and then you have, like, the banker who comes to town to, like, buy the farm.
9:51
Rachel: Well, they're.
9:52
Rachel: They have conflicting goals where the banker wants to buy the farm and the farmer wants to save it and not give it up to the bank.
9:58
Rachel: And then, like, the romance develops between how they interrupt each other's goals, but that are not individually, they're not villains.
10:05
Rachel: It just is a protagonist and antagonist and how.
10:08
Rachel: How their goals between each other create conflict.
10:12
Emily: Yeah. So maybe we could talk a bit about, like, as you're setting up your antagonist, I feel like there are some key things to be thinking about because you want them to.
10:26
Emily: To be super successful, I feel, and, like, impactful in the story and on your protagonist.
10:31
Emily: I think it can be useful to have to think about how do they impact your character internally, and then how do they impact your character externally.
10:42
Emily: Because if you can have them do both of those things and they're going to feel really integral to the story and to your character's journey and your plot in your character arcs are going to feel very intertwined.
10:54
Emily: So, for instance, in that story, you have the conflict, right?
10:59
Emily: They're setting up.
11:00
Emily: Your antagonist is providing external conflict.
11:03
Emily: They're doing things.
11:04
Emily: The banker is things that are going to stop the get in the way of the farmer saving her farm or whatever.
11:13
Emily: Right.
11:13
Emily: They're going to be actively trying to sabotage her goals and vice versa.
11:17
Emily: She's going to be actively trying to sabotage the banker's goals to take over the farm.
11:21
Emily: And so you have, that's where you get, like, juicy plot events and external stuff.
11:26
Emily: But then internally, they're likely in romances, right.
11:32
Emily: They're going to have something to teach each other in order to fall in love, in order to get past, like, the conflict that the external conflict, they're going to have to change on the inside.
11:40
Emily: And you want to think about how you're setting them up to be the right person to teach the other person the lesson that they need to learn.
11:49
Emily: I feel like romance is a really good one because it's just so clear, like, we have to teach each other something in order to fall in love.
11:56
Rachel: Yeah. And those, like, one of the things that this always tripped me up before is that, like, if you're in romance, those characters interact so frequently that it can be like, as they develop their romance and as they teach each other these things, like, they are in constant contact, basically.
12:16
Rachel: Like, they are frequently on the page together.
12:18
Rachel: But in some stories, you have a more nebulous antagonist that is maybe more of a puppeteer, is like pulling strings behind the scenes.
12:26
Rachel: And you still have to ask these same questions, even if they're not directly speaking to each other on the page.
12:34
Rachel: And in that case, you're not developing, like, a romance.
12:38
Rachel: You're not teaching each other a lesson, but that even though they're not in communication with each other, perhaps every single scene, they are still opposing one another's beliefs.
12:49
Rachel: Like their choices and the consequences of the choices that they make and their worldviews are opposing worldviews.
12:56
Rachel: And as they continually butt heads and run up against each other, you see the push and pull between not only their choices, but also their internal beliefs.
13:10
Rachel: So we have external plot where they run into each other, but that plot also represents, to some degree, what it is that their story point, their flaws and what they're trying to accomplish or their arc of change on the inside.
13:26
Emily: Yeah. It's essentially like they're.
13:30
Emily: You can have them teach the lesson via example.
13:34
Emily: Right.
13:34
Emily: Versus in a romance where you're there together on the page, they're literally teaching each other something.
13:39
Emily: Right.
13:39
Emily: Talking it through, like teacher to student kind of.
13:42
Emily: Except not there are those romances.
13:49
Emily: Yes.
13:50
Emily: So, but what Rachel is talking about is having, like, a voldemort or a thanos.
13:55
Emily: Right.
13:55
Emily: Who is removed from what's happening, but through our.
14:00
Emily: Through the protagonists experiences of what that person is doing, why they might be doing it, and how they are or are not benefiting from it.
14:11
Emily: Right.
14:12
Emily: That teaches the hero something.
14:14
Emily: So I'm thinking of Voldemort because it's just such an easy one.
14:18
Emily: Right.
14:18
Emily: Harry is watching Voldemort become more and more isolated, become more and more evil, become more and more disconnected from his soul.
14:26
Emily: And Harry wants to move in the opposite direction.
14:28
Emily: Right.
14:28
Emily: He wants to move towards love, friendship, all of those things.
14:31
Emily: And so Voldemort is.
14:33
Emily: He's not teaching Harry you should be loved.
14:36
Rachel: Exactly.
14:37
Emily: He's showing Harry the opposite of what will happen if he doesn't choose love and friendship and believing in himself and the people around him.
14:47
Rachel: Yeah, but the question that you mentioned earlier is, what is the purpose of this antagonist to serve the protagonists arc?
14:53
Rachel: And in both of these scenarios, that question has still been asked just to different effects, to different answers, different functions and execution.
15:10
Rachel: But that still is the central question is how is this antagonist going to challenge this protagonist to change for better or for worse, and what actions result because of that on both sides of this equation?
15:26
Emily: Yeah. A great resource to continue if this has got your ears perked up and you're like, how.
15:32
Emily: How do I do this?
15:34
Emily: The secondary characters.
15:36
Emily: Yeah, podcast.
15:39
Emily: We did a podcast about it.
15:40
Emily: Right.
15:40
Emily: We have a blog.
15:41
Rachel: It's episode 39.
15:44
Emily: Episode 39. So definitely go check that out.
15:47
Emily: Because we break down more how you can use secondary characters to teach your main character something or your protagonist something.
15:53
Emily: And in there, you'll inherently find lots of different ways that you can use a secondary antagonistic character to teach your protagonist something on their internal journey while you're using that character to then, you know, provide plot problems that your protagonist has to work through.
16:14
Rachel: Yeah. So we know that this antagonist should test the protagonists internal obstacle.
16:22
Rachel: It should be challenging them to change.
16:25
Rachel: They should be showing up to get in the way of external plot goals.
16:29
Rachel: This person should be a thorn in the character's side.
16:33
Rachel: But how do we make that.
16:34
Rachel: How do we make that happen?
16:36
Rachel: How do we make them believable?
16:40
Emily: Well, just like any other secondary character, you want them to be three dimensional.
16:47
Emily: And we talked a little bit about this in our interview for the Fantasy and Sci-Fi summit.
16:52
Emily: So if you're here from that.
16:53
Emily: Hello.
16:55
Emily: And we talk about this a lot in everything because it's so important.
16:58
Emily: You want to make sure that your.
17:01
Emily: The characters in your story are believable, even if they're Voldemort.
17:05
Emily: Or Thanos.
17:06
Emily: Right.
17:06
Emily: And they're out puppeteering, pulling strings.
17:08
Emily: You still want to deeply understand what they want, why they want it, and what they believe and where those goals and beliefs came from in their past, because that's how you're going to use, especially if you're not, you know, in a romance or some kind of buddy story where your characters are teaching directly, teaching themselves something.
17:27
Emily: You need to show us what your villain believes and wants so that we can deeply understand how, especially if it's a. If it's a villain character or morally gray character, how their negative beliefs have negatively impacted their life.
17:46
Emily: And so that's why you get in.
17:47
Emily: Like, in Harry Potter, we get those scenes where we get to deeply understand Voldemort is because we were seeing how he and Harry grew up kind of similarly, but Voldemort lacked the love that Harry had, and that made big impacts on how their lives turned out.
18:06
Rachel: Yeah.
18:07
Emily: You know, simplistically.
18:08
Emily: Do you get.
18:09
Emily: Do we get Thanos backstory in the Marvel movies?
18:14
Emily: It's been.
18:14
Emily: I've only seen them once a while ago.
18:17
Rachel: I remember when you were watching them for the first time.
18:19
Emily: And now my brother.
18:21
Rachel: My goodness.
18:22
Rachel: Emily watched them all in order, which was incredible to follow, like, all in chronological order of how they came out.
18:28
Emily: Anyway, over, like, a couple months.
18:31
Rachel: It was amazing for me to experience that.
18:35
Emily: I cried so hard at the end, the way that I went from hating Stark to loving brilliant.
18:43
Emily: Anyway, anyway, Thanos.
18:45
Rachel: Thanos.
18:45
Rachel: So we get some.
18:47
Rachel: And what's interesting is that I would love to circle back on Voldemort.
18:51
Rachel: So remind me.
18:52
Rachel: But what we get from Thanos is not necessarily, like his childhood, but we get a strong understanding of his motivations.
19:02
Rachel: So Thanos's goal is to eliminate half of life in the universe, and that's why he wants the infinity stones, so he can snap his fingers and, like, half of life goes away.
19:13
Rachel: The reason that he wants that is to basically restore balance to the universe.
19:18
Rachel: Where we're overpopulated, there's conflict, there's too many people have created too many problems.
19:25
Rachel: So if we cut the amount of people in half, we won't have the same amount of problems.
19:29
Rachel: It will be peaceful.
19:30
Rachel: There will be enough food to go around.
19:32
Rachel: There will be, like, we can eliminate the stress of overpopulation.
19:37
Rachel: So we don't see, like, we don't get a really strong idea of what brought him to that belief, but we know that he's done that on planets before, and it worked.
19:53
Rachel: He did that to Gamora's planet.
19:55
Rachel: And that is how he took her and got to see that by eliminating half of life and essentially becoming the dictator of this planet, it resulted in what he felt like was utopia.
20:09
Rachel: Obviously, killing half of the universe is not, like, great, but you can see the philosophical debate behind that of would that actually be better for the half of the people that remained?
20:21
Rachel: So you get his motivations of people are going to be like, well, no, it's bad.
20:29
Rachel: Obviously it's bad.
20:30
Rachel: But you get his motivations of, he feels like Thanos believes 100% he is doing the best for the universe.
20:38
Rachel: Like, he believes he's helping.
20:40
Rachel: That is so clear.
20:41
Rachel: He believes that it is worth it.
20:43
Rachel: He believes that this will result in good things.
20:46
Rachel: Like, you can you get that from the story that all of this is, in his head, altruistic, where, like, he'll take on the burden of killing everybody, and then everybody else gets to be happy afterwards, and, like, the universe will be better.
21:03
Rachel: And he can look out on, like, the peaceful universe and say, job well done, thanos.
21:08
Rachel: Like, he feels good about that.
21:10
Rachel: So just in the nature of that goal, we can see the philosophical debate, but we also can see that he's done it before and, like, it resulted in what he thought was good.
21:21
Rachel: And so that's why he believes that doing it to the whole universe would, like, also work pretty well.
21:30
Rachel: So his belief is clear, even if we don't necessarily see, you know, what led to it in the movies, there is a whole comic book universe that dives into him so much deeper that I think does share some backstory of, like, because he's called a titan.
21:53
Rachel: Like, that's his race.
21:54
Rachel: He is a titan, and he has, like, a race of people.
21:58
Rachel: And there's a ton of backstory with his, like, race of people that I know exists, but I don't know specifically.
22:04
Rachel: But what I'm saying right now is, like, that that detail is not included in the movies.
22:09
Rachel: We still get it.
22:10
Rachel: We still see his belief.
22:11
Rachel: We can still debate whether or not he was in the right or in the wrong or whether it would have worked or whether it wouldn't.
22:19
Rachel: So what we get from him, though smaller than probably what exists in the comic books, is still clear and worth not, I say, worth the debate.
22:31
Rachel: But I'm not meaning, like, we should all debate whether to kill half of the planet, but I'm meaning, like, it's a question.
22:38
Rachel: It's because of how it's presented.
22:41
Rachel: We can see why he would believe the way he believes and disagree with it.
22:48
Rachel: I feel like I need to be really clear.
22:49
Rachel: I disagree with thanos.
22:54
Emily: Oh, I love it.
22:55
Emily: I think it's so, like.
22:57
Emily: Yeah.
22:58
Emily: Being able to have that debate, we see the endgame of his whole backstory and everything that brought him up.
23:03
Emily: Like, he's very clear in what it is that he wants versus.
23:08
Emily: I feel like Voldemort is actually a little less clear in what it is that he wants and why he wants it.
23:15
Emily: And it's more that we just see how his childhood built him to be the person that he is and how that childhood was similar to Harry's, but different and very significant ways which allow Harry to be the kind of person who would sacrifice himself to stop Voldemort versus Voldemort, who is not willing to do that.
23:37
Rachel: But we see his.
23:39
Rachel: This was going to be my question for you.
23:41
Rachel: Circling back on vulnerable.
23:42
Rachel: So, surprise, surprise to all of the listeners, I've never actually read Harry Potter.
23:46
Rachel: I can't believe it.
23:47
Emily: I can't believe I have it.
23:48
Rachel: I know.
23:49
Emily: I mean, and we also.
23:51
Emily: I feel like we have to say, you know, caveat.
23:56
Emily: JK walling kind of sucks right now.
23:57
Emily: Yes.
23:58
Rachel: Okay. Yes. Agree.
23:59
Rachel: We don't.
24:00
Rachel: Don't.
24:00
Rachel: I don't feel any need to read them right now.
24:03
Rachel: I saw the movies.
24:04
Rachel: They were fine.
24:04
Rachel: They were great.
24:05
Rachel: I loved the movies.
24:07
Rachel: But Voldemort is not a pov character, to my knowledge.
24:12
Rachel: You see his past through Harry's eyes, through, like, functions of the plot, like the Penceeve, and, like, things where he can go, quote back in time, but really, he's seeing a vision of the past, but it's all through Harry's eyes still.
24:27
Rachel: And we're still able to get that.
24:28
Rachel: Cause I think sometimes we get questions that are like, how can I show all of this antagonist complex history without having them be a pov character?
24:36
Rachel: And there are ways you can accomplish that, such as how Harry is able to see Voldemort's past.
24:44
Emily: Yeah, I'm actually doing that right now in my book, too, because I have, um, you know, trying to avoid spoilers, but my book one ended with a big bang, and the villain came out on top.
24:55
Emily: And so now I have my characters, um, investigating him to try to find a way to take him down.
25:02
Emily: And in investigating him, they're learning about his, you know, his childhood, his life, his wife, his child, like, all of those things.
25:10
Emily: And so, um, we're getting a fuller picture.
25:13
Emily: Like, there are ways to bring that on the page where your protagonist can learn.
25:16
Emily: And he's heavily.
25:17
Emily: He's very.
25:18
Emily: He's not on the page very much in book two at all.
25:20
Emily: And so he's not, you know, sharing this information.
25:22
Emily: They're digging it up.
25:24
Emily: So there's.
25:24
Emily: Yeah, there's ways to do it.
25:26
Rachel: Yeah. But it's not like.
25:27
Rachel: It's not like in very often when you get, like, a villain monologue in a movie in, like, the climax scene where the villain is finally explaining why they did everything they did and you're like, why are we monologuing right now?
25:40
Rachel: Just kill him like that.
25:42
Rachel: That's not effective.
25:43
Rachel: Usually is saving all of that for the villain monologue at the very end for your protagonist, like, wins.
25:51
Emily: Yeah.
25:52
Rachel: There are ways to weave it throughout.
25:54
Rachel: There are ways to, like, uncover.
25:56
Rachel: What is.
25:57
Rachel: What are these?
25:58
Rachel: What are the motivations of this villain?
25:58
Rachel: Why are they doing what they are doing without just, like, kind of saving it all to that last monologue at the end before you defeat them?
26:08
Emily: Yeah.
26:09
Rachel: That makes them come across like a Scooby Doo villain.
26:12
Rachel: I was just talking to one of my clients about Scooby Doo villains.
26:18
Rachel: Because if you're.
26:19
Rachel: If you don't.
26:20
Rachel: If you.
26:21
Rachel: If you do not have, like, the clear motivations if you do not have, like, them being a present and, like, fluid interruption to these plot goals if you don't have them being, like, if they themselves are kind of cardboard, not dynamic they really do come across as, like, I'm gonna like, it was me the whole time.
26:45
Rachel: And then you're like, why?
26:47
Rachel: Why like, it?
26:47
Rachel: They come across as really, like, what was I was I talking about with my client?
26:53
Rachel: Like, villainy for no other reason than to be the reveal.
27:01
Rachel: You know, like, their villainy for the drama.
27:04
Rachel: That's what I mean.
27:05
Rachel: Yeah, but not, like, villainy because they have, like, interesting motivations and, like, actual goals.
27:12
Rachel: They're just villainy to be like, ha, ha.
27:14
Rachel: I am the villain.
27:15
Rachel: I am the drama.
27:17
Rachel: Rip my mask off and here I am and take me away to jail.
27:20
Rachel: Like, that's Scooby Doo.
27:21
Rachel: But if you bring complexity and depth to them as a character and, like, understand why.
27:25
Rachel: Why are they doing this and how is it affecting the people around them?
27:29
Rachel: And, like, why do they believe what they believe and why is this important to them?
27:34
Rachel: That's how you can, like, get out of Scooby Doo land and get into, like, okay, this is someone that I can understand and get behind and, like, see, you know, understand why they are doing what they're doing which is what makes us connect with characters.
27:47
Emily: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome.
27:51
Emily: So a couple last notes that I kind of wanted to write.
27:56
Emily: And if you have any others, we can obviously add them.
27:59
Emily: But the first one is that forever.
28:01
Rachel: You know that.
28:05
Emily: But one of them is you can hide your antagonist.
28:09
Emily: And I think that can be a really fun twist if your character thinks that one person is the antagonist but it's actually the other, so another, just because it's so well known and clear.
28:21
Emily: Harry Potter, again, Sirius Black in the third book is a really great example of this because Harry thinks that Sirius Black is the antagonist he's trying.
28:29
Emily: He thinks that Sirius is the one who killed his parents.
28:32
Emily: He thinks that he's the one that he wants to take down, when really it's the rat.
28:36
Rachel: Yeah.
28:37
Emily: Peter Pettigrew. Peter Pettigrew.
28:39
Emily: But another one.
28:41
Emily: Spoilers for the housemaid by Freda McFadden coming up.
28:46
Rachel: So pause now, if you don't want.
28:49
Emily: Spoilers about the housemaid, because if you hear this, you probably just won't want to read it.
28:54
Emily: I feel like it's that big of a plot to it, but I just read it.
28:58
Emily: I just consumed it last week in, like a day.
29:01
Emily: Rachel read it a few months ago.
29:06
Emily: The whole first half the book, we think it's the wife.
29:08
Emily: And I think this is, like, pretty.
29:10
Emily: It's a trope that is used in thrillers, I would imagine.
29:13
Emily: But, you know, for the first half of the book, we think it's the wife that's the antagonist.
29:18
Emily: And she is kind of, because she's the protagonist is trying to secure a stable job in this woman's household, and this woman is, like, sabotaging her.
29:29
Emily: And so she is being an antagonist.
29:31
Emily: But we learn that the true antagonist, who is the antagonist to both women, is the husband.
29:38
Emily: And so that can be a really effective twist as well.
29:42
Rachel: Yeah. I remember you texting me and being like, Nina is the worst.
29:46
Rachel: And I was like, ha ha ha.
29:47
Rachel: Just you wait.
29:49
Rachel: Nina is not that bad.
29:51
Emily: When it switched to her TLB, I was like, oh, my God.
29:54
Rachel: I know. Yeah. But I really think the twist, which we won't spoil for you comes at the end in the last scene.
30:03
Rachel: And that's the best part.
30:05
Rachel: Yes.
30:06
Emily: So good.
30:07
Rachel: But in that case, like, that is where you are using.
30:12
Rachel: That's why, like, this is important, that the way you view your story is through your protagonist's eyes.
30:17
Rachel: So, like, view your twists through your protagonist's eyes.
30:21
Rachel: Because in the housemaid, the first half of the book, through Millie's eyes, Nina is the antagonist.
30:28
Rachel: That's what, intentionally, the author has made.
30:33
Rachel: Millie, see if you, like, go back and look at that first half again, you're like, oh, yeah, he's a shitty person the whole time.
30:40
Rachel: But, like, we're.
30:42
Rachel: It's unreliable.
30:43
Rachel: Like, we're being led to believe it's one person.
30:45
Rachel: And then once we get the twist and we go to the husband, and you see, like, through Nina's perspective, you know, what.
30:52
Rachel: What led her to be the person that she was in the first half of the book?
30:57
Rachel: It's like, a very intentional, okay, now our protagonist has shifted.
31:02
Rachel: Like, Nina is our protagonist now.
31:04
Rachel: Now we get to see the truth.
31:06
Rachel: The real antagonist is Andrew, the husband.
31:10
Rachel: Yeah.
31:11
Emily: And it doesn't switch back to Millie's perspective until the author has solidified that he is the antagonist for both women.
31:19
Emily: So we don't actually go back to Millie thinking, like, everything is fine.
31:24
Emily: Andrew's the best.
31:24
Emily: Nina's the worst.
31:25
Emily: Like, it literally switches.
31:27
Emily: Like, we get back into Millie's head when she realizes that he is the.
31:32
Emily: He is the villain.
31:33
Emily: There's no. Yeah, there's no overlap there.
31:38
Emily: Cool.
31:38
Emily: So one thing that I was thinking about when I was thinking about this episode is, in romance, oftentimes we talk about how the romantic interest is the antagonist, but that's not always true.
31:53
Emily: So I wanted to talk a little bit about that because, like, if you look at pride and prejudice or season two of Bridgerton, which I'm currently rewatching.
32:02
Emily: Right.
32:02
Emily: There's so clearly each other's antagonists in that whole season, and.
32:11
Emily: And that's a really common way to do it.
32:13
Emily: But I think oftentimes people make the mistake of thinking that that's the only way to set it up.
32:19
Emily: So I was.
32:19
Emily: Do you have thoughts?
32:21
Rachel: Yeah, I do.
32:21
Rachel: I mean, yeah, there's the whole.
32:23
Rachel: Because a trope that's so huge right now is enemies to lovers.
32:27
Rachel: And that entire trope is built with.
32:30
Rachel: With this in mind where, like, the protagonists and the antagonist are enemies and they become lovers.
32:35
Rachel: And so, like, literally, that is the setup where in a romance, if you have a protagonist and antagonists that are opposing, it's enemies to lovers.
32:44
Rachel: Also add, like, a little asterisk.
32:46
Rachel: There's debate, like, how far is an enemy versus, like, a rival.
32:49
Rachel: There's rivals to lovers.
32:51
Rachel: Anyway, knowing, though, that if you have a protagonist antagonist with opposing goals, you're in that direction.
32:57
Rachel: That's very common.
32:59
Rachel: On the flip side, though, if you have, like, shared goals where you're accomplishing something together, you then have another space for that antagonist, and that can circle back around to the circumstance or the social structure.
33:16
Rachel: I feel like that's pretty common with romance, where the two characters themselves are not antagonistic towards each other, but what keeps them apart is the villain.
33:29
Rachel: And a lot of times, that is, like, social structure or a villain or some sort of circumstance that is keeping them apart.
33:40
Rachel: And in that case, that would be what they're both teaming up to fight against.
33:46
Rachel: And then romantic right now is very common, where you have two protagonists that end up teaming up with similar goals to take out a villain character, take out a main antagonist.
34:01
Rachel: But in that case, I think the most compelling part about romance is what keeps the characters apart from one another.
34:09
Rachel: So if you can figure out how that thing ties together with an antagonistic force, why that happens and why that exists and how it drives the characters closer yet apart at the same time, what's the push for pull?
34:24
Rachel: You'll be able to develop something still very emotionally resonant, and that makes sense without feeling like, oh, this is just another tropey book that doesn't have any substance.
34:41
Emily: Yeah. I'm reading Emily Henry's new book.
34:46
Emily: Funny story.
34:47
Rachel: I haven't read it.
34:49
Emily: I'm not very far.
34:50
Emily: But it's not spoiler because it's.
34:53
Emily: The whole premise of the book is that the.
34:56
Emily: The female main character is she gets dumped by her fiance, like, right before the wedding because he leaves her for his best friend.
35:07
Emily: And the best friend's boyfriend, like, she ends up.
35:13
Emily: She ends up moving in with the best friend's ex boyfriend.
35:21
Emily: So, like, both of their lovers, their lovers ran away together, and so now they're, like, living together, and they're both miserable because they both just got, like, cheated on and dumped by the same, you know, the same people.
35:33
Emily: And so the romance is that they're gonna go to basically pretend to be dating to, like, make their exes up.
35:44
Rachel: Jealous.
35:45
Rachel: Yeah.
35:45
Emily: And so it's not even like they're trying to.
35:48
Emily: I mean, I guess they're teaming up to take them down, but it's.
35:53
Emily: It's a fun little play on that.
35:55
Emily: So they're not in each other's way in that they're not the antagonists to each other's stories.
36:00
Emily: Their antagonists are the ones who cheated on them.
36:04
Emily: But I'm excited to see how she plays with that trope.
36:07
Rachel: That is fun.
36:09
Rachel: Okay, so there are two other kind of examples that I wanted to talk about before we wrap up.
36:18
Rachel: One is, like, antagonist redemption stories.
36:22
Rachel: Everybody knows that Prince Zuko is my boyfriend and that I love him with all of my heart.
36:28
Rachel: So I have to talk about Prince Zuko for a second.
36:30
Rachel: So Prince Zuko from Avatar the Last Airbender starts out as firmly antagonist character antagonist Zone, where Aang, who is the protagonist, is the avatar.
36:44
Rachel: He is trying to restore balance to the world, et cetera, stop the fire nation from taking over the world.
36:50
Rachel: Prince Zuko is the prince of the Fire Nation, and he is trying to capture Aang.
36:55
Rachel: They have diametrically opposed goals.
36:58
Rachel: At the beginning of the story, however, Prince Zuko comes into a massive change in worldview when he realizes that Aang's worldview is correct and he lets go of the worldview that he has been brought up with, which is the Fire nation worldview of world domination.
37:21
Rachel: And he has very intense internal motivators, which is searching for honor and love from his family, from his father.
37:30
Rachel: So we understand Zuko when he is a villain.
37:34
Rachel: I want to make that very clear.
37:36
Rachel: He makes sense as a villain.
37:38
Rachel: We get it.
37:39
Rachel: We know why he is the way he is.
37:41
Rachel: We know why he wants to capture Aang so badly.
37:44
Rachel: And what makes his redemption work so well is because you see him struggle with the beliefs that he's grown up with in comparison to Aang.
37:56
Rachel: You see him wonder, what is the right thing.
37:59
Rachel: You see him struggle with the truth, the lesson that he needs to be learning.
38:06
Rachel: And you ultimately see him switch sides, going from an antagonist to a protagonist, where he becomes part of the gang and he becomes a really important part of taking down the Fire nation.
38:20
Rachel: Spoilers.
38:21
Rachel: The show's like 15 years old, but anyway, you can take an antagonist who firmly exists in that conflict of opposing protagonist goals and bring them back to the right side, bring them back to the good.
38:41
Rachel: But at the same time, we still really need to understand why they are the way that they are so that you can heal them.
38:49
Rachel: And through that healing, fixing the wounds that they held from their child that made them bad.
38:56
Rachel: Like, fixing those is what can show them the light, bring them to the right side.
39:02
Emily: And I think it's most effective if you can have a way for who used to be the protagonist and the antagonist to become protagonists working together against a different antagonistic force.
39:15
Emily: Right.
39:16
Emily: That's why it works well in more spoilers for the housemaid cause of being able to hear.
39:23
Emily: But when Nina and Millie end up, like, teaming up together and coming up with a plan at the end, right now we know who the real antagonist is.
39:31
Emily: And so even though Nina kind of really was an antagonist towards Millie because she was trying to ruin her life, now she's moved past that.
39:37
Emily: Like, they're working together towards a goal.
39:39
Emily: And so you can always make an antagonist switch sides, I guess, but you would want to come up with.
39:50
Emily: With some other new antagonistic force, some other new conflict that becomes the thing that they're focusing.
39:55
Rachel: Yes, exactly.
39:57
Rachel: The last character that I want to mention briefly before we wrap up is Frankenstein, because we were talking about the book Frankenstein before we started recording.
40:09
Rachel: And this is why it's important to think about whose eyes are we viewing the story through and what is the real message of the story.
40:18
Rachel: Because if you take a look at Frankenstein, where the Doctor, Frankenstein, the Doctor is the protagonist of that book, at least to start, he creates this monster, Frankenstein's monster, and then we hates the monster for being an abomination, and then the monster is viewed as the villain.
40:43
Rachel: But really, there's a very poignant message to that story that it's not Frankenstein's monster's fault.
40:49
Rachel: It's not the monster's fault.
40:51
Rachel: If Frankenstein would have showed the monster the love that that monster deserved, he never would have been a monster.
40:58
Rachel: You know, like, there's all of this philosophical debate wrapped up in this.
41:03
Rachel: In that story, and, like, the resulting things that the monster does and, like, how smart the monster becomes and, like, how he turns Frankenstein's sins back against him.
41:16
Rachel: And, like, by the end of that book, you're really like, oh, shit.
41:19
Rachel: The monster was the protagonist the whole time.
41:23
Rachel: The doctor was the villain.
41:25
Emily: The monster was the hero, the doctor was the protagonist.
41:28
Rachel: But, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the monster was the hero, the doctor was the protagonist, who ended up being the bad guy.
41:37
Emily: So that's a great example of how those terms can get interchangeable.
41:41
Emily: But you have to focus on, like, whose eyes are you?
41:44
Emily: Are we telling the story through, and what is their conflict and therefore their antagonistic force.
41:50
Rachel: Yeah. And the ultimate message that you want to make with your story, because by the end, we are all like, oh, Frankenstein sucks.
41:58
Rachel: Yeah, the monster also sucks, don't get me wrong.
42:01
Rachel: But, like, we understand the monster.
42:03
Rachel: We get the monster.
42:04
Rachel: We're like, yeah, you suck for a reason.
42:06
Rachel: The doctor is like, you're shitty.
42:09
Rachel: And so.
42:10
Rachel: But that's the.
42:11
Rachel: That's, like, the message.
42:12
Rachel: That's the complication, the philosophical debate, you know, so you can also be weaving in your story, point into, you know, these conflicts.
42:22
Emily: Yeah. Cool. Well, that's all we've got on antagonist today, friends.
42:27
Emily: If you have any questions about antagonist, Dylan's Marley Gray characters, we love talking about it.
42:32
Emily: If you have questions about anything else, let us know.
42:35
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42:43
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42:48
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42:50
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43:01
Emily: Okay, cool, cool.
43:04
Rachel: Awesome.
43:05
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43:12
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43:13
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43:19
Rachel: Link in the show notes.
43:20
Rachel: We'll see you there.