Category Archives: Protagonist & Antagonist

Protagonist and Antagonist

Protagonist drives the plot forward.

Antagonist tries to stop him.

The Protagonist is the Prime Mover of the effort to achieve the Story’s Goal. The Antagonist is the Chief Obstacle to that effort. In a sense, Protagonist is the irresistible force and Antagonist is the immovable object.

Often, a Protagonist is cast as the hero – trying to accomplish something for good purposes through unflinching dedication to the task.  Similarly, the Antagonist is frequently cast as the villain – trying to prevent the Protagonist from achieving that task for evil purposes.

But good and evil are not part of what a Protagonist or Antagonist is. They are just qualities our culture often associates with the achiever and the stopper.

For example, consider where good and evil reside in a typical James Bond movie.  Usually, it is the bad guy who hatches a plan and then sets off to realize it.  And it is Bond who must try to stop the bad guy and set things right.

In this example, the villain is actually the Protagonist trying to achieve the goal (albeit an evil one) whereas Bond is the Antagonist trying to prevent a disaster.

So if, for a moment, we remove the preconception of a Protagonist being good and an Antagonist being bad, we might ask ourselves, where exactly do these two characters come from and how do they work dramatically in story structure?

In our own minds, we survey our environment and consider whether or not we could improve things by taking action to change them. The struggle between the Protagonist and Antagonist represents this inner argument: is it better to leave things the way they are or to try and rearrange them?

The Protagonist represents our Initiative, the motivation to change the status quo. The Antagonist embodies our Reticence to change the status quo. These are perhaps our two most obvious human traits – the drive to alter our environment and the drive to keep things the way they are. That is likely why the Archetypes that represent them are usually the two most visible in a story.

Functionally, the character you choose as your Protagonist will exhibit unswerving commitment to effecting change. No matter what the obstacles, no matter what the price, the Protagonist will charge forward and try to convince everyone else to follow.

Without a Protagonist, your story would have no directed thrust. It would likely meander through a series of events without any sense of compelling inevitability. When the climax arrives, it would likely be weak, not seen as the culmination and moment of truth so much as simply the end.

This is not to say that the Protagonist won’t be misled or even temporarily convinced to stop trying, but like a smoldering fire the Protagonist is a self-starter. Eventually, he or she will ignite again and once more resume the drive toward the goal.

Still, do not feel obligated to fashion a Protagonist whose storytelling qualities make it the most forceful character. The Protagonist does not have to be the most powerful personality. Rather, it will simply be the character who keeps pressing forward, even if in a gentle manner until all the obstacles to success are either overcome or slowly eroded.

When creating your own stories, sometimes you will know exactly what your goal is right off the bat. In such cases, the choice of Protagonist is usually an easy one. You simply pick the character whose storytelling interests and nature are best suited to the objective.

Other times, you may begin with only a setting and a cast of interesting characters but have no idea what the goal of the story will be. By trying out the role of Protagonist on each of your characters, you can determine what kind of a goal the nature of each character might suggest.

By working out an appropriate goal for each character as if it were the Protagonist, you’ll have a choice of goals. And once you have chosen one as the story goal, each of your other characters now has a clear motivation of their own – a tangible end-game they are hoping to achieve for themselves as a result of their part in the effort to achieve the overall story goal.

What, now, of the Antagonist? We have all heard the idioms, Let sleeping dogs lie, Leave well enough alone, and If it works – don’t fix it. All of these express that very same human quality embodied by the Antagonist: Reticence.

To be clear, Reticence does not mean that the Antagonist is afraid of change. While that may be true, it may instead be that the Antagonist is simply comfortable with the way things are or may even be ecstatic about them. Or, he or she may not care about the way things are but hate the way they would become if the goal were achieved.

Functionally, the character you choose as your Antagonist will try anything and everything to prevent the goal from being achieved. No matter what the cost, any price would not seem as bad to this character as the conditions he or she would endure if the goal comes to be. The Antagonist will never cease in its efforts and will marshal every resource (both human and material) to see that the Protagonist fails in his efforts.

Without an Antagonist, your story would have no concerted force directed against the Protagonist. Obstacles would seem arbitrary and inconsequential. When the climax arrives, it would likely feel insignificant, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

In choosing one of your characters as the Antagonist, don’t be trapped into only selecting a mean-spirited one. As described earlier, it may well be that the Protagonist is the Bad Guy and the Antagonist is the Good Guy. Or, both may be Good or both Bad.

The important thing is that the Antagonist must be in a position in the plot to place obstacles in the path of the Protagonist. Since the drive of the Protagonist is measured by the size of the obstacles he or she must overcome, it is usually a good idea to pick the character who can bring to bear the greatest obstacles.

In summary, while you may find it easier to write by thinking in terms of good guys and bad guys or heroes and villains, be sure to step back every once in a while and consider the underlying dramatic functions represented by the Protagonist and Antagonist regardless of noble or ill intent.

Melanie Anne Phillips

Also from Melanie Anne Phillips…

Protagonist & Antagonist – Who ARE These Guys?

protagonist-antagonistThe protagonist and antagonist may not be who you think they are.  For one thing, a protagonist is not necessarily the hero of a story.  Structurally speaking, the protagonist is the one who shakes up the status quo – that’s the “pro” part, while the antagonist is the one who tries to stop that effort or put it back the way it was.

In a James Bond film, for example, it is often the bad guy who begins an evil process that James Bond is called upon to thwart.  This makes the bad guy the protagonist even though he is the villain, and James the antagonist even though he is the hero.

In practice, a true hero is a protagonist who is also the main character (we identify with him) and is also a good guy.  A villain is an antagonist who is also the influence character (he has an opposing life philosophy or morality to that of the main character) and is also a bad guy.

But these traits can be mixed and matched between the two characters creating, for example, anti heroes and sympathetic villains.

The main point here is to stop thinking of protagonist and antagonist as hero and villain but as structural functions – to begin a quest or to try and stop a quest.  Then, you can have some fun as an author determining which of these is the good guy and bad guy and with which one you wish your readers or audience to identify.

This video was excerpted from:

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Fire Your Protagonist

Many authors start with a Protagonist and then build a cast of characters around him or her. But as a story develops, it may turn out that one of the other characters becomes more suited for that role. Sticking with the original Protagonist causes the story to become mis-centered, and it fails to take on a life of its own.

To see if this has happened to your story, try the following:

Take each of your characters, one by one, and try them out as the Protagonist. Give each a job interview. You ask them, “What would the story’s goal be if you were the Protagonist? What would you be working toward? What would you hope to achieve? How would you rally the other characters around your efforts?”

More than likely, you will find one character who seems just a little more driven – a character whose goal seems far more important than any of the others, one that not only affects him but all the other principal characters as well. That character should be your Protagonist, and it may not be the character you originally cast in that role. If it isn’t, fire your Protagonist and hire the new one!

Sure, you’ve become attached to the original character, but if he or she is no longer write for the job, well, business is business. You have to think about what is best for the entire company of players in your story without playing favorites.

Of course, with a new Protagonist, you’ll need to re-center your story and possibly to change the nature of the goal. But in so doing, your story will gain a renewed sense of purpose as this new character takes the helm.

Write your novel step by step…

Protagonist Personal

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Step 49

Protagonist Personal

Characters have dramatic functions, but the reader or audience needs to identify with them as real people.  A necessary but difficult task is to intertwine the personal and structural aspects of each character so that they blend seamlessly together and become interdependent in a unified person.

For your protagonist, what personal qualities or previous experiences have led them to become a protagonist in this particular story, the Prime Mover in the effort to achieve the goal?  Conversely, if your character by nature is wishy-washy, how does that affect their efforts when called upon by story circumstances to function as a protagonist?

By integrating all aspects of a character together, it will seem to be driven by real motivations, enacted in a truly human manner.

To further refine your protagonist, refer to the material you developed for that character including personal goal and moral issue.  If your protagonist is also your Main Character, consider what you developed there as well.

For this step, write a brief description of your protagonist’s overall nature, incorporating all of this material.

 

Identifying Your Antagonist

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Step 48

Identifying Your Antagonist

While the protagonist attempts to accomplish the goal, the antagonist seeks to thwart that effort, either preventing the achievement or by achieving it himself.

These efforts have nothing to do with whether the antagonist is a good guy or a bad guy.  For example, in most James Bond films, the Villain is the protagonist, for it is he who initiates a plan, thereby driving the plot.  Structurally, James Bond himself is an antagonist, since he tries to return things to the status quo.

So, who we cheer for and our moral prerogatives are really not involved in this choice.

Referring to your cast of characters, your plot synopsis and the refinement of your protagonist you wrote in the last step, pick one of your existing characters as your antagonist and describe how he, she, or it is focused on preventing the protagonist from achieving the story goal.

In the off chance that none of your characters can easily fulfill the role of antagonist, return to the character development steps and create a new character specifically for this task.

 

Protagonist and Antagonist

Protagonist drives the plot forward.

Antagonist tries to stop him.

Now before we get into more detail, the Protagonist is not a Hero or even the Main Character.  And the Antagonist is not a Villain or the Influence Character who tries to get the Main Character to change his ways or values.

The Protagonist is the Prime Mover of the effort to achieve the Story’s Goal – that and nothing more. The Antagonist is the Chief Obstacle to that effort.  In a sense, Protagonist is the irresistible force and Antagonist is the immovable object.

Protagonist and Antagonist are archetypal characters.  That means they have a dramatic function in the story:

Hero is a combination character who is a Protagonist who is ALSO a Main Character (the one we identify with) and also a good guy (with good will toward others).

Villain is another combination character who is an Antagonist who is ALSO the Influence character (trying to change the Main Character’s heart and mind) and also a bad guy (with ill will toward others).

In this article, we’re going to put aside those other aspects and focus solely on  the archetypal function of these two essential archetypal characters.

Where do the Protagonist and Antagonist come from?  When people come together in groups for a common purpose, one emerges as the voice of change and another as the voice of the status quo.

The character who wishes to affect change is the Protagonist and the one who wants to maintain or return to the status quo is the Antagonist.  Over hundreds of generations, storytellers documented these two archetypes (and others) because it is what they saw in real life.  And so, eventually, the archetypal characters became part of the conventions of story structure.

But why do these two characters emerge in groups in the real world?

When we try to solve problems in our individual lives, we use all our faculties – reason, skepticism, etc.  When we gather in groups to solve common problems, we get a lot more done if we specialize so that one person becomes the voice of reason and another the resident skeptic.  This way, each of the specialists can give his or her full attention to the problem from his perspective, and as a whole, the group gets a deeper dive into the issues that if we all tried to do all the jobs ourselves.

So, in a sense, the functions that emerge in a group, represent the same traits we have in our own minds as individuals.  For example, in our own minds, we survey our environment and consider whether or not we could improve things by taking action to change them. The struggle between the drive to change things and the drive to leave them be is the same struggle represented by the Protagonist and Antagonist in a story.

So, in a word, the Protagonist represents our Initiative, the motivation to change the status quo. The Antagonist embodies our Reticence to change the status quo. These are perhaps our two most obvious human traits – the drive to alter our environment and the drive to keep things the way they are. That is likely why the Archetypes that represent them are usually the two most visible in a story.

Functionally, the character you choose as your Protagonist will exhibit unswerving drive. No matter what the obstacles, no matter what the price, the Protagonist will charge forward and try to convince everyone else to follow.

Without a Protagonist, your story would have no directed drive. It would likely meander through a series of events without any sense of compelling inevitability. When the climax arrives, it would likely be weak, not seen as the culmination and moment of truth so much as simply the end.

This is not to say that the Protagonist won’t be misled or even temporarily convinced to stop trying, but like a smoldering fire the Protagonist is a self-starter. Eventually, he or she will ignite again and once more resume the drive toward the goal.

 

What, now, of the Antagonist? We have all heard the idioms, Let sleeping dogs lie, Leave well enough alone, and If it works – don’t fix it. All of these express that very same human quality embodied by the Antagonist: Reticence.

To be clear, Reticence does not mean that the Antagonist is afraid of change. While that may be true, it may instead be that the Antagonist is simply comfortable with the way things are or may even be ecstatic about them. Or, he or she may not care about the way things are but hate the way they would become if the goal were achieved.

Functionally, your Antagonist will try anything and everything to prevent the goal from being achieved. No matter what the cost, any price would not seem as bad to this character as the conditions he or she would endure if the goal comes to be. The Antagonist will never cease in its efforts, and will marshal every resource (human and material) to see that the Protagonist fails in his efforts.

Without an Antagonist, your story would have no concerted force directed against the Protagonist. Obstacles would seem arbitrary and inconsequential. When the climax arrives, it would likely seem insignificant, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

As with the Protagonist, don’t be trapped into building an Antagonist with a mean personality. There are many stories with Antagonist’s who are actually right in trying to stop the goal.

Think of James Bond for a moment.  The “Bond Villain” is almost always the Protagonist – starting some new scheme with a goal to change the world.  Bond himself is the Antagonist, as strange as it may seem, for his job is to prevent the change and/or put things back the way they were.  So, as described earlier, it may well be that the Protagonist is the Bad Guy and the Antagonist is the Good Guy. Or, in fact both may be Good or both Bad, as often happens in more sophisticated stories.

The important thing is that the Antagonist must be in a position in the plot to place obstacles in the path of the Protagonist, not just to make the quest more difficult (another archetype does that), but to actually try to prevent the Protagonist from succeeding.

Now that you know a bit more about who the Protagonist and Antagonist really are, see if you can’t refine their dramatic functions in your next story or even the one you may currently have in development

Melanie Anne Phillips

Learn more about Archetypal Characters

Protagonist & Antagonist

Protagonist drives the plot forward.

Antagonist tries to stop him.

The Protagonist is the Prime Mover of the effort to achieve the Story’s Goal. The Antagonist is the Chief Obstacle to that effort. In a sense, Protagonist is the irresistible force and Antagonist is the immovable object.

In our own minds, we survey our environment and consider whether or not we could improve things by taking action to change them. The struggle between the Protagonist and Antagonist represents this inner argument: is it better to leave things the way they are or to try and rearrange them?

The Protagonist represents our Initiative, the motivation to change the status quo. The Antagonist embodies our Reticence to change the status quo. These are perhaps our two most obvious human traits – the drive to alter our environment and the drive to keep things the way they are. That is likely why the Archetypes that represent them are usually the two most visible in a story.

Functionally, the character you choose as your Protagonist will exhibit unswerving drive. No matter what the obstacles, no matter what the price, the Protagonist will charge forward and try to convince everyone else to follow.

Without a Protagonist, your story would have no directed drive. It would likely meander through a series of events without any sense of compelling inevitability. When the climax arrives, it would likely be weak, not seen as the culmination and moment of truth so much as simply the end.

This is not to say that the Protagonist won’t be misled or even temporarily convinced to stop trying, but like a smoldering fire the Protagonist is a self-starter. Eventually, he or she will ignite again and once more resume the drive toward the goal.

In choosing which of your characters to assign the role of Protagonist, do not feel obligated to choose one whose Storytelling qualities make it the most forceful. The Protagonist does not have to be the most powerful personality. Rather, it will simply be the character who keeps pressing forward, even if in a gentle manner until all the obstacles to success are either overcome or slowly eroded.

When creating your own stories, sometimes you will know what your goal is right off the bat. In such cases, the choice of Protagonist is usually an easy one. You simply pick the character whose storytelling interests and nature is best suited to the objective.

Other times, you may begin with only a setting and your characters, having no idea what the goal will turn out to be. By trying out the role of Protagonist on each of our characters, you can determine what kind of a goal the nature of that character might suggest.

By working out an appropriate goal for each character as if it were the Protagonist, you’ll have a choice of goals. Developing the plot of your story then becomes a matter of choosing among options rather than an exercise in the brute force of creating something from nothing.

What, now, of the Antagonist? We have all heard the idioms, Let sleeping dogs lie, Leave well enough alone, and If it works – don’t fix it. All of these express that very same human quality embodied by the Antagonist: Reticence.

To be clear, Reticence does not mean that the Antagonist is afraid of change. While that may be true, it may instead be that the Antagonist is simply comfortable with the way things are or may even be ecstatic about them. Or, he or she may not care about the way things are but hate the way they would become if the goal were achieved.

Functionally, the character you choose as your Antagonist will try anything and everything to prevent the goal from being achieved. No matter what the cost, any price would not seem as bad to this character as the conditions he or she would endure if the goal comes to be. The Antagonist will never cease in its efforts, and will marshal every resource (human and material) to see that the Protagonist fails in his efforts.

Without an Antagonist, your story would have no concerted force directed against the Protagonist. Obstacles would seem arbitrary and inconsequential. When the climax arrives, it would likely seem insignificant, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

In choosing one of your characters as the Antagonist, don’t be trapped into only selecting a mean-spirited one. As described earlier, it may well be that the Protagonist is the Bad Guy and the Antagonist is the Good Guy. Or, both may be Good or both Bad.

The important thing is that the Antagonist must be in a position in the plot to place obstacles in the path of the Protagonist. Since the drive of the Protagonist is measured by the size of the obstacles he or she must overcome, it is usually a good idea to pick the character who can bring to bear the greatest obstacles.

Ask yourself which of your characters would have the most to lose or be the most distressed if the goal is achieved. That will likely be your Antagonist. But don’t discount the other candidates out of hand. In storytelling, characters are not always what they seem. Even the character who seems most aligned with the Protagonist’s purpose may have a hidden agenda that makes them the perfect choice for Antagonist. You might play such a character as an apparent aid to the effort, and later reveal how that character was actually behind all the troubles encountered.

The Hero Breaks Down

Groucho Marx once said, “You’re headed for a nervous breakdown. Why don’t you pull yourself to pieces?” That, in fact, is what we’re going to do to our hero.

Now many writers focus on a Hero and a Villain as the primary characters in any story. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But as we are about to discover, there are so many more options for creative character construction.

Take the average hero. What qualities might we expect to find in the fellow? For one thing, the traditional hero is always the Protagonist. By that we mean he or she is the Prime Mover in the effort to achieve the story goal. This doesn’t presuppose the hero is a willing leader of that effort. For all we know he might accept that charge kicking and screaming. Nonetheless, once stuck in the situation, the hero drives the push to achieve the goal.

Another quality of a stereotypical hero is that he is also the Main Character. By this we mean that the hero is constructed so that the audience stands in his shoes. In other words, the audience identifies with the hero and sees the story as centering around him.

A third quality of the most usual hero configuration is being a “Good Guy.” Simply, he intends to do the right thing. Of course, he might be misguided or inept, but he wants to do good, and he does try.

And finally, let us note that heroes are usually the Central Character, meaning that he gets more “media real estate” (pages, screen time, lines of dialog) than any other character.

Listing these four qualities we get:

1. Protagonist.

2. Main Character.

3. Good Guy.

4. Central Character

Getting right to the point, the first two items in the list are structural in nature, while the last two are storytelling. Protagonist describes the character’s function from the Objective View described earlier. Main Character positions the audience in that particular character’s spot through the Main Character View. In contrast, being a Good Guy is a matter of personality, and Central Character is determined by the attention given to that character by the author’s storytelling.

You’ve probably noticed that we’ve used common terms such as Protagonist, Main Character, and Central Character in very specific ways. In actual practice, most authors bandy these terms about more or less interchangeably. There’s nothing wrong with that, but for structural purposes it’s not very precise. That’s why you’ll see Dramatica being something of a stickler in its use of terms and their definitions: it’s the only way to be clear.

At this juncture, you may be wondering why we even bother breaking down a hero into these pieces. What’s the value in it? The answer is that these pieces don’t necessarily have to go together in this stereotypical way.

For example, in the classic story of racial prejudice, To Kill a Mockingbird, the Protagonist function and the Main Character View are separated into two different characters.

The Protagonist is Atticus, played by Gregory Peck in the movie version. Atticus is a principled Southern lawyer in the 1930s who is assigned to defend a black man wrongly accused of raping a white girl. His goal is to ensure justice is done, and he is the Prime Mover in this endeavor.

But we do not stand in Atticus’ shoes, however. Rather, the story is told through the eyes of Scout, his your daughter, who observers the workings of prejudice from a child’s innocence.

Why not make Atticus a typical hero who is also the Main Character? First, Atticus sticks by his principles regardless of the dangers and pressures brought to bear. If he had represented the audience position, the audience/reader would have felt quite self-righteous throughout the story’s journey.

But there is even more advantage to splitting these qualities between two characters. The audience identifies with Scout. And we share her fear of the local boogey man known as Boo Radley – a monstrous mockery of human form who forms the stuff of local terror stories. All the kids know about Boo, and though we never see him, we hear their tales of his horrible ways.

At the end of the story, it turns out that Boo is just a gentle giant, a normal man with a kind heart but low intellect. As was the custom in that age, his parents kept him indoors, inside the basement of the house, leaving him pale and scary-looking due to the lack of sunlight. But Boo ventures out at night, leading to the false but horrible stories about him when he is occasionally sighted.

As it happens, Scout’s life is threatened by the father of the girl who was ostensibly raped in an attempt to get back at Atticus. Lo and behold, it is Boo who comes to her rescue. In fact, he has always been working behind the scenes to protect the children and is not at all the horrible monster they all presupposed.

In a moment of revelation, we, the audience, come to realize we have been cleverly manipulated by the author to share Scout’s initial prejudice against Boo. Rather than feeling self-righteous by identifying with Atticus, we have been led to realize that we are just as capable of prejudice as the obviously misguided adults we have been observing.

The message of the story is that prejudice does not have to come from meanness, but will happen within the heart of anyone who passes judgment based on hearsay rather than direct knowledge. This statement could never have been successfully made if the elements of the typical hero had all been placed in Atticus.

So, the message of our little story here is that there is nothing wrong with writing about heroes and villains, but it is limiting. By separating the components of the hero into individual qualities, we open our options to a far greater number of dramatic scenarios that are far less stereotypical.