Since the inception of Shelf Life, I have been saying I’m going to write a post comparing and contrasting the various available writing suites and word processors but I have never gotten around to doing that because doing so will mean spending some time trying out other word processors and I just don’t want to use any word processor but Google Docs, which I am using right now (and always).
What does this have to do with Twenty Questions (Part III), the follow-up article to June’s Twenty Questions Part I and Part II? Well, this: I had my full list of twenty questions, which I drafted in the document I was using for Part I. When I completed Part I, I crossed off the four questions answered therein and moved the list into the document for Part II and deleted the full list from Part I (so it would not print in the final version). Then when I completed Part II, I deleted the full list from the document but I forgot to save the list anywhere. This was in June.
Google Docs’ version history saved me and produced not one, not two, but eight saved drafts of Part I at various points of that article’s development, including several that included the full list of questions. Docs is not the only word processor with a version history but, to compare functionality, I opened a Microsoft Word file on my desktop—a guest list to which I have made many changes—and Word had no version history for me. Not even one older version.
So anyway I guess I still can’t say what’s the best word processor but I can say what’s not the best word processor. I don’t need to but I can.
Anyway that’s what that has to do with this. I started this multipart series in hopes of getting ahead on my Shelf Lifes before I’m on vacation later this month and that did not happen but hope springs eternal so maybe I’ll deal with it this weekend.
In the last installment, we left off after answering the question, “What Stands Between the Protagonist and What They Want?” That is, what is the major obstacle preventing the protagonist from getting their way immediately and ending the story prematurely? Once you have answered that, you can move onto the next question—
9. Who Is Behind That Obstacle?
A plot is an obstacle course your protagonist must run, jump, climb, crawl, slide, and dodge through to get to their goal. The person who sets that obstacle course up for the protagonist is, naturally, the antagonist.
Antagonists are great. They take a lot of forms. There’s usually more than just one—like potato chips, or roaches. If you think about it, the bigger and bolder you are, the more you’re trying to do, the more people will come out of the woodwork to get in your way. This is a law of nature, or at least a law of woodwork.
If you have ever played a video game then you know there’s never just one boss. You have to fight your way through a host of minibosses (or midbosses) to get to the head honcho. You have to fight seven fake Bowsers before you finally get to fight the real one. Thank you, Mario, but you’re never going to believe this. . . . Antagonists can be like this, too. Maybe your story is like The Gunslinger by Stephen King and from page one, paragraph one, sentence one, there’s no question about who is who in your story:
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
But it’s not always that plain. In many stories, the protagonist will encounter multiple antagonists before they get to their big bad—the person who is ultimately responsible for the obstacles that stand between them and the thing that they want.
Consider Aliens (1986), again—in fact, always; the ABCs of Aliens are “Always Be Considering Aliens”—Ripley has to deal with a lot of xenomorphs to get where she’s going but the xenomorphs are not the ultimate antagonist; they are, themselves, an obstacle. They did not end up in her way by accident. They are not working for or with the Weyland Yutani Corporation; they have no meaningful relationship with the company. They exist for their own purposes and have their own motives, which are aligned neither with Ripley nor with the Weyland Yutani Corporation. The story has two (groups of?) antagonists, one higher up on the “seriousness hierarchy” than the other.
Another example of multiple antagonists, these ones kind of “nesting,” is the Lord of the Rings trilogy, in which there are minor antagonists to deal with (like Grima Wormtongue); more serious antagonists like Saruman (Wormtongue’s employer, incidentally), the Orc army, and the Nazgûl; and then one biggest and baddest antagonist behind everything (who is in charge of all the rest, directly or indirectly). All the antagonists roll up to one—they’re all kind of in one another’s employ going up the chain till you reach Sauron.
You may have multiple villains and antagonists in your mind, but there’s probably one who stands above the rest—perhaps because the other, lesser antagonists are working with or for them; or because they are more powerful and dangerous than the others; or because they are the one masterminding the design of the protagonist’s obstacle course.
10. What Does That Person Want?
We know what our protagonist wants. We figured that out with question 7 in part II. Now we need to ask of ourself: What does the antagonist want? What do they want just as much as the protagonist wants their thing?
I wrote about this at length in Unforgettable Villainy: A good villain does not wake up in the morning and set out to do some evil. A good villain believes they are the hero in the story; in the version of the story as they would tell it to you—they are the protagonist. Reminder: The antagonist does not need to be the villain. In rare cases these roles may be switched, and the hero may be the antagonist while the villain is the protagonist. For the purpose of question 10, we’re talking about the antagonist. But either way—hero or villain—the antagonist must have a meaningful motivation for their actions.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be a noble motivation. It just has to be a real motivation. A cartoonish villain, mustache-twirling villain who does evil things just for the sake of being evil is a really hard sell outside of a comedy. The antagonist has to have a motivation that puts them in opposition to the protagonist, but that motivation should not be limited to opposing the protagonist. The xenomorphs from Aliens aren’t evil; their life cycle requires host organisms.
Their motivation isn’t to wipe out all the humans they come across, it’s just to reproduce so their species can survive. They have a motive that pits them in direct opposition to the protagonist (Ripley) and her allies, who also want to survive. As long as there’s even one xenomorph running around, it will kill off all the humans in its endeavor to survive and reproduce.
11. Why Won’t—Or Can’t—the Antagonist Compromise?
Just like the protagonist, the antagonist can’t just pack it up and go home—or there’s no story. In real life we reach a compromise when we can’t agree with someone, but in a dramatic story the protagonist and the antagonist both feel so strongly about, and are so committed to, their motivation that neither can back down.
The protagonist and the antagonist will overmatch one another at different points in the story. In the beginning the protagonist will be significantly disadvantaged compared to the antagonist but there will come a crossover point during the story where they are more evenly matched. The protagonist may even have a minor victory and outdo the antagonist before their fortunes take a turn and the good guys reach their nadir.
There has to be a reason why the antagonist can’t recognize or accept that they’re wrong, or that the odds are not in their favor, or that they are significantly outmatched by the protagonists and should give up. An antagonist who gives up when the going gets tough for them is about as compelling for the reader as a hero who does the same. A great antagonist will become more vicious and deadly when they’re cornered. A bear with its leg in a trap doesn’t roll over and say, “Oh well, you got me, guess I’m done for.” Instead it becomes much more dangerous by far than before it was trapped.
The antagonist has to have serious stakes in the story, just as the protagonist does. If the reader has to ask—“Why are they doing this? What do they have to gain? Why can’t they be reasoned with or reach a compromise?” then the antagonist needs more work. (To be clear, a reader may wonder these things early in the story before the motives have been made clear, but should not still be wondering after the motives have been revealed).
Never give either side a reasonable option to give up, take their ball, and go home before the end. (Crises of faith excepted.)
12. Who Can the Protagonist Depend Upon to Help Them Reach Their Goals?
At this point the protagonist and antagonist are pretty well figured out. Now: It’s time to start building up the cast of supporting characters. The antagonist may have henchpeople and the protagonist will need some allies. Beginning with the protagonist’s posse, ask yourself—who does the protagonist need on their side to reach their goals? What does the protagonist lack—in terms of their personal qualities, skills, expertise, or even equipment or belongings—that they need to get the job done?
The people who have those things and are willing to lend them in support of the protagonist are the supporting cast. I think sometimes we, as writers, tend to imagine the supporting cast as individuals first rather than approaching them as, essentially, the writer’s toolset for supplying the protagonist with what they need to make it to the finish line. This is because, as I said back in part I, writers love making characters and then we want to stick them in stories and sometimes, sadly, they have no business being in there.
As I wrote recently in Character Soup, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing (characters). Supporting characters are often the ones who contribute to this too-muchness in a story. You know what story has too many supporting characters? The Hobbit. There’s Thorin Oakenshield and then there’s twelve more dwarves and all but a few of them are indistinguishable from one another. The Hobbit is dwarf soup. Anyway, that’s a rant I don’t need to get back on right now.
To figure out who your supporting cast will be, ask yourself what the protagonist will need to reach their goal that they do not have in their personal bag of tricks. The people who can supply what the protagonist is missing and needs, are the cast supporting of characters.
Okay, two more of these to go sometime this month, perhaps in succession or perhaps mixed in with other topics. They are on the way, eventually.
If you have questions that you'd like to see answered in Shelf Life, ideas for topics that you'd like to explore, or feedback on the newsletter, please feel free to contact me. I would love to hear from you.
For more information about who I am, what I do, and, most important, what my dog looks like, please visit my website.
After you have read a few posts, if you find that you're enjoying Shelf Life, please recommend it to your word-oriented friends.