Write a Great Antagonist

1. Introduction: Hi everyone and welcome to this course on how to write a great antagonists or villain for your story. Next to the protagonist, the antagonist is probably the second most important character in your story. And so it's important that we want to spend a lot of time developing and fleshing out who that character is. Especially and importantly in light of who the protagonist is and what the protagonist's goals are. So this course is designed for us to look very specifically at the role of an antagonist or villain. And to consider, given that, that's the function of the character in the story, what are the important aspects of that character that we need to consider so that we make sure that that individual is as threatening and as formidable as he or she needs to be, so that we have the proper tension, the proper suspends the proper conflict for a narrative to succeed. One way to look at this is considering what a story is. So when we think about a story being that which is focused on a main character who's going to go through a grand character changed throughout the whole story. But then that grand character changed is manifested through a lot of little story points throughout. We are examining this development of a character through conflict. And more often than not, that conflict comes in the form of a person who we would consider the antagonist or the villain. It's the person who is standing in the way of the protagonist's goals and is forcing that conflict on the protagonists, which then forces the protagonist to face, develop, nurture certain traits within himself or herself that make him grow as a person. Protagonist has the ultimate sort of actionable goal in the story they're trying to achieve. But they also through achieving that, will develop as a person, that antagonist is there to sort of put a stopper, put it with a roadblock in front of the protagonist for the goal that he has or she has. But in doing that is causing character growth in your main character, which again makes the antagonist to really your second most important person in the story. A weak antagonist is not going to be believable, is not going to seem threatening, and is therefore your story will never reach those climactic moments of tension that it could have. You might be a wonderful writer and you might have a great story. But if you don't do the proper legwork to make sure that your antagonist or your villain satisfies certain storytelling functions and roles. It's, your story is never going to get that depth and that reaction from the reader. In this course, we are going to be looking at an antagonist from a variety of different angles so that you get your head around all of the things that you need to make sure you're thinking about. And this includes addressing antagonists and villains. They are different and it's extremely important that you understand that difference so that you can manifest it properly into your story. We will also be looking at the antagonist motivation and his goal because these are essential, this motivation and goal is essential for the protagonist. But we have unique aspects of motivations and goals that are important for an antagonist. We will look at trying to understand the why and the motivations of the antagonist. How do you humanize your antagonist? How do you make them? Not cardboard, not caricature? Do you want your antagonist to be purely evil? Or do you want them to have human capacities are aspects to himself that the reader can connect with. These sorts of variables really changed the relationship the reader has not only with the antagonist, but with the protagonist and the way that the reader interprets your straight as a whole. So you need to know how approachable you want your antagonists to be. You need to know how you're going to manifest that approachability, whether it's through backstory, whether it's through juxtaposing the antagonist with other characters, whether it's through certain traits the antagonist has. There are all kinds of ways that we do this and we will be looking at those. We will look at the antagonist when he's the main character, when your protagonist is the antagonist or the bad guy. So we'll be taking a look at that. We will look at social issues when your story doesn't really have a primary person as the villain. But the antagonist is a social issue. Likewise, if the antagonist is something more abstract like man versus nature or something like that where it's the weather. How do we, how do we deal with that? What do you do if you have an unseen antagonist that you might have in say, a mystery novel or something like that. We will look at protagonist, who, the antagonist is there internal struggles, people who have goodwill and don't have a negative desire but are yet an antagonizing force. We will look at those and we're also going to then look at quite a number of antagonists in literature and in film to see how and why they succeed. So we will be addressing some of the truly great antagonists in literature and in film. This course comes with several things to help you, including class notes and a worksheet at the end that you can fill out to help bring your antagonist to life. It also includes a number of recommended readings and viewings of books and films that will help you absolutely get a handle on analyzing antagonists and identifying why they work and why, why they are so good. So all of that's packed into this course. I'm very excited about it. This is a widely requested one. It's my joy to bring it to you. I hope it sounds of interests. If it does, let's get started. 2. Difference Between Villains and Antaognists: Alright, before we get started in delving into the course, I recommend that you download the class notes for this course. Before we go through it, you will see where it's just going to give you some really great bullet points. And what have you of the things that we are going to be talking about. If you want to get the most out of the class and retain the most information, you'll make notes, you'll write things down. So I highly recommend downloading these first so that you can make notes on them. So take a pause, go download the notes, and then come back. Now, because you want to develop your antagonist as best you can. There are numerous exercises that I recommend that you do just to build the antagonist character period. First and foremost being my character profile course. I have a list for you on the class notes of recommended viewing of my courses to develop a character. I highly recommend that you go through all of them. All of those courses have exercises for you to do. If you haven't watched them, please do and then go through and do those exercises for your protagonist and for your antagonist. This course supports those courses. We're not going to talk about character development in general. We're going to look at specifically how do we build out this character that's the antagonist. So while you develop your antagonist character through those of the class exercises, which again, they're listed in your class notes and they're also listed on the class worksheet. You want to think again specifically in this course about, alright, now how do we shape this into the best, most threatening villain that we can? If you've watched my courses before, you know that I am a big believer in writing guidelines, not writing rules. Everything I'm going to be talking about here in terms of advice, I have no doubt in literature has been broken at one time or another to great effect. So take these in as guidelines, not rules. The other thing that I would like to clarify as we go through this, there are different forms of writing characters. There are characters for genre fiction, and then there are characters for quote-unquote, more literary fiction. And this course is, we will be looking at both. We will absolutely be addressing things that go more toward the genre end, but we will also be taking a great care to address things that are more in the literary side of it. When you push to the literary side of things, it's just or less clear cut. It's not going to be your standard archetypes. It's not going to be sort of as predictable in terms of, it's the antagonists relationship to the protagonist, et cetera. This is not to say anything against genre fiction. A lot of fiction, genre fiction, and so it's wonderful and it has its place. But I also want to make sure that we're addressing more nuanced depiction in which the role and the function and the antagonizing characters are not so clear cut. They don't necessarily fit into a mold. And when you go down that avenue, a lot of the right are the rules as it were. I don't want to say the gut the window, but they're just they're not standard. It's not standard. So please keep those things in mind as we go through the class. Now the first big idea that we need to get our heads around is, what is a villain and what is an antagonist? And the short rule to this is that all villains are antagonists, but not all antagonists are villains. Let's start with the antagonist. Since villains, all villains or that, let's start there and forgive me if I look down, I teach, I teach from notes. So an antagonist isn't necessarily a person. What it is is a plot role. It's a function in the story. It's the thing that's butting up against the protagonist. It can be a character, it can be the weather, it can be a social issue or a social cause of society. So it can be a variety of things, but there are things that are challenging your protagonist and keeping your protagonist from, oftentimes, achieving a goal that he or she is working toward. But as we shall see when we go through this normal characters, not all books, they're actively working toward a goal that doesn't matter. It's, the antagonist is a plot role, it's a function, it's a force that's that keeping the protagonist, if not from a goal, from contentment, from being happy, from a better life. You want to keep that in mind. Now, an antagonist because it's a plot role, it can have multiple antagonists. Do you might have several? There might generally be a hierarchy to them. At the main villain, the main person being the ultimate antagonist. But then you might have another character who's not a bad person, who actually cares very much about your protagonist. And yet is, is getting in the way of the protagonists goal just the same, which makes them an antagonist also. So antagonists can have bad intent for a character, but antagonists can have good intent for a character. We know through just living that someone can have very good intentions, but their intentions aren't always helpful. And so that, that is true of an antagonist. So the function of an antagonist in a story is to provide opposition, to provide trouble for the protagonist and that pressure, that trouble opposition that it's causing in the protagonist's life is what forces the protagonists forward in the story. It creates conflict. The protagonist tries to solve that conflict which pushes the plot forward. The plot is always pushed forward by conflict. That is, then the protagonist tries to resolve more conflict. The protagonist tries to resolve. You think of a, of an oyster and might be very peaceful, but you put a little piece of sand and it now gets all agitated and it has to do something about it. It's the same thing true of the protagonist. So that antagonist without antagonizing force is what's causing the protagonist to react and to move forward and in doing so, to grow as a person. So again, so keep in mind that protagonist is not necessarily evil. A mother who grounds her daughter because she loves her daughter and the daughter disobeyed her. But in doing so, she grounded or daughter and our daughter can't go out and save the day in this XYZ way on antagonizing force might also be internal. It's something that someone is struggling with an internal pain. Maybe they had a traumatic experience as a child and they've never been able to get over it. That haunting of the past isn't antagonizing force. It's keeping the protagonist from being a more full human being. Now traditionally, this antagonizing force, this opposition to the protagonist is, is demonstrated Through a person. But again, it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be through a person. That's what an antagonist is now, a villain is not a plot roll. A villain is a character type. A villain will always be an opposing force to a main character. Which means again, a villain is always an antagonist. But whereas an antagonist could be like that mother who cares very much for her daughter and its grounding her out of love. Or a friend who is trying to help, but it's a bumbling sort of a friend and it's constantly messing things up. So in an attempt to help is actually making things more difficult, those are antagonizing forces, but a villain has mal intent from the get-go. And then villain wants to do bad, wants to inhibit the protagonist, wants to be an opposing force, whereas an antagonist that might not be true if your story has a villain, that villain will be the main antagonist, should be the main antagonist. So you want to keep that in mind and that the reason they're part of this is so important is that when you are creating a fleshed out storyworld, more often than not, there is more than one antagonizing force because that's an awful lot of pressure to put on one character to be the only opposition that a protagonist experiences. And now everything else the protagonist's experiences isn't that difficult? Know, the protagonist should. I mean, just think about life. There's not usually one person or situation that's an opposing force in our lives. It's money. Again, the villain is going to be a sort of a physical personification of a intentionally bad antagonizing force. For the purposes of this class, we're going to predominantly focus on personifications of antagonizing forces. So we'll be looking at villains and then we will look at antagonists were not villains. We're not going to spend as much time on things like the weather, etc, that we will address it in the next video, I want to talk about one of the most important aspects of a good villain and antagonist, but certainly villain in particular, which is that they be a genuine threat. 3. Making the Antagonist a Genuine Threat: One of the biggest issues that I see riders run into when they're crafting their villains is that they fall in one of two ways. They either make the villains so evil, so terrible, nothing redeeming, nothing that flushes them out so that you have this sort of well-rounded protagonists and then this very cardboard fake, cartoonish sort of antagonist. On the other side, what they do is they don't actually make the antagonist all that formidable. They give their protagonists all of these skills and resources and brainpower and things like that. And then their antagonist doesn't have any of that and it doesn't seem that all threatening. So it's very important when you are writing your antagonist that you say to yourself, how can my antagonist be a genuine threat to this story? And those last three words are so important. We can all just sit down and come up with a baddie who, you know, is, hates this and he's good at sword fighting and he is really smart and can solve puzzles. And we can think of all kinds of things that would be intimidating for someone to possess if they're not on our side. But you're writing a specific story, you're writing a specific protagonist. So what characteristics can you put into your antagonist that would be most intimidating to this protagonist and most intimidating to this story. Give you an example. Say, I'm writing a story about to that book focuses on two opera singers. Our protagonist who is trying to get the lead role in the next opera, and the antagonist who likewise wants the lead role. Now, it just so happens at my antagonist is a really great, fabulous singer who actually has more formal training and opera than my protagonist. That skill and singing in this situation is incredibly intimidating to my protagonist and germane to my story. What would not be terribly intimidating or germane to my story is the fact that on the side, she knows taekwondo, that port, unless you somehow magically weave that into your story. If the plot line is all about trying to get the lead in the next opera, the taekwondo issue is not that intimidating, Which is why you really cannot think of your antagonist in isolation. You need to develop your protagonist. And antagonist needs to play off of that protagonist and needs to play off of the protagonist's goals and the main conflict for the story. So you really want to keep that in mind and you want to form an antagonist who truly is a genuine threat. And you do that in part by saying, what are the skills, what are the, whether it's mental or physical, etc. What are the things that are going to be the most intimidating to my protagonist? If your protagonist can very easily overcome your antagonist, you don't have much of a story. So keep in mind, your protagonist is going to be struggling against your antagonist for a while, for a while. So if you can't devise an antagonist in which you can dream up numerous struggle points, numerous points of conflict in your story that are all unique, all a bit different, then you haven't fleshed out your antagonist enough. We need enough substance to this person so that the protagonist really feels threatened by it. Now, you can do this in a number of ways. The first being what we talked about with skills. So a really phenomenal Just set of skills that makes your protagonist to go. This is my equal, at least this person is at least as good as I am. If not better, which makes sure your protagonist, the underdog. So the level of talent, of skill is similar. They are, they are equals in this regard. This can be mental capacity, it can be physical skills. There are all kinds of things that it could be. But when you're analyzing a film or thinking about chores and when you're thinking about your protagonist and you're coming up with your protagonist strengths. You need to take your protagonist strengths and go over to our antagonist and say, alright, How does my antagonist match these? And if they don't match them all, what are these strengths my antagonist has that my protagonist doesn't have, so that they are equally, equally matched. Other things that can make the protagonist seems sort of undefeatable. You want your readers to go. Is this possible? Can we beat this person? I don't know, I have to keep reading because you want your readers doing that. We have to sense the idea that the protagonist might actually lose. She might lose because she lacks the skills. Another way that you can think about doing this is make sure you are designing scenes in your story in which we see your antagonist out with other people. So remember, yes, the antagonist is the antagonist to your protagonist. But This person is also probably an opposing force to other people. So perhaps we can see the antagonist opposing these other people. Perhaps we see our opera singer, villain, wowing, wowing judges, wowing audiences and doing so well at this and that. And then maybe we see her sabotage another singer by causing you to get sick or putting something into drink or things like that so that we can sort of see her overtaking other people. Another thing that's going to then make your antagonist just seem intimidating is just having that antagonists have unsavory goals. Your opera singer antagonist might be your best friend. And that's a perfectly fine plot structure. She's still in antagonizing force. She's still preventing the protagonist from getting the lead role perhaps. But that's different than the antagonizing opera singer being also a villain who has mal intent. So if you want somebody who really has this dark presence in your story, then show me her, her malicious intent to my protagonist and to others. Another thing that's going to make that antagonist seem very intimidating is going to be that her actions, his actions require a reaction quickly. You know, if if a character does something we don't like and we go, I didn't like that, but I can deal with that next week. It's fine. That's not a terribly intimidating antagonist. But if our antagonist does something, if our villain does something and we go, I have to respond. Now. That's intimidating. So you're ratcheting up. Now it's not just someone who's really skilled, it's somebody who has a bad intent and is after me. If you're not paying attention to me, I might think you're really skilled, but you're not focused on me. Know, there's skilled. They are against you. Their actions against you require immediate reaction from you. All of these things are going to make that antagonist seem like a true blue threat. You may also want to have scenes in which the antagonist really is demonstrating his or her power over other people. So just, just knowing that they have a certain amount of power, whether that's inherited power or power they earn. I mean, all kinds of power. But show me that person dominating over other people. That's going to be again, building in this fleshed-out, fleshed-out character. Also having a believable backstory and believable reason why they want what they want. If we'll get into this in a little bit in the course. But if a character doesn't have a believable goal, believable reason for what they're doing. It's just not going to seem that intimidating to us. If we can sympathize to the point of understanding why they believe what they believe that is going to make them far, far more intimidating in the final two things that you can do to make sure that you are your antagonist is certifiable threat is show that person's effect on the story world. Lord of the Rings does this so well. We don't even have to see sore on all that much. But we absolutely feel the threat of Sauron. We know he has bad intent. We know he's incredibly powerful. That's both told to us and shown to us. He has all these terrible things, hideous, horrible henchmen working for him. So he's built up this big army of people. You feel the effect of Sauron on the whole story world. Everybody is dealing with the darkness of this and that, that really makes him such an intimidating villain because he isn't just having an effect a little bit over here. He's affecting everything, everywhere. It's just tremendous, tremendous, large. So that's part of what makes Sauron such a huge effective antagonist. Likewise, you think of janice the white, which in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, where she freezes all of Narnia. I mean, it's all of Narnia. She's frozen the whole thing and everyone is having to respond to her either by being on her side, are not being on her side. And it requires a decisive response because if you're not on her side, she'll turn you into stone. So worth thinking quickly whether you are on her side or night and she's not trustworthy to begin with. So having that effect on the storyworld is truly one of the significant ways that I would say, particularly in a lot of genre fiction and particularly in fantasy, you definitely see villains coming to life. And last point that I would want to make is just having in the emotional danger that is brought about by which your antagonist does. So there's the physical danger, say Lord of the Rings, all of the danger that Frodo is in as he tries to get that ring to Mordor. There's a lot of physical threat and danger, but there's also an emotional threat. And you want to make sure that you are considering that to you want your readers to feel what the repercussions emotionally are for the protagonist. What are these emotional repercussions to what's happening? A really great example of this that I have in the viewing for you as a film called Dial M for Murder. And this is an Alfred Hitchcock film. And the basic premise is that a man, he's married to his wife. She inherited a lot of wealthy. He does not come from money, not a big worker. So she's living off of that money and he just really wants her money. So he plot to kill her. There are complications to this. And we are able to actually see the emotional strain that his wife is under because of the actions that he's taken supportive. What makes that powerful is that we see the emotional strain That's happening because of the antagonist. Again, true in Lord of the Rings, the emotional strain that Frodo is under because of Sauron, because of the ring, and all of the rest. So don't ignore that emotional strain. Remember, we are connecting with characters through emotion. You want to make sure that you're not just talking about the physical impediments and the physical challenges of an antagonist. But you're also talking about how these stressors that are happening to your protagonist are affecting him or her emotionally. Okay, in the next video, I'd like us to talk a bit about antagonists, motives, and their goals. 4. Antagonist Motives and Goals: Just like protagonist has goals and reasons for those goals, likewise, your antagonist does. So it's very important that you know, your antagonist goal and his or her motives for that goal. A goal is basically what your antagonist, once the motive is why he or she wants it. Now there are certain antagonist characters or villains that don't necessarily have expressly goal. And Ms. Mentioned from a little princess comes to mind. Ms. Mentioned if you wanted to give her a goal at all, you would say that it's, in some ways, her villainous goal is to just make Sarah's life miserable. But the truth is, she doesn't have a goal. She's a woman who wants money, she wants power, she wants prestige. Sarah, she feels has cheated her out of money, even though she hasn't, but Ms. mentioned sees it that way. And so Ms. Mentioned is just using Sarah. She's trying to use Sarah as much as she can, but she's just really trying to fix Harris left terribly miserable. She is a bit intimidated by Sarah. She just hates Sarah. And Sarah is in many ways everything mismatch and wants to be, but no, she isn't. And so she just makes Sarah's life terribly miserable, but she doesn't have an active goal herself. So if you're writing a story and you say to yourself, I don't think my villain has a goal. Now that is a warning signal. You need to really look at your story. But it could be that your story structure doesn't have this overt goal the way a genre fiction might. So do keep that in mind. But goals and motives. So what does he want and why does he want it? And that source of behavior is so important. And I have a list for you of sort of why, what might cause villains to have the goals that they do have. But that is what provides logic for why the villains doing what they're doing. Your reader, your viewer is going to want to say, why does Captain Ahab wants to kill this white whale so much? You know, why does Voldemort want to kill Harry so badly? Why does the White which wants to take over Narnia? And what you'll find across stories is that sometimes there's more humanizing happening to the goal or with the goal and the motive. And sometimes there is less. The more your villain is just purely evil, the less development of that internal. Why neat is there? They're just purely evil and they're doing it because they're either. But we are definitely in a trend, certainly now with fiction where a lot of times the, the antagonist, the villain has a lot more they can say about why they want, what they want. You know, someone might really want power and everything else. And it's because when he was a child, he was poor and they lived in a country with his terrible dictator and it was just tedious and horrible and he was abused. And because of that, it just turned him into somebody who really wanted power. And perhaps it started off as a good thing and he wanted power so he could defend the little ones. But then it turned into this terribly bad thing and it just grew into something that was horrid and evil. So having that kind of reasoning, why is so important? But again, don't, I think there's a lot of advice out there that you have to totally humanized. And again, we'll get into this but your antagonist and you don't have to totally, but you do have to put a stake in the ground for what is the goal, what is the motive? Even if it's just that his goal is to kill Harry because he hates Harry, because he's evil and he wants them to die. And Harry, Harry's parents got in his way. So that Y and that motive, insight, the villains actions and the villains actions caused the heroes reactions. And that's where you get the conflict and the forward propulsion of your story. So make sure he has a goal. Now, when it comes to this goal, it's several things. The villain needs to totally be leaving the goal. Like he needs to be leaving the goal and he needs to see himself as the hero of his own story. The villain has to feel like I'm in, I'm in the right. I am my hero of the story. I'm the star of my story. I'm the hero, therefore, I want to kill Harry Potter or what have you. I want to take over Narnia. But the second thing is that the villain needs to see that and believe that this, this goal is the only way. This goal is what must be. This goal must be white. Which cat? Just co run no idea or have control over the dwarves. She has to have all of Narnia because otherwise something could threaten her rule. So she's got to get all of it and she has to eviscerate anyone who doesn't totally be leaving her because she cannot afford to have her dominion threatened. And she probably feels that way because her sister. Backstory. She clashed with her sister on control of the kingdom, and she doesn't want to deal with that again. So it's all or nothing. So they have to really believe that this is what must be. Voldemort must kill Harry, because if he doesn't kill, hurry, hurry is going to kill him. So there is this sense of, it must be the only way I'm the hero of my story. And the third thing is that he has to really have considered this. I mean, that's implied, but I want to state it. They have to have truly fought about this. You don't need to show me scenes of them truly thinking about it. But I need to feel like you're villain has seriously thought about this and has determined that this is what needs to happen. They've thought about it and they're resolute in going after what they want. And now keep in mind, this goal is usually manifested in one of two ways. It's usually the same thing the protagonist wants and only one person can get it. Think of the two opera singers. There's only one port and the other one lead and the opera. And they both wanted, or they want different things. So I might want to make a cherry pie and you want to make an apple pie. And we can't make both. We can only make one Pi, only one of us is going to win. So it's usually we want the same thing or we want different things. Now, I will say, don't get too hung up on that because you can word it differently and end up at the same place. By that I mean, you could look at say, Nohria in North Korea. You could say both Aztlan and the white which want to rule no idea. You could also say the white which wants to be in control of Narnia. And then the other one, Aztlan, wants nor Nia to be ruled. And those are two different things because they want to different rulers. Do you see what I'm saying? So don't get terribly hung up on this, but it's worth contemplating and thinking about. The last thing to really consider with the antagonists goes that it's justified. They feel they're right and doing it. They feel they have a justification for what they are doing. This brings me to the concept of the why in your antagonists reasoning. So the why of the goal, the reason, the motives of that. They can come from a lot of places. They can come from their backstory, they can come from their past, as we talked about, that, you want to consider the legitimate reasons that your antagonist might do these things. Now, keep in mind, you are going to flesh that antagonist out far more than what's actually going to end up in your story. That's okay. But you want to take time to consider these things. So consider the source of their behavior. All of the unbecoming traits of your even becoming ones when you're thinking about the traits of your antagonist, what is the source? If you have this villain who is a terrible, hideous, horrible person and yet has phenomenal manners. Manners matters so much. Opening a door the way that one speaks and this NADH, Where did that come from? Otherwise terrible, hideous, horrible villain. But maybe he grew up in a certain kind of household with a certain set of rules and his parents established with this. Now what is the story there? Why is he the way that he is? And then the other thing that I want you to consider and to think about is this. And this is so important. The justification and the logic that your antagonist has for the reasons that he is the way that he is. Don't have to be, right. They don't have to be moral. It's not, it's not about that. They could be totally crazy. You could say you're insane. What matters is that they are very logical to the antagonist and we can see how their logical to him. So you can have a character who is mentally insane, but who's operating out of a place of considerable logic. And you can see that you might not agree with it, but you see what drove them to their actions. That's important because it allows you the freedom to really write somebody logical who's also actually quite evil. A great example of this is inspectors are there in the lemon syrup. This is a man who believed so deeply in the law. He believes in the law and he is committed. What the law says is what has to happen. He's an antagonizing force. He's not necessarily a villain because he, he's not just doing something out of the heat of his horror. He loves the law. He wants justice, but he wants it so much that he can't see the forest through the trees. And he's there for a series antagonizing force. He is V antagonizing force in the story. But you can look at him and say, I understand because of your background, I understand why you are so doggedly pursuing this other man. Because you believe so deeply in the law, because of your past, because of these things, it makes sense even though we're like, Oh, I wish you could just take a step back and see where you're wrong. But it still makes sense to him and we understand that. So that's just something that you want to, you want to think about, you know, the villain. Their worldview is so important. So we knew can show that a villain sort of began and a path of logic and of moral health as it were. Just a solid moral place and then sort of devolved. That's a lot easier for the reader to understand where the villain is coming from. And the other one is where that motivation comes from. A, an emotion that we can relate to. If the villain is jealous, we might be able to relate to jealousy. Doesn't excuse the villain, but it allows him to be relatable. 5. Motivation Examples: So what are some of the motivations set a villain can have? I have a few listed for you. I'm not going to go into great detail on any of these. There are far more than what I've listed here, but I did want to take some time to list a few of them. These include a failed career. So they tried something and it didn't work out. That can cause them to have certain antagonizing forces to someone say our opera singer villain didn't get the roll. And now she is stalking or protagonist who did get the role because she's so bitter about it, that would be an example of that. A failed romance. So an antagonizing force or a villain who is operating because they feel guilty did a phenomenal example of this is mishap a sham in Great Expectations, Ms. have a sham was tilted as a young woman, her feel safe did not show up to the wedding. And so she never got over that and has not only been a man hater her whole life, but then she's raising young Estella to be a man hater and a heartbreaker. She's a tremendous antagonizing force and pips life. She's not necessarily the main villain and she actually just kinda like pip. But, um, She's an antagonizing force that and her, her actions all stem from this failed romance, this tilting that she had. Another reason that the villain might be the way that he is, is an attempt to gain acceptance. Interestingly enough, a character who is a good example of this is actually Bob Ewell into Kill a Mockingbird. And in To Kill a Mockingbird, Babu is the father of a daughter who they are claiming that a young black men raped her. And Bob Ewell, you watched the film. You get the sense he's not liked by the town. He's not educated. He's very poor. So he's on the UPS, is not accepted, he's not an accepted part of the town. And in a way, falsely accusing this young black man of rape. And the trial and all of the attention and everything else. It's almost like in Bob mind. He, he's going to take revenge on being on the outside and he's good to try to be accepted because this is such a racist time in America. That form. What is the first time in his life? All of these people are on his side because he happens to be against a black man. There's a kind of acceptance that he's getting from pursuing this. So that's an example of this, attempted to gain acceptance. Another reason would be Revenge, which a good example of this is masala from Ben-Hur, which is also in your readings and your viewings. But masala is, he was best friends with her and they grow up. He wants Ben's help in. He asks for Ben's help, asks him to help him do some work for the Roman government. Bend her is a Jew is against the Romans. And he says, I cannot help you. A solid is so upset about this that he's exact revenge on Ben-Hur. That revenge just sort of grows and grows and it becomes increasingly less human as it were in his, in his resoluteness to hate than her. Another reason could be justice, which we talked about. Inspectors, you have inspectors, you have air is after justice. And that's why he does what he does. Another reason is just fear an antagonist or a villain who's just simply so afraid and that's causing them to be an opposition to the protagonist. Now to give you an example of somebody would be an antagonizing force but not a villain. Say the protagonist has to go into a dark wood because she has to do this if she's going to beat the actual villain. But her sister is terribly afraid of the word and just won't let her go inj just literally, physically not letting her go in and preventing her unlocking her in a room or something so they won't go out into the forest. In that situation, her sister out of fear of going into the forest is an antagonizing force because she's keeping the main character from achieving her goal against the antagonist. So that can play into things. Paranoia, absolutely can play into it. So here's the antagonists, just totally paranoid about something. This would show up in Mrs. Dan verse in Rebecca would be a good example of that woman who's just sort of, I don't want to give away too much of that one. You should definitely see it. But she's got issues. Which brings me to the next one, which is mental health issue, whether that's depression or psychological condition of some kind. Do they have a mental health issue that's causing them to be the way that they are. Another, another one could be desperation, just feeling totally desperate, like you have no way out and you therefore react. You think of even just an animal or something like that. If an animal feels closed in, then they might react. They react because they're desperate, they have to. And some others can play into this. Money, can play into it. Do they just really want money? Do they really want power? Do they really want to freedom? Any of those things can be motives for a villain. So when you are watching films, are doing reading, always ask yourself, what is the primary group motive that this villain has? Alright, in the next video, I would like us to talk briefly about what do we do in an antagonist is not a villain, but as an antagonist is a loved one. 6. When the Antagonist is a Loved One: As we mentioned, antagonists aren't necessarily villains. Sometimes an antagonizing force is just someone who is a loved one, is a close friend of your character. And it's good to have these characters in your story. It's far more fleshed out and far more realistic because people in our lives who do care for us can still keep us from doing things that they want or can certainly make life more difficult. So, you know, a mother who grounds or daughter doesn't let her go to prom, it might be getting in the way of her slaying the dragon or what have you Sheets, she's doing it because she thinks it's four daughters own good. When you write this sort of thing into your story, you want to make sure that you are capitalizing on the conflict in the relationship. Bring out the drama that occurs when someone has our best interests at heart. And we don't think that what their idea of our best interests to our idea of our best interests. These are people we love. These are people we are not indifferent to. You know, the villain. The protagonist hates that person. They're still hard to overcome. But we know emotionally where the protagonist stands. But people we love, this is really conflicting. This, those are the exhausting relationships because you love that person. You want a relationship with that person. You see a lot of good in that person. It's just right now, they are not helping you out. So you want to sort of bring out all of the drama that happens when someone you love gets in your way. Think of that. When someone you don't like do something to hurt you, you might be a little hurt by and you might be a little irritated by it. But when someone you love hurts, you gosh, it sinks in deep. So consider that look at the drama inherent in the relationships of people. We love these characters. The protagonist doesn't want to see them thrown into jail or killed or anything else. They want to change that person's mind, which requires so much energy, right? I mean, how do you do that? How do you do that and compassionate, how do you how do you show them? Show them the light, let them see the way. And if they're not going to see the way, how do you get around them without hurting them. There's just a lot of conflict there. So you want to really work to try to keep that tension in that relationship up. A really interesting example of this is the book Washington Square by Henry James, which is also a movie called The. And in it basically it's about a very plain girl who falls in love with a young man who's very handsome and he's very sociable and she's none of these things. She is just to put it unkindly, she's the girl is just no one can imagine her ever getting married because she's not lovely. She doesn't have good conversation or anything else. The only thing that she seems to do well as embroider and her father believes this battery doesn't see why anyone would want to marry his daughter. She, her mother's dead. And her mother, his wife was a beautiful woman, beautiful everything or daughter's not. And so when the Father looks at the daughter, all he sees is how she falls so far short of a woman he married. She falls in love with this young man. The father thinks that the young man is just after this girl's money. And so he does a lot to prevent quite a lot, to prevent the marriage a lot. And it ranks it is a total strain on that father daughter relationship. I'm not going to give this story a way. It's one worth, you're certainly reading, but at least watching the movie and they're on the list. That is one where you really see someone who is not the prime antagonist, but has a tremendous emotional role with the protagonist and its attention that the author and then the director. They keep that tension high throughout in a variety of ways. It is just an excellent example of an I really recommend that you watch it. And when you do, if you do as the track, all of the scenes with the father and the daughter, what's happening in each one of those scenes? And how are we maintaining the tension? But how are we seeing different facets of the way that the Father has this relationship with his daughter is phenomenal example. I cannot I cannot recommend it enough to you. In the next video, what I would like for us to do is to look at how do we humanize our antagonists or a villains bring them to life. 7. Humanizing the Antagonist: As we mentioned, we are in a place where a lot of people want to truly humanize their antagonists. I think this advice is a little over done myself, because I think there are a lot of examples in the literature where we don't have a lot of that humanizing and yet they are just the best villains. So I do think it's an important thing to think about, but I also think that you don't have to give your villain or kinds of emotional baggage and backstory that we sympathize with him. I'd simply don't think that's true regardless of how much it's advised by people. I simply don't see it in a lot of great literature, but it is definitely used and it is something that you can do to great effect when your reader can establish emotional and mental connections with your villain. That makes your villain far more complicated. And it makes our relationship with that villain more complicated. Because just like your relationship, your character's relationship with say, a loved one who's an antagonist is just more complex. That is also true of our relationship with the villain. If the villain is someone we can understand in some ways, or someone who's sort of like in some ways, then we have a more complicated relationship with that villain. And that makes your story more complicated as well. Because there are numerous ways that you can sort of humanize your, your character. One is we sort of touched on, is to look at the root of his or her bitterness. Why is this person the way that they are in? Can we see that example of that is in the Incredibles. The little boy who looks up to Mr. Incredible and is then rejected, ends up that, that causes him to then become the, the arch nemesis of the Incredibles for the film. So he has this tilting or mishap or sham is tilted at the altar. And can you only imagine what it would be for a young woman, particularly at that time, to stand up this huge wedding. All of these people here and then the groom never shows. That's terrible, that's horrible thing. We can relate to that and understand how hurtful that might be. So it's just things like that. You don't have to bleed emotion all over the page. It's just a situation that we can understand. And if you read Ms. Shams character in the book, you don't walk away feeling boatloads of sympathy for you really don't because she's just kind of a dark twisted woman. So when you provide that backstory, there is a difference between deeply emotional backstory that just makes us totally feel for the villain, even though we don't like them. And backstory that were like, yeah, I get it. I see it. But I still think you're bad and Ms. Habitat falls more into that. So there's there's quite a range you have to play with here. Don't feel like you just have to do an emotional dump for your antagonist. Certain things or give them that origin story. The origin story doesn't even have to be the origin of their birth so much as the origin of why they are now a bad person. Because, you know, most people aren't born out of the womb. A villain, something happened to them to make them that way. So, you know, do something with that humanizing and give me that backstory that tells me a bit more about why they turned bad in the first place. That helps flush that out. Also, just, just taking time to have this realistic characteristics going through the character profile and things like that. Just having certain traits, you might have a really wretched villain who just has a penchant for cinnamon rolls. And he just, he just likes to have his cinnamon rolls. And it's oddly and daring little thing about this person who you otherwise do not like. And yet he wants a cinnamon rolls the window. And so you can take salt is quite, quite evil and give them these little trades, these little oddities and things like that that can in fact make us like him or like her. So think about doing it that way. If it's a non-human, than personify him a bit. If your, if your character is not a human, it's an animal or something like that. Give them emotions, give them things like that. Do they love their family? Do they have a sibling? Do they have moments where they feel sad, lonely, jealous, you know, giving us some moments where we see some emotion from the antagonist that we can relate to in the current moment. So we can relate to the pain of being jolted by Ms. have a sham. But in the midst of the moment, what kind of sympathy can we feel for a character? You see spit Mean Girls if you watch the film, Mean Girls, there are, there's a moment closer to the end where you do feel some sympathy for Regina George. Can you give me some peaks into the emotions bit behind the curtain to let me see that emotional than emotional pain. Another thing you can do is just get them very likable traits. So if someone is truly evil, give him charm and they can funny Silence of the Lambs. Hannibal Lecter comes to mind, really intelligent, really smart, able to totally articulate the way that he feels and give a very logical, cogent argument as to why the people that he's going after really deserve what they're getting. Now. I'm going to say all that, saying that he is, it's insidious villain. He's not likable. I don't care how smart he isn't that film, he's just grossly unlikable. But in at least putting those things out there keeps him from being flat and cardboard. So just because you've put some good traits into a villain doesn't mean that I'm necessarily as a reader going to like him. It's just going to help make him a bit more three-dimensional. And it's going to give you a protagonist, something to engage with. If your protagonist has only evil to engage with, then it's easier for your protagonist to not be conflicted. If your antagonist has these other traits, has this logic, etc, your protagonist becomes more conflicted. That's why the Jodie Foster's character in signs of the Lambs is a bit conflicted. She knows how bad Hannibal Lecter is. She knows it, but she has spent enough time with him. She sees this man who's so educated, who so sensitive to culture, who can so clearly articulate his thoughts, his emotions, that she becomes conflicted. So that's what makes the story more interesting. Remember, you are always thinking, not just about how do I make my villains more relatable for my reader? How do I make my villain more relatable for my protagonist? Building in the conflict. Conflict isn't just antagonist, is preventing protagonist. That's not just in, the conflict, is also emotional. How do I feel about his preventing me from doing this? If it's somebody I don't like Who's preventing me from doing it. It's much easier for me to be like, you're terrible and I'm going to do everything I can to get passed to you. If it's someone I love whose protecting me from doing it and I really have to deal with this and think about it. So all of these things start to come into play. Your readers relationship with antagonist, your protagonist's relationship, the antagonist always dealing with both. Keep that in mind. Make them smart, make them intelligent. Always remember they are a hero in their own mind. Never forget that day. Note that for them they are the hero. They have ambition, they have goals. They are just, again, go through the character profile course and the other courses you will flush your character out in this way you want your reader to empathize with that antagonist does not mean they have to like them, does not mean they have to approve of them, but they should be able to empathize to go back to inspect to Chavez, he believes stealing is wrong. Therefore, he is obsessive and going off to this man. Now we might think he's obsessive. We might think he's taking the justice too far. We might think he's not seeing that actually this man is innocent and that the law isn't always write. The law can get things wrong. But we can agree with inspectors shear there that stealing is wrong and that the law in general should be obeyed. There are things there. It's just that he kind of gets in the way of things. Which brings us to this idea of having shared values with our antagonists. Inspectors are there believes in justice. I believe in justice. You might have a character who really believes in the environment. Maybe they take it too far, but I believe in the environment. Do I have shared values? Is there something at which I can agree with? Then the last thing I would say that can help to make the antagonist relatable and humanize them a little bit just to give them special gifts, give them special things. You know, if you have this terrible, terrible evil which she has this magnificent gift of everything that she touches becomes beautiful. If she touches a tree, blossoms and is so lovely. That's a lovely gift. That's just beautiful. She might be really terrible, but what a beautiful gift to have. What special gifts cannot villain have that you can look at and say what they are. They're special because of that. So those are all ways that you can make your antagonist more empathetic, more humanizing, keeping in mind that this doesn't mean your reader has to like them better. It doesn't mean that your reader has to believe that they are right, and you don't have to just make your antagonist emotionally stripped bare. You do not have to do that. In the next video, let's take a bit of time and look at what do we do when our villain is our main character. 8. Main-Character Antaognists: One of the best things you can do to make your antagonist or your villain not a caricature, is to actually make him or her a viewpoint character, to make the story from his or her point of view. And when you do this, generally speaking, you are making the villain, the main character. You're choosing to make that person, the main character. What makes this work? Because your protagonist is your antagonist. Now the way your protagonist is a villain, the protagonists always needs antagonizing forces. So while your protagonist, your main character may be a villain, we still need to see that villain come up against opposing forces. Because that's what makes the plot interesting. That's what makes the plot push forward. That's what makes us engage. So he was wanting to say, okay, what are the antagonizing forces? This more so than other points of view really will go back to the idea of the antagonist seeing himself or herself as a hero in his own mind, you're going to really truly, if you choose to do this, you will have to have a very solid sense of motive, sense of goal, and sense of character. You will desk definitely. You'll need to know their values and their beliefs, their strengths, their weaknesses, why they're doing what they're doing, what their goal is. You will have to nail down all of that just like you would for a protagonist and then come up with those antagonizing forces. Several great examples of this in Lolita. Humbert. Humbert is a pedophile. He marries a woman to get at her daughter. And he basically forces relations with this young girl. It's very sad and disturbing. That being said, it is one of the truly great works of literature. And Humbert, Humbert is the main character. And we see his emotional pain. We see his attempts to really try to treat Lolita well and give her the things that she wants. And part of what makes that story in that character. I say sympathetic, so tentatively because he is totally unlikable, what he does is extremely inexcusable. But what makes him that sympathetic main character is that he has his antagonizing forces. He has someone who is also attracted to the leader who sort of stalking him. Joined with the fact that Lolita herself is not likable. Now, if we were to look at this from Lolita perspective, we might understand why she feels everything that she feels. But if you watch the film or read the book, Lolita does not come across like this, just pH of a girl. She doesn't. And so you have these antagonizing forces, whether it's Lolita, where the person following him or his own emotional pain, you have all of these things happening and coming into play. We get the backstory on Humbert. Humbert, we get a lot. We see all of it through that perspective of his lens. And that is a truly great literary example of this form. Madame Bovary is an interesting one that is not first-person the way that Lolita is, but it is third person limited. We really see very frequently through her eyes. She is completely unlikable character. But you have some sort of sympathy for a woman who feels just who's getting it so wrong. You read that book and you do sympathize with her getting it so terribly, terribly wrong. And it seems tremendously tragic because she does actually have a husband who loves her very much. So there's a tragic minus two, Madame Bovary. But we do get quite a bit of connection with her because we're in her headspace so much. A couple of other examples of this is Jill Brenner from Judy Bloom's blubber. Jill permanent printer is a bully. But we see things from her perspective. That's a great one, especially if you're more interested in young adult or children's literature, I would recommend that book. And then George RR Martin in a song of fire and ice, he has this sort of incestuous brother, sister characters who are totally unlikeable when we first meet them. But in subsequent books in the series, they become viewpoint characters. And so you end up just empathizing with them more than you would have. So all of those are examples of that when you choose that, you really want to say, how am I going to get my readers to empathize and to what degree do I want them to always be asking yourself, what do I want my readers to feel? Whether it's about a plot point or a person, what do I want my reader to feel? Then add to that with what you have to put into your books. So often people want to write the book and then say, gee, I hope somebody feels something will know, you need to know what you want your readers to feel, make that part of your goal and then write for that another way that you can actually make that the main character villain more likable, is to sort of outflank them with worst villains. So an example of this is Long John Silver in Treasure Island, which is just such a phenomenal book and film. And he's not the main character in that Jim Hawkins is, but silver is certainly present. And he is a villain in that he's, he's absolutely villain, but he's tremendously likable. He is on Jim Hawkins side. He likes Jim, he helps Jim and he is brave. I mean, he's, he's, he's everything a pirate should be. If you're going to be a pirate, be brave. If you're gonna be a pirate, be a cutthroat. If you're gonna be, he just spits it. He fits it all. And these tremendously likable and a lot of ways and part of why is because all of the other pilots around him are sort of weak and bumbling by comparison. So despite the fact that silver is apparently a totally violent cutthroat pirates who you really probably don't want to run into because of his relationship with Jim and because of the contrast that he has to the other pirates around him, we really like him. So he's not main viewpoint character, but he's so central to the story that we, we see where he, he could still function in that way. Finally, an example of a main character who is a villain would be in the film, Catch Me If You Can. Frank Abigail Junior, he knows he's doing wrong. He knows he shouldn't be faking his identity. He knows he shouldn't be printing counterfeit money. He does all of this for a very specific backstory reason because they fleshed out all of that backstory. And we know when we sympathize with all of his motivations because we see his family relationships and how much he loves them, because he sees his desire to be cared for and accepted. We see all of these things so much. We sympathize with him tremendously. I mean, he is seriously breaking the law, but you like him. Whereas opposed say with Humbert, Humbert, you don't like him. He's the main character, but you don't like him. And in that case, that's a first-person perspective. Someone like Emma Bovary, you don't like her, but you feel bad for her. Long John Silver, not first-person, you know, he's bad. Pr to like him. But she put, you know, is bad. But then Frank Abigail junior, he's doing the wrong things, but you really do sympathize with him. You, you, you really do want things to turn out well for him in the end which you don't for any of the others. So those are all nuanced aspects of that. And again, I have a big list for you to go and watch. So if this isn't shared interest area for you, those are the books and films that I would recommend. In the next video, I just wanted to touch briefly on antagonizing forces within the protagonist. 9. Mental Struggle as Antagonizing Force: Sometimes the antagonizing force and a story. Here's an on the outside at all. It's on the inside. It's something internal that the protagonist is dealing with emotionally or mentally. Now keep in mind that if you choose this as your antagonizing force, it makes it difficult to write certain genres. So you want to think about the genre of fiction you're writing. If you choose this. For example, if you are going to write something like this, you're going to spend a lot of time in the characters Headspace, which makes it very, very difficult to write, say, an action story. This kind of take on an antagonist is going to be far better for a drama, literary work, a psychological thriller or something like that. When you do this, what you want to keep in mind that the drama is happening inside your character. But remember it's being manifested out in the world. We cannot just sit in your characters headspace. What they're struggling with on the inside is going to be lived out in the wider world. Several examples of this. One is a film called The Last weekend. And that is about a gentleman who's struggling with alcoholism. This one is really is about the struggle with the alcoholism. So the whole point of the story is this man struggling with this addiction. And you'll see that, you'll see that the focus is on him dealing with that. It is a film that is truly up in his head. We are living in his head space. So it's a very uniquely done film. But what you also see is the effect that his addiction has on the people around him who care for him, who loved him. So when you're writing in this way, you, you want to make sure that you're pulling that internal struggle out into the, into the world. Because otherwise your book just read like a very tiresome monologue. And you want to avoid that. You also really want to avoid moralizing in something like this. Another example of having the protagonist who the main forces working against us inside of himself, would be Ebenezer Scrooge in a Christmas Carol. That'll story is about a man changing his mind, changing his mindset, changing how he sees the world. And we see so much of that is actually about him seeing how his mentality affect the people around him. So it's again, very much about how is internal perspective that internal struggle manifest it out into the world. And in that story we see so much Scrooge just say, I can't change, I can't change them this way. I'm stuck this way I can't change it's too late on an on-the-go. And then the third example of this, which again is another take on it, would be Jane Austen's Emma. In that film. Emma is her own worst enemy. Emma wants to help people. She wants to set up weddings. She wants to be the matchmaker. She thinks she's doing such a great job. She's doing a terrible job. She's hurting her friend Harriet very much. She's causing a massive things. Her struggle is with herself. Her struggle is with her needing to learn that she can't run the show, that she is a bit stuck up. She has to sort of get back on track. That's all inside. But what you see with Jane Austen is that she takes a very comedic approach to it. That Emma is tremendously likable for all of that because she's so genuine and her heart wanting to do good things. And we see her being gifted in other ways. And we see other characters who we respect like her. So we see a lot of these little likable things and then it's just like, it's just like Emma cannot help herself to just see the error of her ways. And it's comedic and it's funny. But that is a story that just plays out, out in the wider world amidst a very large cast of characters in comparison to some of these other stories. And yet the premise of everything, the antagonizing force in all of it is the main character of the story. Alright, the next video, let's look at not what happens when the issue is inside of a character. What do we do when the antagonist isn't a person at all? It's a wider force and abstract force in the world. 10. Social Issue as the Antagonist: Sometimes the issues that we're dealing with and we set our protagonist up against isn't a person at all. It's more of an abstract idea or an entity. It could be something like the weather where our protagonist is going across a blazingly hot desert and asked to survive. But it could also be a social issue. And that's what I really want us to look at here. What do we do when that antagonizing force is a general abstract issue of some kind. An example of this would be just total racism, which we see in To Kill a Mockingbird. One of the things that you often see happen is that because an abstract force is abstract, most of the time, what you're going to see riders do is put a face on the abstraction. So they put a, put a character in place. Who is the villain that represents who represents the abstraction itself. Bob Ewell is the main villain of To Kill a Mockingbird. But what he's really doing is acting as the main villain, which is the racism of society at the time. The trial is so obvious, it's so obvious that John Robinson is innocent. That you see people going through this. You see the African-American people up in one seating in the white people in another setting. You see outside of the trial the ways in which that racism is playing out. And then you go into this trial and you see this whole hullabaloo happening. You see a jury over there and of white people judging this black man. And you think this is so obvious, we shouldn't need this much time to show that this man is innocent. He could not have raped this woman. And yet it's happening. Bob Ewell is the face of it. Give me something specific to be against as a reader. I can be against racism in general, but when I can have it personified for me, I can just I can be against both. I can just think Bob you will is terrible and I can just take all of the racism that he represents. But that abstraction, when you can take an abstraction and put it into a person, just story becomes infinitely more powerful. Other examples of this would be Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility. That book has several antagonizing forces in it that the two sisters run up against. You have a story about two sisters. They are poor, their father dies. They are forced to go live in a smaller home, away in the country because of the way inheritance is work, they have almost no money. So Marianne and her sister Eleanor go and live with their mother in this countryside. This is a time when you kinda need to get married to ensure your future as a woman. And both of these young girls are in love with certain men now for different antagonizing forces prevent those girls from being with the people they love. And what you see is that a lot of it, there's a theme to all of the reasons that get in the way and all of the antagonizing forces and it all boils down to this societal structure that privileges money. That is all about money and all about inheritance at all about making a good match based on money. So that force is it's the culture, it's the structure of a disempowering these women from being with people they love, or at least being in a position to earn money for themselves. That's what they're really fighting. But it's played out in a really interesting fun cast of characters who represent different aspects of that. Little Women is another example of this. And Little Women, there's really no one person who we point to and say you are an antagonizing force. It's not like that. The main character of the forest sisters is Joe, although we do really, it's all four sisters, our main characters. And it's really about those girls being sisters and going through life. They hit antagonizing forces. But again, you see that for Joe, one of the really big main ones is a culture in which a woman can't be independent and go and make her own way in the world. Joe wants to do that very much. And that really holds her back. And we see that same sense of what culture thinks a woman should be play out for all of the sisters. It plays out from Meg when she tries to go to a party that she has to be a certain way and look a certain way, Joe, when she wants to be a writer and a struggling with that. And then she tries to go and she tries to be a governess and her aren't thinking how she'll make it in the world. And Amy, and Amy who seems to be the most accepting of that culture and what it is and Beth, so all of them deal with that. And in that book in particular is one where they don't take the culture and put it on one person. It's more in groups of characters. It's the girl at the ball, or it's the people who reject Joe's stories. It's in groups of people rather than a specific person, so you can do it that way. So I just wanted to point those things out. But the key thing to remember is when you choose a social issue is you're antagonizing force. You're making a commentary on it. So you need to know how you feel. If you've chosen an issuer area as you're antagonizing force. What is your thesis statement of what you feel about that? What is your value statement? You have to know what that is. In the case of To Kill a Mockingbird. It's, I think racism is wrong, right? That's how you feel the issue areas racism and you think it's wrong. You have to know how you feel about that so that you write that into your story. So make sure you think about that. And then the most cases, your personifying it, you're giving human experiences that helped me understand an abstract idea. Alright, in the next video, let's talk about the unseen antagonist. 11. The Unseen Villain: Not all antagonists are forward and present in a story. They might be very hidden from us and yet so present. Nonetheless, this is often true in mysteries, which makes them tremendously fun. And what makes these succeed? Because you're sitting here going, alright, I have a villain, but he's not seen. And yet I have to make sure that he seems intimidating and I have to provide conflict there. So how do I do that? You do it in several ways. You build up the tension by giving the protagonist perhaps moments where they almost seeing him but don't. Or you give, you make me feel like I'm moving toward knowing who the antagonist is. Because when I know the antagonists, when I'm moving forward toward the protagonist, defeating the antagonist. But when the antagonist is unseen, I'm not only moving forward too hopeful defeating of antagonists, I'm moving forward to the big reveal. And so getting clues, trying to figure out who is this person. That's, that's part of the fun. There are two really great examples of this that I recommend watching their films. They're so good. One is a film called the spiral staircase. And in that, basically the plot is this. I'll try not to really ruin anything here. But it's about a woman who's mute, a young woman who's mute. And there's a killer on the loose. And we know that the killer is watching her. Well, we don't know who the killer is. We don't know what's going to happen. And the tension is built and built and built over the course of a night that we see all of these events take place where we feel the murderer is getting closer and closer and closer to this young woman were desperate to figure out who it is you have your people to pick from. So you're spending all this time trying to sort that out in the plot. He's done in such a way that we're given scenes that make us go, Oh, maybe it's two. Maybe it's him. And we do this because the director has set up for us the scenes than allow us to see certain things. And then you couple that with the weakness of this young woman who's mute and could not scream for help. And so it's a very intense, intense film. It's so good. That one is not a comedy, that is drama. Then there is a series of Ms. Marvel movies. They were done in the 1960s starring Margaret Rutherford. And I've listed just one few murder, she said as a recommended watch, but any of them are grand. Those are your typical mystery. We know there's a murderer on the Lewis and Margaret Rutherford is going to figure it out, which is this charming, Lee, fun little old woman. Those are comedies. And again, you see the same idea where we are given clues dropped along the way. But very much the tension is about let's figure out who this is. There's an obvious yes, let's get the murderer, but there's really a, let's figure it out. That's the fun of it. So in that situation, the tension that you're bringing in are the clues. You make me think one thing and then you give me a clue that makes me think something else. So in a story like this, you have to focus very much on mental place and the emotional place that your reader or your viewers at any given time. Because you want me confused. You want me shifting around. You don't want me to feel like I know who this is. That's for mysteries. But this can also be done in different ways as well in non mystery films, where we simply don't see the villain terribly much, but we probably do see his proxies. A good example of this is Lord of the Rings. We don't necessarily in the films or caustic to the films for now just because they're easier for people to get through. We don't see Sauron a lot, but what we do see are his proxies. We see the night riders, we see the Orcs. We see all of these creatures that are on his side. All these people who are on his side, who are very intimidating, who are quite villainous. And they sort of stand in for the villain proper, forcing a protagonist to defeat these proxies along the way before he can defeat the villain himself. Raises the stakes. It makes the final and eventual, if it is eventual altercation with the main villain or the more emotional and intense because of what we've had to go through to finally get to the main villain. Welcome to have a story in which we deal with the villain on repeat. And that works. But it's almost like I have to earn myself, I had to earn my way to the big villain. And this certainly plays out in the Harry Potter stories. How are you deals with all kinds of proxies, all kinds of Representatives and henchmen and different people who work for Voldemort, who are on Voldemort side before he ever fight this huge final battle with voldemort himself. So keep in mind, when you say, I'm not going to reveal my antagonist. If it's a mystery, do the one thing, but if it's not and we know who it is, when am I going to put my protagonist in contact with that main villain? An unseen one doesn't mean he's unseen till the end. It could be that we just rarely see him and most of the time it's the proxies, that's okay. But when you choose for me to see the main villain, those should be really high-stake peak moments, so should be some of the most intense moments in your story. So ask yourself, how am I going to get to the intensity of that moment? I have a course on making a scene outline, and I recommend going and watching that. One of the things you'll see in that is how we look at an intensity score, a conflict intensity, so that you're making sure that your different scenes in different beats within those scenes or at certain levels of attention, you want to establish your attention in a range. This is my lowest tension. This is my highest tension. Now I work within this. That's what allows the climax to be climactic. It's just like a painting. When you're painting, one of the first things you do is establish your darkest dark and your lightest light. And you work in that so that you make sure the highlights and low lights are dramatic. It's the same idea with your story. When you want to have this unseen antagonist, or certainly any scenes with your antagonist. How emotional, how intense is this scene compared to that? Compared to that scene? You should have a score that is shifting up and down, providing moments of intensity, moments of relief. So think about that as you, as you do this. Alright, in the next video, we're going to just address some of the many antagonist archetypes. 12. Villain Archetypes (with examples): Alright, on your class notes, we have listed for you antagonist archetypes. Now. These aren't just select a villain archetypes. There are many more, but we're going to go through these. I'm going to just address them briefly. But the reason I wanted to go over these is that quite truly, as I've said in many other courses, one of the best things that you can do if you are interested in writing and writing great literature or screenplay, et cetera, is of course, to become a student of the form. I have for you such a fantastic list of books and films to go and to watch. What I've done is gone through some of the archetypes and giving you pointed you towards some of the very best in cinema and Literature. For you to then go experience for yourself everything that we start to look at here you will see these characters embody things that we have talked to, talked about up to this point. So let's just go a few of these again, by no means all of them. But I just wanted to point a few out to you. The first archetype is the fanatic. Now, this can be, but does not have to be a religious fanatic. It's just someone who is just fanatical about something. Some examples that I have for you here are any Wilkes in misery? This is a Stephen King story. There's a book, there is a film. It's seriously disturbing, I have to say. But she's just obsessed with this author. And you see her obsessions play out. Big time. It's frightening. She's scary. It's a serious, very serious story. The next example I have is more comedic. So syndrome, I mentioned him earlier in the Incredibles syndrome, who is hurt emotionally as a boy. And then it changes him into this little supervillain that he becomes. Another example is Saint John rivers in Jane Eyre. St. John, remember, is this actually a good guy? He is sort of religiously fanatical a little bit, but he's a bit of an antagonizing force for Jane in the sense that he is pressing her to do something she doesn't really want to do. He doesn't have bad intent behind it, but it's not quite what she wants to do. So it's just a milder milder version of that. Then inspectors are there from the mirrors who is again fanatical about the law and truth and doing right? But it ends up making him a serious antagonizing force in the story. Alright, The Secret villain. We've talked about this one already, so I'm not really going to go into it in more of it again, the spiral staircase murder, she said, I'm leaving the names blank on these because I want you to watch them and I don't want to ruin the ends of the mysteries. So anywhere there's a blank, it's because I don't want to ruin the story for you. And Sauron in Lord of the Rings, all of those examples of secret villains we don't really see, but are nonetheless there. Another example is the parental oppressor. This one is just that parent figure who either knows he or she is doing bad or who doesn't know he or she is doing that, just has the child's best interest at heart. And I have an example of each. Humbert, Humbert in Lolita pedophile. He marries her mother, so he is now her stepfather. Bad intent. He knows pedophilia is wrong. He's just so attracted to the leader, he can't help himself. He is a terrible person. But another example of someone who is just an antagonizing force but not the villain really is an Hamilton from the film The Notebook. She is the mother of a wealthy young girls, so it's a wealthy family. She has a daughter. Her daughter falls in love with a man from the wrong side of the tracks as it were, mother wants daughter marrying and good man from the right side of the tracks and does some things to get in the way of the relationship that the daughter with Amanda daughter really loves. She gets in the way she's doing it out of the goodness of her heart. But it isn't intact. Helpful. So that is that one, the sidekick. A good example of this is Grover deal from a Christmas Story. The sidekick is just basically that person who's always there next to the villain, kinda doing what the villain says and helping out. It's different than the henchmen, which we will see in a moment. But the sidekick, he is just kind of like the villain goes rod and it's like, Yeah, it's just climbed, does the same thing. So the sidekick, the outsider, or the outcast. There are a lot of examples from this and film and literature going back to just early, early ancient poetry in Beowulf, Grendel is the monster in that, and he's, he's an outcast. So I wanted to throw that in there because for those of you who like fantasy and like mythology and whatnot, go back and watch or read Beowulf, because that one truly has this outsider outcast as the villain, the beast from Beauty and the Beast. He is an outsider. He is the villain who we then find is not the villain. And then we find the ultimate villain is the person who's actually the incisor. So that the beast who seems like the villain is the outsider. And then we come to find no actually this outside or it's really quite good and becomes quite good. But this popular man in town is in fact the villain. So it's sort of a switch. Tom Riddle from the Harry Potter series. We see him be the outcast for sure. And then a great literary example is Heathcliff from weathering heights. That's a good psychological one as well. That's a very complex one. That story, novel and film. The novel and film are very different. If you don't want to invest in the novel, watch the film, That's fine. Fat. It's an interesting one because Heathcliff is really quite a villain in some ways and knows some of the damage that he's doing it. But he's doing it because he's he loves this girl and he feels so supported. It's, it's a complicated relationship. If you were looking for villains who are complicated and they are the villain, but they're also the love interest and they're the villain, but they're also the outcast and they have quite a backstory that you can sympathize with. And there's family who are antagonists, but it's out of love. It's very complicated. It's a great example of that. So I really wanted to throw that out there. The Violent Predator example of this would be T from Cold Mountain if you haven't seen it. I recommend watching it. He is basically stalking the main character because the main character left the army. He left, the confederate group, ran away. And this man is hunting him down to bring him back. Fatigue is absolutely evil. He is violent. He murders without a thought. He is truly, truly, truly a bad, just to the core. I mean, just as close to just pure evil as, as you're going to get into a story like that, that's not a fantasy or something like that. He is very violent and he is hunting someone down. The traitor. Couple of examples of this Long John Silver and Treasure Island. Silver tricks Jim Hawkins and he tricks other people to get onto the island to try to find the treasure. And in that way he's a traitor. But again, if you are looking for an example of a villain who you really like, but it's not because you've been given a lot of backstory that makes you connect to silver emotionally. You're not gonna get that Stevens and doesn't give you that. You don't get a lot of oh, I connected with John Silver because he had this rough childhood. No. You don't get any of that which you learned about his backstory sees the worst of the worst. Everybody's like, Well, Flint was the worst pirate, but then there's silver, and only silver was worse than Flint. That's how bad silver is, but we end up just loving silver because of his actions. So he's a grand example of a unlikeable villain who is likable for his actions and his relationships with the characters as opposed to some sort of heart-wrenching backstory. Another example of a trader is the character Benedict Arnold, who of course is a real person, but an Rinaldo, Facebook finishing Becker. And I put finishing back in because it is a romance, it's a young adult romance, historical fiction. If you like historical fiction, you like young adult, you like romance. That is a great one to read. It really is. It just has everything that you'd want from those genres. Genre fiction type book, totally likable and enjoyable. I recommend that one, the insane villain. Several examples for you here, mrs. Danforth and Rebecca. This is definitely, I'll get to this one. I go over the other lists, but this is definitely one of those films you have to watch. The book is excellent too. I recommend it as well. At least watched the film. You won't be sorry, Alfred Hitchcock directed it. It's so good. It's good. Another exam. I don't want to give anything away, so I'm not going to address it terribly much, but you will find insanity in that story. Bruno Anthony from Strangers on a Train. This is a man who is just mad and he kills somebody because of it. It's oddly interesting film. It is just, he decides that he's made this pact with someone he hasn't made a pact with, that. Each will kill someone. You kill someone for me and I'll kill someone for you. The other person totally never made this pact, but Bruno decides they did, and he upholds his part of the bargain and he wants to be the person to hold up his side of the bargain. He kind of stocks that person. It's wild, but it's very good, very good film. And then the uninvited, which I'm not telling you who is insane in that one because it would ruin something, so they won't ruin something for the others. The sympathetic villain, I'm putting hm, pr tampered here. I've already said how I feel about him. He's really not sympathetic in the sense that he's totally evil and wrong. But the way Nabokov writes him in that first-person perspective you do. It is designed for him to be sympathetic. The authority figure, Ms. Mentioned Ms. mentioned, if you've watched my other courses, I've talked about a little princess before. Ms. Mentioned runs a boarding house and Sarah crew is one of the wealthy young girls who attends. Sarah's father dies. She is now we learn totally poor. Her father has no money. Ms. Mentioned did not know that. So Ms. Mentioned is spent a great deal of money on Sarah thinking her father would pay her back. When Ms. mentioned found out the terrorists father was dead and penniless, and now Sarah is penniless and on her hands, she goes about making Sarah's life tremendously, tremendously miserable. So that is a great example of this authority figure. Ms. Mentioned is all about authority. She wants power. She wants money. She wants to be considered graceful and an elegant woman. Sarah drives her crazy because Sarah has all of the things naturally, the mismatch and wants. So when Sarah loses her power, loses. Her money. Ms. Mentioned jumps after that. This is a situation. This is a book where there's, there's no real goal on either side. It's very situational. Sarah, getting back to a good place and sort of quote unquote, defeating Ms. Mentioned isn't because of something Sarah did, is because Sarah's circumstances changed. And the reason I talk about this book so much in my classes is not only because I do truly love it, but most everything you hear about writing is all goal-oriented. What's the goal of the protagonists with the goal of the antagonist? And this is an example of such a phenomenal story that does not have that. It is just not that simple to say. You have to have a goal and you have to be working toward the end result. It's not often the case, it's not the case there. It's a wonderful story. I highly recommend it. The beast, monster. If you've ever seen the film Alien, there is an alien in it and it is a monster. And it's scary. And that is a good example of that, the bully. Several examples for you here, Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter series, that, that one is a very traditional bullying of children, curly and if mice and men, That's an example of bullying that happens at the adult level. That's a short book, but it's very powerful by John Steinbeck. It's very sad. So curly, curly isn't, he is a bully. If you are looking for horror as a genre fiction, I wanted to make sure to include a horror book. Carries mother and her classmates are bullies, carries the main girl. I don't want to give a lot of it away. It's a film and they book. But her mother and her classmates bully, carry in that job runner from blubber is a really good example of a bully. And this is a good example of a first-person perspective book as well. So again, if you're looking for that first-person perspective, this is one where the Boolean starts out. The boolean learns her ways. And then Regina George from the movie, Mean Girls, Who is just the epitome of bullying in school? The femme fatale, Phyllis Dietrich, sin in Double Indemnity. The femme fatale is such a great archetype or role. And this film in particular, she might be my very favorite femme fatale figure. This one is really worth watching. It's Xi is seductive, but she's totally wrong and she's got some seriously bad intentions. And yet you have to kind of like her. You know, the two main characters that are not good people, but Phyllis is definitely the villain of the two of them. And you see that played out. I don't want to ruin it for you because it's so good, but you just must, must, must go and watch it. Henchmen. Now the hedge funds, not the sidekick, the henchmen is going to be someone who really more carries out things the main villain wants done. And a good example of this is a character from The Godfather, Luca Brodsky, who sort of just, you know, he's the point person. He sort of helps run things. Sometimes it's a machine, the terminator in the film, the terminator as an example of that. What's interesting about that one is that you don't have the emotion to play with because it's a machine. So your, your strain, your stress, your anxiety is going to be much more physical. In a story like that. Personifications of evil. These are the people who are just flat out evil. Voldemort. Voldemort is very close to its pure evil as you're going to get. And he's an example of an irredeemable villain, just purely, purely evil. We get a lot of backstory on him across the course of the Harry Potter films. To the point where you understand his boyhood, you understand why Tom Riddle did things that he did and you have all of that. And yet, Voldemort remains this sort of purely evil figure. You have to ask yourself, why is that? When all of these things they put in backstory, put an emotion, putting these things so that I kind of relate to the character and that should make them not purely evil. It doesn't really work that way in Baltimore, we still think Voldemort is just as bad as it gets. And port. The reason behind this is that he is just so bad. His final form is so monstrous, it's so stripped of humanity that he doesn't even look like a person anymore. He is physically in human. He has an absolute clear goal is to kill Harry Potter. He will do anything to make that happen. He will kill anyone to make that happen. He will do it without remorse. He is just, he's just lost all of the things that might make him human. When you add to that, this sort of ethnic cleansing that he has going on where he just wants to wipe out whole swaths of people. And then we are presented with so many deeply disturbing things that he does and choices he makes. It just makes him downright villainous to the core despite the backstory that we're given. So he is a phenomenal example of that. Another example of this purely evil character would be Mr. Hyde and the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. That's a short book by Robert Louis Stevenson in which you have a deeply good man, Dr. Jekyll. And he wants to see if he can sort of separate out the evil and somewhat so that we could all be really good. Well, he succeeds but ends up with this alternate personality that's just pure evil, and that's who Mr. Hyde is. I won't ruin the story for you. It's short but worth reading than a book like Dracula, Dracula, straight-up, evil. There's nothing good in him. And in Dracula you don't get this emotional backstory. He's just a monster. He's just evil. The white which Janice the white which from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, who we spoke about. Again, she's just solidly evil. We have a little bit of backstory on her, but the backstory we have is not emotional. It doesn't let us connect with her personality. She wants to destroy all that is good and beautiful in Narnia. She wants to kill as land. Who is the Christ figure in Narnia? She's just the state and of the story. All of those grant examples of personifications of the evil nature can also be an antagonizing force. This would be true in the river, in the film, The African Queen, a man and a woman are attempting to sort of blow up a certain enemies fortress at the time. So the enemies or the enemies, but really what they're facing throughout as this river and the rapids and the nuts and the leeches and all of these things that they have to go through in this river in Africa. It is a truly phenomenal film where it really is that nature's working against these people as it were. And then there's a Jack London story called to build a fire. And then that one, it's the cold. It's just the cold. And that's a more, The African Queen is quite adventurous to build a fire is a far more calm story, but the call is no less threatening. And then the supernatural, ghosts, aliens, things like that. Again, I put the alien from aliens, but there's also a wonderful ghost story film called The uninvited that has a ghost in it. That's phenomenal example of that. I also have that listed under insane because there is a character who deals with that. So all of those was just there, just some of the many, many archetypes one could have for an antagonist, for a villain. Alright, in the next video, I would like to go over your class project, as well as some final thoughts on how you can write a great antagonist. 13. Bringing the Villain to Life & Project: We're in the homestretch. What I'd like to do is just point out a few things for you that I hope are helpful resources and then talk a little bit about your class project. Now, on the class notes, you will see that not only did you have an outline of the things that we've talked about in the class. You also have a list of the select film archetypes that we went over. You also have a list of select motives for your valence and antagonists. And then we have lists of recommended reading and watching. I cannot speak enough for these. I did choose them very specifically. So do take time to go over them. We've talked about almost all of them. All of these you could take and run through the class worksheet to get a further handle on a villain. You could also use the worksheet, which we'll talk about in a moment for your own stories, whether you've written them yet or not. My first recommendation for you, when you are really ready to write your villain is to go through and make sure you have watched this series of courses that I have on character development. Because the first rule of thumb really remains true. You want a fleshed out character? I have a number of courses that do that, including my writing unforgettable characters, character profile courses is a great starting point. It is all about building the foundation of your characters. What you want when you design any character is to create what we think of as root characteristics. And out of those root characteristics, grow all of the other traits. When you write your characters this way, everything that they do will make so much more sense because it grows out of the root. This is very different than just randomly choosing characteristics for your characters that can make a story and the characters seemed disjointed so stark that character profile course. But then as we talked about, villains need to have motives. They need to have goals. They need to have a reason why you're going to get a lot of that when you look at the next course, I recommend, which is the character values and beliefs. This is the other foundation for your character. You, your character has goals and reasons and values. And everything that they do is based on those beliefs and those values that they have. So you need to establish what am I villains values and beliefs. If my villain, if inspectors are their values, justice, then that's going to drive him throughout the story. So, you know, if John is the white, which values power that drives her throughout the store, you've got to know what those are. So that values and beliefs of course, is going to help you do that and help you. All of these will help you come up with really in-depth, meaty characters. You'll want to look at what am I character's flaws, because your character's flaws can help drive the plot forward. This is not just true of the protagonist. Antagonist should have flaws to your antagonist should have things that get in his way. So you need to know what those are. They are just as three-dimensional is your protagonist. They also will have strengths. I have a course on that. Then there's a course all about describing their traits, their actions, their thoughts. So this is going to help you bring that antagonist to life and help you come up with and describe them inaction in unique ways so that they register as truly unique, separate from all of the other characters. Then that'd be lovable character relationship course. And again, all of these are on your class notes. But the believable character relationships course, this one is all about juxtaposing your protagonist and your antagonist. So they're interesting. You don't want two characters who are too close. You don't want two characters who don't butt up against each other enough, you want friction. And that course is going to help you write that friction into your story. So if you have not watched those, watch those in conjunction with this one, because if you do that and you will do the worksheets for all of those courses. You will have a fleshed out villain for sure. So I recommend that very much. In terms of the project for this class, I have a worksheet for you, as you know, I have for many of my classes, and it's a series of questions and a series of things for you to process through and help you figure out what and who is my antagonist and my villain. When you do this, use it as a brainstorming thing. Feel free to write down far more than it's actually going to end up getting, get your creative juices going. One of the worst things you can do for yourself as a writer is saying that the first thing is you write R. Or to be, they have to be, they don't start writing things. You'll write some things down and go, well, that's rubbish and irrelevant things down and go, Oh, that's great. Let yourself do that with these questions. The goal of these questions to get you thinking about specific things that will help you consider your antagonist as specifically a villainous forced in the story. So download that worksheet, work your way through it and then take those answers and bring them into conjunction with the character profile, with the values and beliefs course. And you'd be amazed, you'll be amazed the fleshed-out character you end up with. I hope all of this was helpful. If it was two things you can do for me that will help me make more courses for you. One is to leave a review that's huge for me and I would appreciate it so much. And the other thing that you can do this, share this course or any of my courses you like with your peers, with your friends, with anyone you think might enjoy it as well. Each course has a shareable link on the course web page for a computer. And if you share that link with people that can help me, as opposed to if you copy paste something, if you use that shareable link, that can help me in, the more I'm able to get that support, the more courses I'm able to make, which is such a joy. So if you wouldn't mind doing that, I would appreciate it. Thank you for watching. I hope this was helpful. And I wish you the very, very best of luck with your writing. Bye.