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Just to throw in some thoughts. A human antagonist will almost always believe they are doing the right thing. However, they don’t need to be sympathetic for it. There are many examples in history of people that were downright vile doing what they thought was a good thing. Beliefs of superiority due to race, gender, sexuality, religion, etc. have led to many atrocities that were supposed to be for the right reason. While some of these people are universally hated, some are heroes or villains depending on who you ask. Winston Churchill for example. Often seen as a hero by the media, but I’m sure the Irish and Indians have much different views on him. Or Sir John A. MacDonald. One of the leading figures in the formation of Canada as a nation and the first Prime Minister. However an alcoholic and involved pretty firmly in the Residential Schools. If not human though, minds work in different ways. A few examples have been brought up such as Jaws, or the Raptors in Jurassic Park. These though are primal creatures acting on instinct. Slasher villains such as Jason Vorhees or Michael Myers are often supposed to be embodiment of evil but they are really mostly instinctual and primal. Characters like Pinhead from Hellraiser though have objectives and goals though they are clearly not of the moral variety. My current story my villain is a demon. He has plots and schemes that involve the destruction of many lives in one way or another, and he’s not sympathetic to the pain he causes as that stands in his way. However, he just just go off destroying things for the shits and giggles of it. It’s less evil, and more amoral from common society’s standpoint.

Spent 45 minutes hanging out under a bridge today. Note to self: Check the friggin’ forecast before you decide to take your bike to work.

Googled it up, there’s no DSM for psychopath, instead, the psychiatrists would label an individual as having “Antisocial personality disorder”, rather vague, though a psychopath, “A "psychopath" is someone whose hurtful actions toward others tend to reflect calculation, manipulation and cunning; they also tend not to feel emotion and mimic (rather than experience) empathy for others.” An example, a psychopath CEO has no issues with doing layoffs, as they can’t empathize with the employees being laid off, however, what they’re doing, reducing overhead, is in the better interest of the shareholders. So, I’m guessing there’s a degree to the psychopath. Some are more goal orientation, don’t care about busting rules/hurting to make the goals. And some went further, enjoyed the busting/hurt, and therefore enjoy the means as well as the goals. Not absolutely certain without becoming a psychopath myself.

There are certainly psychopaths out there who have no real conscience, who believe the ends justify the means. Some become serial killers, others become CEOs/Bankers/Lawyers/Politicians. My current universe, though, are people who feel they are doing the right thing, who agree with what is happening even if it gets a bit “messy”.

Like tags, for every rule I make, I break. Messy can be fine for the story, or not, depends on the impact even though I do tend to keep the means simple (ie, not tying victim to a draw bridge and waiting for the next tall boat to come through, causing the nearby cyanide-gas filled chandelier to break in response to an elephant rampage). i do measure the desired impact on my characters. I did have one scene where I was going to have my main character witness a thousand being massacred, but had to change it so he’d only see a couple, because I figured a thousand would really screw him up, even a couple will haunt him.

Since it’s fanfiction, we kind of get to select our antagonists out of available characters. Even if they are not originally antagonists, we can then make them one, and that gets more into what this topic is about. But I think a big part of it is selecting the right person out of the available characters. I think you just pick someone who has a strong connection to the MC. So for instance I once wrote a Legend of Zelda non-lemon where Zelda was the antagonist and conducted herself in an overly logical way. Perhaps you can get the readers to go against anyone if you make them extreme enough. And I picked Zelda because she had a lot of meat on her as a character, and I could see how she could have differences with my MC Link. In lemons I haven’t really bothered with real antagonists. It’s more been like a condition as the antagonist. So like a Naruto who’s struggling with his own lusts. In writing, what’s this again? Man vs Man, Man vs Nature, Man vs Self. Or something.

Move along, nun-thing to see here ….

Yep, sometimes it’s a clean electrocution, other times, we’re tossing the nun into the woodchipper.

They can, from what I’ve learned from my father who works as an underground electrician. Not only can burns be nasty, but he’s had groundhogs get decapitated when they get into substations. Electricity moving through the body can cause both entry and exit wounds, and those wounds can go quite deep. While not always visible on the surface, it certainly can be.

I write soldiers a fair bit, so guns are around often enough.

I personally think long, creative and messy doesn’t necessarily take away from the emotional impact. Gratuitousness miiight in some cases, depending on how it’s written. The most important thing to me, when I write a death scene where I want emotional impact, is if it’s breaking my heart to write it. I need it to break my heart if I want it to break the hearts of my readers. I tend to favour the messy stuff, but that comes from my horror background. Messy can make a spiral out of control more powerful and put a spotlight on raw, messy emotions. If you wanna get philosophical about it, it can be a metaphor for a lot of other emotional things going on in the story. Personally I like my death scenes real intimate and raw. Though I don’t think I get all that complicated either. (Scene in bathroom = heavy soapdish to the head) Something that happens spontaneously to normal people who don’t have guns just hanging around, so in the heat of the moment, they have to improvise, or they’re giant winged monsters and everything they do is messy anyway, lol. I can’t say I’ve done a lot of death-by-gun bits. At least not with main characters. It usually doesn’t make sense for the circumstances I lay out, or the settings. If I wrote about gangsters or cops or hunters (or republicans?) more, I probably would.

Well I just hope I succeeded in an erotic horror/fantasy fusion. ] As @Desiderius Price has, death is part of life in my stories. I tend to go less simple. Even a gunshot makes a hell of a mess. I personally feel its what makes my stories mine. I’m curious though if others find that a messy death can make a character’s death less emotionally impactful. I don’t think so myself, but there’s always various opinions out there.

Thank you! I appreciate it.

Yep, I’ve plenty of stories about instant BBQd squirrel bits. So high voltage can most definitely do interesting things. In my story case, I simply needed a murder, and the killer knew what he was doing, so it was relatively clean, so to speak.

A good example of that happening is Light Yagami of Death Note. He reaaaaaaally lost it. It looked like he was slipping at first, then he went from gradually slipping to just jumping off that ledge into I Am God! territory.

Wouldn’t someone who feels they are doing the right thing, and agree with what is happening even is it gets a bit “messy” actually be the people who believe the ends justify the means? Someone who’s more along the psychopath route, it almost feels like the means are the goal, and less about an end state.

I’ll shift it for you!

Re: “Mia: Confessions of a Dickgirl” Ah, you’re quite right. I hate having factual errors in my fics (inadvertent ones, anyway), so I went back and fixed this. Thanks. Thank you.

Re: “Mia: Confessions of a Dickgirl” Thank you, for that and for the beta! *blushes* These sex scenes were really fun to write, particularly the whole strategy of Mia seducing Lorraine without revealing what she's really got going on down there. So glad you enjoyed that. Thank you!

“I’ll take deranged psychopathic schizophrenic serial killers for a thousand, Alex.” As always, it depends on the story being told. Also, with how I write my stories, death is a part of life, as I was reminded of earlier this year. I also generally opt for simple means, gunshot, electrocution, etc, not overly complicated in the method.

I love horror fantasy fusions. But yeah, I absolutely believe you can be super attached to your characters and empathize with them yet still be more than happy to slaughter the fuck out of them. Doesn’t mean you’re less attached than someone who wouldn’t hurt their characters, I think it just means that you made a difficult decision, or like the more emotionally driven writers like me, let the story sweep you away and did what it demanded.

You! So I was reading a chapter of a first person story recently (GeorgeGlass’s Mia: Confessions of a Dickgirl, which I need to also put a review on the site for now it’s loaded!) and it worked really well. Thinking more than ever about taking the I! sequel idea mentioned above, and actually going for it. I think the biggest weakness I have with it would be trying to make all five characters sound unique in languague rather than just interests for the narration for their parts. And also whether I’d be able to get enough humor out of Kate chewing on her own ass to deal with an itch in first person because I’d probably have more of that kind of thing than “noble wolf hunting through the forest” Thank you for your comment! I realise this was a little on the nose for Mary Sue fanfiction titles, but I’ve seen some that were pretty fucking close to it! Although Sarsa was lying to and manipulating You! she is a genuine Suethor who really lucked out by getting released by someone with knowlege of the modern fanfic world as opposed to the much more restricted old school “Writing for yourself/fanzines” world. I’ll have to finalise a real name for Sarsa at somepoint, with “Sarsa” or “Sarsa Parilla” just being her pen name. As well as those demon style titles “The earliest records describe this demon as “The One Who Writes.” They say she was shipping Odysseus with her OCs before the fall of Troy! They say she burnt the place after a bad review…” And thank You! again for your comment :)

Just avoid Kindle Unlimited, from what I’ve been told….

I’ve been waffling on going Amazon myself, though I’d view it like buying a lottery ticket, it’d have a chance, but more likely flop.

New phones always fall on the first day. It’s a universal law. It’s motherfriggin science. If you got a new phone and it didn’t drop the first day, then you’re a witch and you need to stop cheating because it’s not fair.

I find antagonists with similar goals can cause the biggest problems. They may be heroes with their own flaws and hurdles. Or just plain careless and dumb. But those aren’t the villains, the ones involved in selfish and cruel agendas. I know their major goals, but I still work on intermediate steps and remembering to show those results subtly. I want to show how the big bad is hacking city infrastructure, enough to make problems and get his jollies after earlier losses, but not enough to draw the heroes’ attention fromthe antagonist who’s a pain but not the real big bad. I’m rather pleased about this villain compared to my usual. I have had some flat villains, but thinking back on the first, I did give him some background and a wife killed earlier by the heroes. He wasn’t that clever on the fly but he was a pain...

Antagonist are best conceptualized as the protagonists of a different story. As in the need to have a goal and a reason or desire driving them towards it The worst thing you can do with an antagonist is to use them as plot-spackkle.

Yep. Some people just jump right off that slippery slope rather than slide off.

Each form of antagonist has it’s time and place in stories, depends on what the author is going for. Sometimes, a Mr. Joker or Lex Luthor is exactly what the story calls for. Othertimes, it’s less, even down to just “society” being “normal” in the story’s era/setting.

spite and malice have their place to be sure. But its much more satisfying when one of the biggest problems for the protagonists is just normal people going about their lives

Antagonists can also be more complicated too. In a particular story within my universe, I may choose a name/face to represent the antagonist, but the general antagonist is the collective whole of society, so it’s very multi-faceted in how it wants to screw over my protagonists. And that’s not out of spite or malice, but more in a belief within the society as a whole that they are right, and going about things in the right way.

Antagonists are in many ways the easier to create than protagonists. They laugh,cry and generally do everything the protagonists do. The who what when and why generally take care of the rest.

One needs look nor further than real life to find every type of “villain” you could desire. From the sociopath, to the eternally greedy, to the hypocrite, to the fanatic, to the horrifically misguided, they’re all there. Even honest and honorable people can find themselves on opposite sides of a “front” in a “conflict,” where absent that conflict they would share meals and be friends with each other. In writing, just like in real life, every villain has their place.

Don’t create antagonists as Villains. An antagonist at heart, the person who’s goals run counter to the protagonist. THey are just both people that desire something and are journeying to get that thing. The first thing to humanize an antagonist is that very few people see themselves as the ‘bad guy’. Everyone thinks they have good reasons for what they do and that they are doing what is best for themselves and those they care about. Give them goals, , give them a reason for their goals and ask yourself why this person and the protagonist are at odds. Is it a grudge against the protagonist specifically or is the protagonist just an obstacle to be over come. Or to put it this way. is it personal, or incidental. personal indicates that the character holds a sepecific and focused hate for the the protagonist specifically. Incidental just means it was a matter of chance , that in the course of their own independent goals they wound up in opposition. It’s sort of like how soliders are. VEry seldom is there any actual hatred for the enemy soldier, not genuine hatred. They are just there and you have your orders, and they have there’s. If you want to get advanced, you cmake the antagonist be essentially be the protagonist, just facing the opposite direction. Give them the same trains, qualities and etc as the protagonist.

What is the antagonist for? What genre is the story in? How complex is the main protagonist? What are the interactions between protagonist and antagonist? Are they friendly and jovial? Or are they die hard someone is going to die the moment one of them sees each other? Sometimes the story just needs a complete monster. And sometimes the whys are much more interesting than the antagonist themselves. The most interesting questions come to mind if the main character is the villain of the story.

You can. Stereotypical villains can be interesting \. Or you could simply make the story less about the villain. Look at Lord of the RIngs. Did you notice that Sauron (despite being the big bad) never really factors in the story? He’s there, in the same way the trees the grass and the mountains are but he’s not the focus. In such cases the Villain is more treated as a force of nature, something the protagonist must react to, In these cases the meat of the story is what sort of actions, changes and reactions the villain brings out in the characters. The raptors in Jurassic Park, Jason Voorhees, The Shark from Jaws. These are prime examples of that. Not every story needs to be focused on a grand, looming conflict. Sometimes just the task of getting from A-B is enough. Sort of like in a video game.You aren’t thinking about the last boss fight. Your attention is focused on surviving one area at a time., and I’d say that makes for some thrilliung engagement.

For my main potter fic (not on AFF), I’d write the minutes/notes/debate for “Death Eater” strategy meetings. I found that quite useful in figuring out what the DEs were up to, what was next, how they’d respond to counter anything Dumbledore was doing, and generally shaping their overarching plan. Also included in those notes were chastising for the missteps among the main antagonists. I do this a bit less for my current line of fics, but its something I still do from time to time. It does help.

I know this was directed at someone else, but I just want to put out there that there's totally a time and place for the stereotypical antagonist. Some writers avoid stereotypes as much as possible. And that's a pretty good rule to live by, especially if you're unsure of yourself. Or if you don't appreciate them to begin with. If you bristle at the snobby waiter trope at a high class restaurant no matter how well it's done, you should probably avoid it in your own writing. However, If stereotypes and 2 dimensional characters are tools you want to learn how and when to use effectively, the learning process does tend to take the trial and error route. Personally, I avoid combining them and I avoid 2 dimensional chars more than I do stereotypes. If your main antagonist embodies a number of stereotypes but is multi faceted and you love him and what he brings to your story, that is a valid character. I might be repeating myself with all this, but I love stereotypes. They're so fun to play with.

Beautiful… What’s great about your advice is that it's so true and RELATABLE. Me and my neighbor IRL are bitter enemies because we run into each other in the parking lot all the time. She is my villain and I am hers! Maybe this is the writer in me, but I’ve always been curious about this neighbor of mine. Because you're right, she’s a protagonist in her own weird ass story. Shit, I know my story is pretty crazy lol. On another note, do you think it's ok to have a stereotypical antagonist? I’m not looking for an excuse, I’m just wondering since you asked about the purpose of the character, if how you can construct your bad guys depending on usage. I suppose you can, and I’m answering my own damned question! There can be more than one bad guy, it can just be the dick waiter who spills coffee on the main character, or you could be talking about the guy who’s plotting to rule the universe! Ok, well, thanks for that little tidbit of advise. I think that’ll be easy to store in my back pocket and take it along with me I like simple and sweet. easy to repeat!

I hate to say it, but I have yet to add complexity to my antagonists! Since my stories are so main character driven, it’s them who have the deep personalities and complexity (sometimes to the point where they become the a little hard to sympathize with) Pretty much everyone else is… a stereotype. Fudge, look I’m admitting to it! Enough is enough! No more of this!

Melrick will appreciate your volunteerism on this topic (once his computer woes are fixed).

And now all I can hear in my twisted little mind is Snagglepuss, saying, “Exit, stage left.”

With all the quality recent guides, I’m looking forward to “Writing the Deuteragonist and Tritagonist” with step one being “Look up Deuteragonist and Tritagonist in the dictionary.”

Most of my plot bunnies are friendly, they rarely get rabid. They just keep spawning. Right now I’m satisfied with the villains in my active stories. I usually create the villain for my plot and then develop as I go. (and feel inadequate). When I look back I have motive and a tracery of backstory, they just don’t feel like enough. (I really don’t want to shift to antagonist 1st person POV, as I want the readers to know as much or little as the villains) I did try profile/outline and my muse ran away. If I go to that level detail I can’t revisit enough to actually write. That muse has a short attention span.

Fanfiction writing is excellent practice. It taught me a lot of things about character analysis, and eventually creation. Because usually we write fanfiction for the love of the characters, right? I think it’s subjective. In some senses, a character is a villain and a hero depending on their actions at any given time, but I tend to categorize characters based on their importance in my story. If they’re the central character, I’d say anti-hero, and if they’re the main conflict/opposition to the central character, then they’d be the anti-villain?

::nods vigorously:: It’s ALWAYS the plot bunnies.

In my stories, the overarching antagonist is society, with the collective requirement of group thought. Don’t like it? Then, you are the problem, and must be sorted out. So, I’ll typically manifest that through characters in the story (ie, Ernest in Dolbourne Chronicles.) Of course, we all know who the real antagonists are … plot bunnies.

Personally, I looove the antagonist role. I love a good villain, so naturally I have a looot of thoughts on this matter. I agree that the villain should think they’re doing the right thing in most cases. (Especially with new writers or writers whose strengths are not in the more naughtiness-inclined characters) But I also do think there are uses for the stereotypes. And the comical bad villains. If done well, a villain who knows they’re doing the wrong thing and loves it can be so friggin awesome! I think my favourite type of villain, usually reserved for the drama or survival genres, is the kind of person you actually find yourself rooting for and getting broken hearted over. Someone you can totally relate to and like, and want to see succeed even if you know they’re doing something they shouldn’t be doing. Like the opposite of an anti-hero. An anti-villain? lol. For every kind, though, especially the ones who you try to make sympathetic, you have to be careful not to try to make them sooooo normal and relatable they become uninteresting. When writing a villain, regardless of the type you go for, I think it’s the same as writing every other character. The most important thing, to me, is to understand what motivates them, to get into their heads, to understand what they’re feeling. Even if they’re motivated by sheer LOLs. I need to see through the villain’s eyes, to feel their hatred, lust, frustration, love, or jealousy. Personally, I always need to love my villains, even if I want my readers to hate them. I was going to say more on that last point, but I’ve gone on long enough and not entirely sure what I’m talking about anymore because I have so many people chattering in my ear.

I, too, prefer the antagonist to be realistic. It makes it more heroic (shall we say) when the protagonist final overcomes them. I definitely have to agree that operating from the different point of view and doing what is ‘right’, a technical view that is quite subjective, thus working quite well in describing their mindset, is a good way to make them real. Real people make decisions all the time that otherwise lead to the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. An example that comes to mind for that is actually, strangely, from Star Trek. ST: Nemesis, for anyone not versed in this, has a clone of Jean-Luc Picard as the villain of the piece. While not the greatest and most powerful villain in the franchise (that, by far, has to be Khan from Wrath Of Khan… Okay, digress finished...), it does provide the example… Shinzon’s backstory falls into a series of backstories that describe his rough upbringing under horrendous conditions, thus leading him to lead a coup and murder off the government and take control… Et cetera, et cetera… Whereas Picard’s choices reflect the good within the UFP… Shinzon’s reflects the darker choices… ‘For now we see in a mirror darkly’, the view of what could have been had situations been different. To me, that’s what makes a good villain, a good opposite to the hero. The ‘what could have been if things were just a little different in the hero’s life. Those that believe they are doing right, too, make for a good antagonist, whether that comes from some deep religious beliefs, malformed opinions based of the propaganda and hate, or justice/revenge, as you’ve pointed out. It brings a human element to them, makes them relatable. And, to me, at least, a relatable villain is, by far, the better one.( (Sorry if this is rambling, disorganized, and incoherent… Maybe this is a sign not to answer after being up all night...)

I tend to prefer mine realistic, so that typically means the antagonist isn’t evil-evil, but rather, operating from a different point of view. In my stories, that typically means the more “evil” characters believe they are doing the Lord’s work, believe that they are being righteous in doing so, or believe that they’ve been wronged somehow and it’s justice/revenge being levied out.