How to Create an Antagonist?
An antagonist is a character that some people may not regard much while writing. When talking about it, our imagination might be limited. But is our story’s antagonist only limited to that? Definitely not! In fact, an antagonist may not be a living thing.
So, before proceeding further, let’s understand what’s the role of an antagonist in your story in a very simple way-
Case-1
In the first case, your antagonist might have some objective or destiny to fulfil but, your protagonist interrupts in between. For example, in the movie Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos’ (antagonist) main objective was to bring stability in the universe , as he believed its massive population would inevitably use up the universe’s entire supply of resources. The avengers (protagonist) became an interruption between Thanos and his goal.
Case-2
In the second case, your protagonist might have some objective or destiny to fulfil but your antagonist interrupts in between. For example, in an episode of Tom and Jerry, Jerry (protagonist) wanted to get a slice of cheese but Tom (antagonist) stopped Jerry from doing so. It’s not that there are only these two cases. There can be other cases too but they are not very common.
Step-1
Now, let’s talk about the creation of an antagonist. The first step towards creating one is to decide what is the objective or motive of your antagonist. It can be as simple as irritating the protagonist by playing loud music to as complex as creating an another timeline to stop the protagonist.
Step-2 (Optional)
After you decided the motive, it’s time for a backstory. Now it’s not always necessary to create one but if created, it can help the audience connect better with your antagonist.
Step-3
After completing the above step/steps, it’s time to build a character sketch. In this step, you have to think about things like how your antagonist will look like, how it do different things, what is its nature. Keep one thing in mind that the character sketch should go parallel with the motive and circumstances your antagonist will have in the story. Also, remember that your antagonist can be anything. From anything, I mean from living things, like a criminal, a scientist, a bird or a gnome to non-living things like a tornado, an idea or a medicine.
Now, before proceeding further, let me tell you a story-
Joseph is sitting on his chair, focusing his eyes on a diary kept in front of him. His hands are trembling and his brain is not able to handle the horde of thoughts coming and going back to back, trying to convince him that what he did was necessary. All of a sudden, someone knocks at the main door of the house. Before opening, Joseph asks, “Who…who’s there?” but no one replies. This time, a knock, louder than before, come back. With a deep breath, Joseph opens the door. A tall policeman is standing outside holding an arrest warrant. He takes Joseph to the police station. On questioning thoroughly, Joseph accepted that he murdered a man.
Now, from your perspective, how is Joseph? You might be imagining him as a bad criminal who murdered a man, he should be sent to prison and things like that. But, what if on the other side what he did was necessary (as mentioned in the story too)? Maybe on the other side of the coin, he did it to protect himself or someone he cared about. From this, we come to an important point that-
“Every villain is the hero of their own story”
