Protagonist vs Antagonist: David vs Goliath or Goliath vs Goliath?

[Jabrosky]

I've had a theory bubbling for a while that character development in stories is fundamentally about how characters cope with challenges. I bet few people would find a protagonist who effortlessly wipes the floor with the antagonist during the climax dramatically interesting. However, what's less clear to me is exactly what level of power the protagonist should have relative to the antagonist by the time the two confront each other during the climax. Which of these two scenarios sounds more dramatically interesting to you?

Scenario A: The antagonist has a better chance of defeating the protagonist than the reverse when the climax arrives (David vs Goliath)

Scenario B: The protagonist and the antagonist have more or less equal chances of defeating each other (Goliath vs Goliath)

I'll add that the story in Scenario B doesn't necessarily have to start with the protagonist having equal power to the antagonist. If anything, it might be ideal if the protagonist started the story as the weaker party but over time accumulated power so that they became the antagonist's equal when the climax comes. In other words, the protagonist would start out David but then grow into Goliath until they were ready to confront the antagonizing Goliath.

I vote for Scenario B. Sure, it's tempting to root for the underdog, but I feel that if the antagonist never loses their advantage over the protagonist, the protagonist will have to depend either on luck or some ridiculous contrivance to beat the antagonist.

BTW, even in Scenario B, the protagonist and antagonist do not have to beat each other using the same tools. We could have an antagonist that is physically stronger, but the protagonist compensates for that by having greater intelligence, thus evening out their odds of beating each other.

 

[robertbevan]

i don't know. i feel like the antagonist should have the advantage right up til the end. and the climax should involve something more than the two of them smashing into one another. i like a story where the underdog does something clever and unexpected to win the day.

in other words, i don't want even odds at the climax of a story. i want things to be looking pretty grim for the protagonist.

 

[ThinkerX]

That might be an overly simplistic way of looking at things.

Who is to be feared more: the hulking armored giant soldier with a weapon few others can even lift? Or the frail king who with a single edict can send forth an army?

It is about *types* of power, not just direct comparisions.

There are also situational considerations. Take the hulking warrior mentioned earlier and put him up against an ordinary draftee. All else being equal, the draftee has a real short life expectency. But -

- give the draftee the advantage of say, a crossbow, or even a defensible position atop a castle wall, and that evens things out considerably.

 

[Penpilot]

They're both equal IMHO. It's all in what your story is about and who your protagonist and antagonist are. Each of the two scenarios is generated by a different type of story arc, so it's a bit of apples and oranges thing here.

 

[Feo Takahari]

I'm fond of David and David and David and David versus Goliath. Power of friendship FTW!

That said, I don't think there's necessarily anything contrived or unusual about a seemingly weak character winning by a method the seemingly stronger character didn't expect. Rock-paper-scissors represents the world better than strength versus strength.

 

[ShortHair]

What's important to the story is not so much the relative power levels of the combatants but the perceived weakness of the protagonist. Hamlet isn't a great story because he defeats Claudius and Laertes, it's because he has to subvert his poetic nature to take any action at all, which destroys him as well. You can read about victory in the sports pages.

 

[BWFoster78]

A couple of thoughts:

1) One of the ways to increase tension is to increase the power of the obstacle. An overpowered antagonist is an easy tension builder.
2) It's typical for the protagonist to finally realize his true power rising the challenge of the antagonist. It's a well worn device, but it works. (I use it in my novel.)
3) As others have said, it really depends on what you're trying to achieve. I think you can make anything work if you do it well enough. I'm a guy who likes absolute rules for writing, but I don't see how you can create one on this topic.

 

[Helen]

What usually happens in the climax is that the protag has grown/changed/become stronger immeasurably since we first met him or her, but so has the antag. They are actually, technically, different creatures (Amazing Spiderman). David has become another Goliath. Goliath has become even more impossibly intimidating.

The protag then has to overcome limitations to defeat the antag.

You can see that distinct method in lots of stories, from Gladiator to Godfather to Avengers.

 

[glutton]

Since my heroines are usually among the best warriors in their worlds and the main villains are as well, I tend to do Goliath vs Goliath.

 

[Ireth]

Lately I've turned toward many Davids versus one Goliath. Yay teamwork! ^^

 

[Mindfire]

Interestingly, video games tend to go for option B. Not sure how relevant that is with novels though.

 

[Ophiucha]

Interestingly, video games tend to go for option B. Not sure how relevant that is with novels though.

Well, in video games, training is - to some degree - often the point. You start at level 1, you need to be level 10 to even access the dungeon with the level 15 boss. By nature of the reward model of gaming, the games are designed so that you have to build yourself up to a level where you are capable of fighting the boss. Some games even 'level' the enemies; in Skyrim, you can go into any dungeon at any level, but if you go into a dungeon at level 5 the enemies will be different than the ones you face if you go into the same dungeon at level 50. They get tougher as you get tougher, so that they are neither too easy nor too hard. Some novels also focus on a 'training' element. The classically riffed 'farm boy' fantasies are often this way; a poor peasant boy whose never touched a sword or rode a dragon spends three novels learning how to do so and only then fights the big bad who started out with those skills. He may have 'David and Goliath'-style encounters with the big bad before then, but the end fight is almost always on more equal footing. Video games sometimes do that, too; they will have battles that you are scripted to lose, no matter how much grinding you do beforehand.

 

[Nebuchadnezzar]

Any of these can work depending on the story but I tend to feel most comfortable with David beating Goliath through rock-paper-scissors as Feo suggests or multiple David's defeating Goliath through teamwork.

Another one I like is David vs Goliath and Goliath wins, but it turns out to be a Pyrrhic victory. David has used the confusion/ruse of a stand-up fight to distract Goliath and beat him another way. Think I first saw this when Larry Niven used it in one of the Dream Park novels and have loved this approach ever since.

 

[wordwalker]

One point: in a lot of ways the momentum of the MC "training" and testing himself (which is 90% of the book, after all) is as important as the climax that brings it all together. If those struggles do their job, the MC can seem awesome even when the Big Bad is bigger yet.

--Which, I think, is the most common combination: the end is the time the evolving MC is scrambling to stay alive again. Yes it could be an equal fight (if written well) or even a comforting "in the end I'm just stronger," but I think stories are more likely to make him either somewhat or completely outclassed, and then use some of the creative solutions we've seen.

(Also common in video games: levelling up enough allows you to survive a hit or two long enough to guzzle healing potions and run around stabbing at the giant's feet, as long as your timing's good. )

 

[MG Silverstein]

They're both equal IMHO. It's all in what your story is about and who your protagonist and antagonist are. Each of the two scenarios is generated by a different type of story arc, so it's a bit of apples and oranges thing here.

I agree with this.

I think it could depend on the antagonist/protagonist relationship. Friends who became enemies are going to be equal. A teacher/student relationship turned sour will be unequal.

It also could depend on how evil the bad guy really is. Is your MC fighting the ultimate evil being who has the power to destroy the world? Or are they fighting a comically simple villain who is a threat to their small town?

 

[ThinkerX]

Ah...the issue of the overpowered.

I used to think a lot about a close varient of this.

Say, you have your classic epic quest - small band of heros successfully completes many challenges growing in power to the point where they can at last stand against the 'Dark Lord' and win. So the heroes and the bad guy duke it out, and at the end the good guys are the ones left standing. Many fantasy epics in this vein.

My question was...then what? Having taken out the most powerful bad guy in the known world, what is left to challenge the hero? How do you legitmately proceed with a sequel to the epic when there is nobody left capable of contesting the hero?

I did come up with some solutions, all of which I've seen in various novels or long series:

First, well, there is the 'known world' - and then there is the 'whole world'. Maybe with the 'local' super powered bad guy done away with, another super powered bad guy from some 'edge of the map' place is getting ambitious. Quite phausible, especially if there are a few hints dropped here and there in the first part of the epic.

Second, there is the 'handicap'. Yes, normally, the hero really would be able to fairly easily best the new bad guy on the block - but he's been poisoned, or his daughter has been kidnapped, or he was tricked into visiting dimension X. Put simply the superpowered hero is unable to use his abilities to best advantage, or at all, leaving it to the not so powerful sorts to deal with the bad guy.

An interesting varient of the handicap is to 'give the hero an actual life' featuring things like a spouse, screaming kids, and umpteem people who can't seem to do anything without the heros direction.

Another varient is where something happened that caused the hero to loose a portion of his powers, thus giving him a handicap.

The third major possibility was the 'unconventional opponent' - a foe, who in the hero's prefered means of conflict, would be disposed of in short order, but instead 'thinks outside the box' - using say, a propaganda campaign to smear the heros good name, or using assassins or parlimentary manuvers instead of assembling armies.

But collectively, I decided I didn't care for the 'box' the conclusion of the epic campaign put the hero in - so I took another option. Yes, there was an epic conflict in my world, with heros and villians on both sides. But its not front and center, its background. A lot of my characters are veterans of said conflict, but with a couple of partial, limited exceptions, none of them went through the 'heroic quest to kill the dark lord' aspect. Of the partial exceptions, one ended up dead, one was disgraced to the point of accepting a relatively minor, distant office, and the last became a sort of outcast wanderer.

 

[wordwalker]

Say, you have your classic epic quest - small band of heros successfully completes many challenges growing in power to the point where they can at last stand against the 'Dark Lord' and win. So the heroes and the bad guy duke it out, and at the end the good guys are the ones left standing. Many fantasy epics in this vein.

My question was...then what? Having taken out the most powerful bad guy in the known world, what is left to challenge the hero? How do you legitmately proceed with a sequel to the epic when there is nobody left capable of contesting the hero?

That's a LOT of great ideas-- especially not playing the "center of the quest" game if you don't want to. Because you didn't quite say these, I'll add: Or the Big Bad has a Bigger Bad that was actually pulling his strings. Or the Big Bad let a Bigger Bad out of the box before he went down. Or, the followup is trying to lead and organize a world that's no longer united in fear of You-Know-Who.

Be sure to read Mistborn. It uses... not all of these, but some great combinations.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

One way around the "now that the villain is dead, the hero is the most powerful one in the realm" trope is by having the hero's power lost in the final battle (the cost of destroying the villain), returning them to the status of a mere mortal. Or, the way they defeat the villain is not by being super-powerful, but by exploiting his individual Achilles' heel, via some magical artifact, or just by being clever.

 

[glutton]

One way around the "now that the villain is dead, the hero is the most powerful one in the realm" trope is by having the hero's power lost in the final battle (the cost of destroying the villain), returning them to the status of a mere mortal. Or, the way they defeat the villain is not by being super-powerful, but by exploiting his individual Achilles' heel, via some magical artifact, or just by being clever.

That or the villain doesn't have personal power far above everyone else in the first place, but used political/leadership/number of minions power to reign.

 

[teacup]

Both can be great - DvG would make the reader wonder how the protagonist can defeat the antagonist, survive against them, or fear for the protagonists life.
While GvG would give the effect of an equal struggle and the reader would see how both sides struggle to win.