Dylan
Scribe
Looks cool but not as intense as the real one
Looks cool but not as intense as the real one
I don't think I'm looking for anything in particular here, if I'm honest. Just been thinking about my own villain a bit, and trying to piece together the best narrative outcome for her and my protagonists. For me, I'm probably going to redeem her since she doesn't understand the full consequences of her tyranny and has emotional ties to one of my two protagonists.
For authors who had good triumph over evil, authors who didn't, and any author or aspiring author who has something to say: what did you do with your villains?
Well this sounds awesome. Sounds kind of like the story Daenerys Stormborn deserved.I have a bad habit of coming up with characters that are meant to be villains only to find that I like writing them and they end up as my protagonists instead.
One of mine, the Dawn Queen, was meant to be a twist on sort of an Arthurian idea of the rightful ruler returning. She was the rightful ruler back during the age of gods and now she's back to gain her crown by conquest if necessary.
At least that was the original idea.
Now her origin is the same, but she's a wandering swordswoman shacked up with her mage girlfriend.
Solid points! Keeping protagonist/antagonist roles simple makes sense, it’s all about perspective and opposition. And yeah, who drives the plot can totally shift depending on the story. The Hobbit is a great example of protagonists steering the ship, with Bilbo’s growth taking center stage. Overcomplicating it can just muddy the waters. Keep it clean, keep it flexible.To me it feels like this discussion is overthinking protagonist and antagonist, a lot.
I like to keep it simple:
- The protagonist is the main viewpoint character through which the reader experiences the story.
- The antagonist is the main opposition to the protagonist.
That's all there's to it. After this, it very much depends on the kind of story you are telling.
As a side note, I agree that if your antagonist is infinitely more important than your protagonist, then you have the wrong protagonist.
As for who drives the plot, that tends to change over the course of the story (and again, will depend on what story you're telling). It's common to have the antagonist drive the start of the story. They're often the ones who set the whole affair in motion. As the story progresses, the protagonist will get more and more agency, to where he starts influencing more of the story.
However, it very much depends on what tale you are telling, and what you consider driving the story. For instance, in the Hobbit, the whole story is pretty much driven by the protagonists, and Smaug isn't the embodiment of the world's central rule. Yes, you can argue that Smaug, by merely existing and sitting on a pile of gold is setting stuff in motion, but that's twisting stuff just to fit your model, and looking at it from outside the story. In the book, the dwarves and Gandalf decide they want to recapture their mountain, and they set out. They have all the agency from the start. As the story progresses, that agency does shift more and more to Bilbo, who goes from being a bit of lugage to the main mover of events over the course of the story. But it's never with the antagonist.