Would a story without a bad guy make sense?

Every book has an antagonist. The antagonist doesn't have to be a person. It might be the MC's own insecurities, or interpersonal relationships, or the pressures of society, or even the forces of nature.

What conflicts does your MC come up against? More importantly, what are they caused by? That is your antagonist.

 

Lots of stories don't have an antagonist in the form of a 'bad guy'.

My current novel WIP has no such person. There are characters with a goal, and obstacles that must be overcome, obstacles that could make the goal impossible to achieve. Pretty simple, really.

This is just my own opinion, but I don't often care for the 'bad guy' as antagonist (though many stories I like have them), for my own stories. To me, it's just that sooner or later, one way or another, such an antagonist always seemes to boil down to the guy twirling a handle-bar moustache and tying a hapless damsel to railroad tracks. These types are usually at their worst when giving speeches delineating their goals/desires/plans.

 

That's actually a bit of trouble I've got with a game I'm working on. It's a (very, very) loose adaptation of an old-school RPG with a stereotypical evil overlord, but I want my antagonist to be more of a primordial being whose fundamental nature just happens to be naturally antagonistic to the civilization its encroaching on. Trying to find a balance of "antagonistic just by existing" and "not actually actively malicious" is harder than it sounds. It's like trying to write a morally neutral sentient plague.

 

Look at the Xenomorphs from the Aliens franchise. They are doing what their evolution has dictated, though that does entail killing other beings to perpetuate their own existence.

 

Toy Story does not have an antagonist. Woody is his own worst enemy. This is typical of character-oriented stories.

 

This sounds hilarious.

 

Hi,

Make sense? Depends on your plotting. But yes stories don't need antagonists. They do need challanges for the MC to overcome. Two examples spring to mind. Shipwreck by Charles Logan - a story of survival (and ultimately not) on an alien world. Gripping reading. And Catch 22. Who's the bad guy? The system really. And in the end a wickedly good read.

Cheers, Greg.

 

He's an antagonist but overall his threat to the group that went on the mission is far smaller than the threat the Xenomorphs present. It's the token corporate scumbag that the writers of the original Alien movie did not want in the first place. They thought it cheapened the movie by supplying a generic bad guy.

He's sort of a side villain I guess. They needed an ulterior motive to get the funding to send everyone to LV-426. His mission is to bring the Xenomorphs back for scientific research, which in itself isn't necessarily evil, it's just his greed that makes his decision reckless. He wasn't around to see what the creatures can really do until it's too late.

 

I'm kind of doing one myself.
So you still have a "bad guy" its just not human like an asteroid or freak weather.

 

Yeahbutt....Buzz and Woody are in conflict about being the object of affection....just like any good love triangle.