Of course, the focus of a story is on the hero. As soon as you start plotting, you do everything you can to make him as multi-layered as possible, because as in real life, no one is just good. But neither is an opponent just evil.
At first glance, this seems completely logical and trivial, but I still missed it in one or the other writing guide, so I would like to go into it a bit more and at the end of the post, I explain how I have solved the problem. I have to admit, that it happened to me in both of my stories that I missed that important point. Only during the revision of "Froschperspektive", I noticed that the opponent of the hero is flat and this has a negative effect on the story.
Froschperspektive
In "Froschperspektive" I was so concentrated to make the opponent as negative as possible that I completely forgot to mention even one positive feature. This can happen especially when you create the opponent on the basis of a real person, which you perceived or wanted to perceive only extremely distorted. You transfer this subjective and unrealistic impression to the story and you infect it with your own narrow-mindedness. This is what happened to me in the manuscript on "Froschperspektive". The story has lost in depth because no emotional relationships could arise among the characters. Due to this lack of complexity of the antagonist, he is also not able to interact credibly with other characters. In this way, I put obstacles in the way, because many connections no longer arose spontaneously from the plot, so artifices became necessary.
Frogs
In "Frogs" my original idea was to design a story world that animals and humans share with each other. However, this led to some problems in the plot, so I decided to change it so that there are only animals left in the story world. Even though they behave essentially like humans, they still remain animals. So in the original plot a human being threatened by greed the habitat of my hero, so it is now an animal and that leads me to the first problem.
Give your opponent a good side!
No matter how evil, angry, greedy, merciless or cruel the adversary is, he needs something positive, otherwise, the character remains flat as in my first example.
Only in bad stories, the bad are bad and the good, just good.
Everyone has a positive trait. At least the acting character has to be convinced that he is doing good. In my „Frogs“ example, it was initially the human being who destroyed the habitat of the hero and his family. From a human point of view, finding a justification for this is not difficult, even if the habitat is destroyed just to build a highway or shopping mall. And if not even that is the case, one can at least understand the actions of the opponent as comprehensible and understand that at least the antagonist believes that he is doing the right thing. The problem that results for me is that I am still looking for an equivalent animal substitute for the unscrupulous human action. It is really hard for me to find a suitable animal.
Make your opponent vulnerable!
You can reinforce the matter even by giving your antagonist a vulnerable side. This helps to make the motivation for his actions credible. Just as the main character has his motivations to do what he is doing, this must not be missing for the villain either. He can fight for a cause that explains his actions and at least justifies himself. Although I have already stressed the example of "Breaking Bad" in my last post, Walter White is a model example of the motivation that results from vulnerability. We as viewers understand why he acts this way and not otherwise to achieve his goal. We can identify with him, we feel with him and accept a lot of the stuff he is doing, because he does it for his family, before the disease takes the opportunity.
Everyone wants to be a bit like Walter White.
But Walter starts to feel a bit too alive, so we as viewers start to question him. But at this point, we are already so captivated by the character and the story that we still want to know how it goes on. It also makes it possible to get the viewer or his readers to think about their own moral attitudes. The audience will come to the point where it becomes clear that Walter White's morality is no longer compatible with our own. A feeling that I also want to create in a "Froschperspektive" by representing the protagonist's childhood hurdles and often using them as a justification for his actions. Here, too, I hope that the viewer begins to wonder if the protagonist uses his childhood issues too much as an excuse, leaving it to the reader to what extent he accepts the excuses of my antihero.
Let your opponent hit your hero at his most vulnerable point!
In „Froschperspektive“ I try to make this effect even stronger by hitting the hero exactly where he is most sensitive. The hero grew up without a father. He suffers from a lack of self-confidence and tries to compensate for this lack by a hard shell. On the other hand, his opponent appears to him as someone to whom nature has given a hard shell in addition to a hard core. The antagonist smiles at the hero and acts on him confidently, self-confidently, like a real man. Just like the kind of man the hero likes to be. If both are fighting for the same goal, the conflict is perfect.
How do I make my opponent multi-layered and multi-faceted?
The chance that the viewer identifies with the character and wants to follow the plot further increases with the complexity of the character. The problem is that the villain usually does not have a character arc. The antagonist does not undergo much change in contrast to the main character. His job, however, is to contribute to the transformation of the hero. He helps him to become what he will be in the end. My hero in „Froschperspektive" discovers his hardness and masculinity through his opponent, and because he is a typical antihero, he plunges into ruin because of this discovery.
Be the Hero of your Antagonist!
With a trick, you can help to find the good sites of your antagonist much better. You just imagine the villain sitting in the dock in court, answering for what he did in your story. You are his defense lawyer and sit next to him. It's time for the final argument and you as his lawyer have the word. No matter how overwhelming the evidence is, no matter how much the verdict is already established, no defender will fail at this point in the criminal process to point out at least the slightest positive thing about his client. Something he will say that the court can not disregard. Finding something positive can be difficult for your antagonist, as well as for real defendant. But both the judge and your audience will sooner identify and empathize if he has understandable and sympathetic reasons that have made him evil.
Thank you for your post. I find this article very useful since I am studying story myself. Look forward to reading more of your posts.
Oh wow thanks, did not expect that: question, is it weird if the antagonist experiences some sort of character arc near the end of the story? If so, I imagine it is a subtle thing, what say you?
Thanks again.
@mariekoh I would say some villains just experience a slight change, but it is not the same as a typical hero's journey. So yes, sometimes they become even more or even less evil, bad or cruel, but I would say never in the same way like the hero.
@mariekoh Thank you! More is coming soon.