Acceptable antagonists.

The Antagonist can be absolutely anything you want it to be--within reason. It is usually more effective (read that as EASIER) to make your Antagonist a human (or have human-like qualities), but anything can and has been done effectively.

Azura Skye said:

Does an antagonist always have to be human? Can time be an antagonist? What about a not yet identified antagonist (they will be identified later)? Or would that be considered a cheap trick?

So many questions.

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Antagonists come in a shapes and sizes, races, etc. For exampled in Ernest Hemingway's "Old Man and the Sea" - the sea was the antagonist.

Consider: "Time is no one's friend..."

Antagonists can be humans, monsters masquerading as humans (Lecter), humans masquerading as monsters (Vader), forces of nature (Moby Dick), even the protagonist's own inner demons and "issues."

There are no limits to what antagonists can be: simple bacteria and virus (Andromeda Strain) or a true force of nature (The Perfect Storm) or something as complicated as a government organization.

An antagonist isn't necessarily a bad guy -- it's just someone or something with a goal that is completely opposite to the protagonist's goal. End (or rather, start ) of story.

I think a not yet identified antag can be done without feeling like a cheap trick. That happens in real life sometimes -- people don't always know what they're up against right away. I think if it's clear what the opposite goal is, the actions of the antag will make sense, and if the MC acts in an intelligent way to try to figure out who/what the antag is then the reader won't feel looked-down-on or cheated or anything else.

They say all stories fall into these categories.

Man against Man
Man against Himself
Man against Nature
Man against Society
Man against Fate

In the Lord of the Rings, the (ultimate) Antagonist was a great big damn eye that had no dialogue, no thoughts, no movement (well, it swiveled) and then, in the end, died, just like that.

People have to relate, or at least not be completely bewildered by your Protagonist, but there's no such obligation for your antagonist.

Despite the theoretical possibility of non-human (or something similar in sf/f settings) antagonists, your best bet really is to have a human being, especially if this is a first or second manuscript. Learn how to use the basic tools before you mess with them or try something really fancy. It's hard enough to write an interesting story with a human antagonist, so you're really stacking the deck against yourself if you're trying to write a story without a human antagonist.

JD

If your antagonist is inhuman enough to be very hard to write, then don't write any scenes from his point of view. We don't always have to see the bad guy's side of things. Witness the Lord of the Rings again. We have no scenes from Sauron's point of view. On the other hand, we have plenty of other antagonists to relate to, but we never see anything from THEIR point of view either.

Just think about your own life. Are the antagonistic elements in your life always human? Often they are, but often they're not. And if you're writing fantasies, there's even more room for imagination.

cinders23 said:

They say all stories fall into these categories.

Man against Man
Man against Himself
Man against Nature
Man against Society
Man against Fate

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Coming from the SF & F point of view. I think you need to add:

Man against Machine to this list. (Unless of course you want to say machines are made by man...)

Man against Monster to this list. (Unless of course you want to say man or nature made the monster...)

In my WIP, the MC's ultimate antagonist is a pair of scissors.

Society I would say is one of the biggest antagonists. Just think about it, who is the antagonist in Of Mice and Men? In The Catcher and the Rye? In the Odyssey? In A Clockwork Orange?

Society is often a major antagonist. Time can be one as well, especially with an old protagonist who has too many things to settle before he dies.

It's a human but they're just pulling the strings behind the scenes for right now.

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The reader doesn't need to know who the antagonist is on page one (although it's good to have at least a hint that there IS an antagonist pushing the story along, from the very beginning), but the author does (at least by the time the story is finished, not necessarily in a first draft).

Just make sure you also have someone -- a person -- on the bottom of one set of the strings, opposing the protagonist, so as the protagonist goes through his/her story, he/she is struggling with someone in each scene, on the way to meeting up with the story's antagonist.

Think of it in two interweaving levels: You have a story antagonist, someone who's pulling the strings or pushing the buttons throughout the course of the book and who is defeated (or not, if you're doing an unhappy ending) in the resolution of the book. Plus, each scene has a scene antagonist, who, for a given scene, may be the whole-book antagonist or may be some secondary character. No matter what, though, there are always two people struggling in each scene, and there's a cause-and-effect relationship that links the struggles in each scene, so that the outcome of the struggle in Scene 1 leads to the struggle in Scene 2, which leads to the struggle in Scene 3.... all the way to the final confrontation between protagonist and the antagonist (the one for the book as a whole, I mean).

JD

Azura Skye, an antagonist "pulling the strings behind the scenes" sounds like it could work fine, as long as there's someone who's giving the MC trouble early on (it could be the antagonist's helper or crony or someone entirely different.) Basically, it doesn't matter WHO the antagonist is, as long as there is one.

In my book, my MC is her own antagonist.