Must an antagonist be known early in the book?

As a reader, I find the 'nameless threat far, far away' to be a kind of cheating. But then, I prefer the big, bad conflict to happen between the characters I get to follow while reading, so it could be just my personal preference.

Not saying it won't work in your book. It very well might. But you might want to do all you can to avoid the situation where there really is no palpable danger (per se) anywhere except in your characters' conversations. To make the book gripping, you need to make your reader empathize with the characters in some way - and part of doing that is making the threat/problem/whatever they're facing real. As in, the closer the danger, the nearer your reader's butt to the edge of the chair.

Two cents, though. Personal opinion and all.

I thought an antagonist was an integral part of conflict. I think the antagonist is influencing your story and maybe you just don't realize it.

Okay...just re-read your question and think I get what you're asking. If your antagonist is a group of people with the same (similar--anything opposite of the protag) goal then I think you're good.

IThinkICan29 said:

I thought an antagonist was an integral part of conflict. I think the antagonist is influencing your story and maybe you just don't realize it.

Click to expand...

The antagonist is not necessarily the villain, though. It's anything/anyone that in some way opposes the characters in a given scene.

I don't see a problem with it. There's a whole genre out there which relies on the reader and hero not knowing who the bad guy is until the last chapter. In the classic mystery novel set-up, the villain/antagonist isn't revealed until the end.

faceless/nameless villians are very difficult to make convincing and effective.
I have a group of antagonists that, at any given point in time, may not really be merciless villians at all.
Most of the people my MC perceives as antagonist turn out not to be.

But they are real people with real faces. The nameless, faceless big bad and the big bad's dark raiders may not be effective, but if written very well and done very well, could work.
You'll have to be careful with the far off faceless bad guys.

You have to somehow make them "real".

If your major villain doesn't make an appearance till the end, that should be fine. But there needs to be plenty of conflict, your protag vs. some type of antag, throughout the whole story.

Oh Christ. I don't have an antagonist. Oops. I hate dystopia! I went for a kinder, gentler novel.

You need conflict. An antagonistic force/situation/etc. (man vs. self, for example). But antagonist? You don't even need one.

Yeah...I know. My antagonist in my last novel was 'life'. Us literary types are such asses.

KTC said:

Yeah...I know. My antagonist in my last novel was 'life'. Us literary types are such asses.

Click to expand...

In the Pacific Between, the antagonist is very clearly the protagonist himself. The people "he" thinks are antagonists turn out not to be anyway...

maestrowork said:

In the Pacific Between, the antagonist is very clearly the protagonist himself. The people "he" thinks are antagonists turn out not to be anyway...

Click to expand...

I actually prefer stories without a 'villian' antagonist. I think life is like that...antagonistic. Not all stories need a bad guy.

KTC said:

I actually prefer stories without a 'villian' antagonist. I think life is like that...antagonistic. Not all stories need a bad guy.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, a lot of modern literature/movies seem to believe that one must have a hero as well as a villain... even if it's not a good vs. evil story. If the story doesn't need one, they'd invent one anyway.

I forgot who said this (Ray Bradbury? Stephen King? Maestrowork? but "every character thinks he or she is the protagonist." I think there's a profound truth in that and when I write, I try to remember that.

Antony B said:

I don't see a problem with it. There's a whole genre out there which relies on the reader and hero not knowing who the bad guy is until the last chapter. In the classic mystery novel set-up, the villain/antagonist isn't revealed until the end.

Click to expand...

That's not really the same thing though. In the classic mystery, you know from the beginning who the antagonist is--it's "the murderer". Plus, the convention is that he must be one of the suspects introduced during the course of the story. So you also know him in his own identity. It's only the connection between that identity and his role as the murderer that's withheld until the end.

Still, the point is valid in another way. You don't always need an antagonist as an individual person. As several other posters have mentioned, an antagonist doesn't need to be a person at all: it can be a force of nature, like an earthquake or hurricane, or an abstract quality of human nature, like selfishness or greed. It can also be a group of people, like the members of a secret society or the opposing army in a war.

I do think it's a bit cheesy to set up a group as the antagonist all through the story and then reveal a hidden mastermind in the climax. Just because there's a group doesn't mean they have to be minions following a supreme leader.

Actually, I think that a specific villian or villians can be a good thing. It makes the evil personal. A man who loses his job because the company decided to move to Mexico, where "the corporate world" is his enemy or something might be interesting, but I'm not likely to get too upset. I'm thinking "what bad luck." On the other hand, if there's a specific villian to get mad at, perhaps the owner of the company who is shown being told that his workers have families and makes some crass comment about them, then I get to say "That jerk!" It makes it personal and gets the reader/viewer more involved in the story. It's hard to get upset at a non personal force. For instance, how many people actually get mad at the weather (an impersonal natural force)? Now, how many people get mad at the weather man for not correctly predicting the weather?

maestrowork said:

I forgot who said this (Ray Bradbury? Stephen King? Maestrowork? but "every character thinks he or she is the protagonist." I think there's a profound truth in that and when I write, I try to remember that.

Click to expand...

I think I heard it as "Every character is the hero of his own story." Same point either way though.

virtue_summer said:

Actually, I think that a specific villian or villians can be a good thing. It makes the evil personal. A man who loses his job because the company decided to move to Mexico, where "the corporate world" is his enemy or something might be interesting, but I'm not likely to get too upset. I'm thinking "what bad luck." On the other hand, if there's a specific villian to get mad at, perhaps the owner of the company who is shown being told that his workers have families and makes some crass comment about them, then I get to say "That jerk!" It makes it personal and gets the reader/viewer more involved in the story. It's hard to get upset at a non personal force. For instance, how many people actually get mad at the weather (an impersonal natural force)? Now, how many people get mad at the weather man for not correctly predicting the weather?

Click to expand...

To me, that has nothing to do with whether it's one or 1000. It has to do with the writing and story itself. A story without an antagonist is just as riveting and personal, if it's written well. This point about "you need this one villain to target your emotions at..." is artificial, I believe. I think it reduces stories into a neat box: "Ooo, here's the guy you should root for, and here's the guy you should hate." It's not to say that kind of story isn't good: I love the well defined archetypes just as much as others (Indiana Jones, for example). But not all stories need to be like that.

Well, sometimes a "personal" antagonist makes a story more effective. But if you want to see an example of a story where the antagonist is untterly impersonal, consider the 1938 classic short story Leningen Versus the Ants, where the antagonist consists of a colony of army ants. Ot think about Kafka's faceless bureaucracies. Or reread The Old Man and the Sea.

Also consider that in mysteries and thrillers, it is common to misdirect the reader so that they believe one party is the antagonist, when in fact the protagonist is being betrayed by someone else.

The great thing about all this is that there are so many different ways to spin it. Don't limit yourself at the outset.

I completely agree with maestro and KTC. Conflict has little to do with a concrete antagonist. Conflict is everywhere, even uncalled for, it's inherent to life and change (and the story is almost always about change). I find it strange that the antag/protag formula is considered universal more and more these days. Most of my fav books don't have a villain or if they do, there's much more to him than 'evil incarnate'. There's plenty of awesome protag/antag stories, but I'm still a bit disappointed by this formula of good and evil, as usually the fight within the protagonist is the most intense and meaningful anyway. Even myths and tales of good vs evil can be and were interpreted as journeys of the soul, with the opposite forces of the human psychic. That's why I love the archetypes, but I feel there's plenty of room for different ways of expressing conflict. And Ray, what you're saying about your book sounds seriously awesome.

Anyway, I think your story, KC, sounds perfectly ok. As long as the antag is there moving the plot forward, and the characters are facing their own things in their quest before he's revealed, I think it's ok, and there's an intriguing quality to an unknown threat. Imo you can still make him real, when he's revealed (show his motives, his personality etc).

Thinking about that, Sauron in LotR immediately came to mind. His threat is hanging over the entire book and creates a dark, tense atmosphere that his presence as a real person would never manage to bring about. He's a dark focus that rallies all evil and sends out signs of danger, bringing about the plot through a simple faceless threat that keeps getting more and more concrete as you advance through the story. It's just the balance needed for that quest. Other stories need different kinds of villains, the kind you can understand and hate in a very personal way, but the point is anything can work. Different stories have a different structure and focus.

I didn't necessarily mean it had to only be one person, or that it had to be a "typical" villian. Okay, maybe it's just me but I find it a lot more interesting to read a story where the conflict exists between people or people and animals (in other words, between living beings) or between a man and himself (his consciousness), than to read a book where the conflict exists between a man and a hurricane, or between a man and a completely nameless and faceless evil. I'm not saying it can't be done and can't be done well. I just think that it's a lot harder to pull off.

Nowhere did I say that every story needed a typical villian. I said I liked it if the antagonist was not some nameless faceless impersonal force. That doesn't mean it has to be some completely evil being whose only existance is to make the protagonist's life horrible. I just prefer if it's a human conflict, and judging by most stories in existance I'd say I'm not alone. Actually, I prefer complex antagonists who aren't artificially evil and who having something going on other than plotting evil for evil's sake.

One more point. Try to imagine a nameless faceless impersonal protagonist. The weather as protagonist, for instance. Wouldn't work, would it? The only way someone can make an impersonal antagonist work is by increasing the amount of sympathy and understanding we have for the protagonist, usually by making the protagonist begin to view the impersonal antagonist in a personal way, such as seeing a hurricane not as the natural force that it is but as a force that's actually out to get him. Just my opinion, of course.

The question is not, "Who is the antagonist?" but instead, "What is the conflict?"

Is there conflict before we meet the antagonist?

KTC said:

Yeah...I know. My antagonist in my last novel was 'life'. Us literary types are such asses.

Click to expand...

But Seb perceived Tommy as an antagonist through most of the book. and his mother while not an antagonist in the beginning, appears to be later.

Eric imagines his dad, Oliver, his sister, his girlfriend, at some point, all his antagonists.
But there is no big bad.

Birol said:

The question is not, "Who is the antagonist?" but instead, "What is the conflict?"

Click to expand...

I would agree with this definitely.
I'm just thinking of the "save the world" from the big far off threat we can't see - eh - there's going to have to be plenty of other plot and conflict to make that work.

if the question isn't 'who is the antagonist?' my question is, 'who's going to care?' it's all fine and dandy to reference great books without a specific bad guy, but are those stories even remotely applicable to the kind of story presented by kc?

i'm reminded of one of the worst movies ever made, 'armageddon.' looming natural disaster without a bad guy. that's not what made it suck so hard, though, rather the fact that because the story was just one big crapfest of forced drama and a case of 'everything that can go wrong, does go wrong.' oh, man, that sucked. it was the suckiest movie that ever sucked, in fact. you want an adventure story *without* an antagonist and expect it *not* to suck? if, indeed, this is basically your everyday adventure tale, of course. (btw, some disaster stories rock. some are so contrived it pains me to think of them.)

the point is, if you're contriving 'conflict' to make up for the fact you have no appreciable villainy (and given the idea the dark raiders are redeemed by the end, i'd say they don't sound all too villainous, all things considered), i'd say you should have some pretty interesting insights because you'll have two characters bopping around from scene to scene solving puzzles like a video game, and who wants that, eh?

me? i'd use the dark raiders as my antagonists and make them truly vile. i'd also follow them around a bit in the story. call me crazy on this, but an adventure story without adventure isn't very fun. the problem here is you can't really say there aren't antagonists because there *are* in the form of minions coming to earth.

so, clearly, in this case we can disregard the entire notion of 'there doesn't have to be antagonists,' because there're there. to answer that question, no, you don't have to have antagonists. that doesn't apply here. but, since you do have them... use them! why would you *not* use them?

'oh, but, preyer, don't you think that's formulaic?' yeah, so? teenagers saving the world *isn't*? i don't know what your aim is with this story, kc, but if it's to entertain the reader, then hell yes i'd introduce the dark raiders before page 127. makes me wonder what the hell is going on in the previous pages that's supposed to engage the reader and it not be formulaic in itself (the idea being that not having an antagonist is somehow better, non-formulaic writing is laughable).

if, on the other hand, you basically have a fun adventure story, get that antagonist (the dark raiders) in there, imo. for all the quotes by authors being tossed about, here's another ~ your most interesting character is usually your villain. or words to that effect. sounds like the raiders are given their due (else how could they return from their villainous ways?), but unless there's some reason why they make a late entrance, i as a reader prefer to see what the kids are up against fairly early on.

i say that with the idea that the head honcho doesn't have to be brought to bear until the end (i'm guessing that's where and how the raiders redeem themselves, during the final conflict, akin to darth vader pitching the emperor into the chasm), but without the raiders being there to actually do the threatening, i'd probably wonder when something was going to happen between all the personal conflict.

i mean, there's got to be character growth one way or another, right? from the start to the finish is nothing more than illustrating the vehicles by which that growth is had. is it going to be entertaining between those two points? or are you promising your reader a save-the-world story with dark raiders which indicates some amount of action and letting the reader down by not fulfilling their expectations because it's 'cute' not to have the threatening presenses around until the second act?

i dunno....