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Sleeping With the
Enemy: Writing From Your Antagonist’s POV
By Dana Mitchells
When I began the task of rewriting one of my novels, I shared with one of my
sisters the intimidating aspect of writing from my antagonist’s point of view.
When finished with these parts of my book, I have often huddled in the corner of
the room, rocking back and forth as I mumble, “Must think happy thoughts.”
My antagonist is a short-tempered, physically violent, obsessive and homicidal
villain. To the story’s readers, he may only be just another bad guy, but to
me he is a very real, very unsettled person. And in order to write him
realistically, I have to become this very unsettled person.
As fiction writers, it goes without saying that we wear many hats. Like actors,
we have to “act” our characters as we write them, playing everyone from the
insecure mailman haunted by schizophrenia to the happy-go-lucky environmentalist
who can never find love. Having to act out our characters as we write them can
be draining, as doing so means we must get into their heads and think what they
think, feel what they feel and see the world as they do. Nobody knows fictional
characters more intimately than the writers (or actors) of them do, but what
happens when we have to write a character who is, say, a serial killer? What if
our antagonist is a child abuser, sexual deviant, or psychopathic murderer? How
can we realistically write these people without needing the help of a therapist?
For the sake of popularity, I will be referring to the antagonist as a “he”
and the protagonist as a “she.”
No matter how terrible this person may be, mo matter how much you’d rather
avoid being anywhere near him in real life, it’s important that you, the
writer, get to know your bad guy as thoroughly as possible in order to write a
great story. Remember: Just because you are writing about this awful person, it
doesn’t mean you’re trying to glorify them. You are trying to show your
readers what a bad person this tyrant is and why they shouldn’t like him. They
shouldn’t pity him during his dark moments or cheer him on if he wins; he is a
very real threat to your story’s hero or, in some cases, to the entire world.
So how do you get to know this evil person intimately while at the same time
remaining the cheerful, innocent person you are?
One way is to create an exhaustive profile of your antagonist. Kill the mystery
of why he is such a bad person. Was he abused as a child? Bullied throughout his
school years? Does he have any physical disfigurements, mental problems or
handicaps? Is he just a naturally evil person or was there a traumatic event in
his life to make him that way? Write this person’s life story to see where
exactly he transformed into the criminal mastermind he is today. While an
arduous and time-consuming job, writing an exhaustive history and character
sketch of your antagonist will help you to understand why he wants to bomb the
UN, kidnap children, experiment on stray cats, or control anyone close to him.
If you can’t decide on how to do this, read The Plot Thickens: 8 Ways to
Bring Fiction to Life by Noah Lukeman and focus on your antagonist as you do
the exercises it offers.
Another way to do this is to take advantage of the different types of point of
view your story can be written from. My novel is written in limited third
person, offering me the chance to tell the story through my main characters’
eyes only as I switch from one point of view to the next. By doing so, I can
create a suspenseful mood for my antagonist as he attacks someone whose only
crime was making him wait to use the phone or the steps he takes to take
complete control over my protagonist’s life. With
a limiting point of view, a writer can effectively, realistically write through
her antagonist while keeping his role as a threat sound. You can either burrow
yourself within your bad guy’s psyche or simply write about what he does. Read
Characters & Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card to help you understand the
best way to write your story.
Additionally, you can figure out how to write your antagonist by studying how
popular authors of today pulled it off. How did they manage to effectively write
their antagonist’s scenes in a realistic way? What characterization tools do
they use? A few
suggested books on how this is done well are: Pretend You Don’t See Her
by Mary Higgins Clark, The Shining by Stephen King and Along Came a
Spider by James Patterson. Study these varying styles and look for others in
any horror, suspense, crime or mystery novels you may read.
Finally, spend time with your antagonist. Write him into various different
scenes you don’t need to necessarily include in your story. Watch how he
interacts with others: his family, friends, co-workers, people on the street.
You can also try acting him
out to “get into character” before you sit down to write a scene he is in.
Be the psychiatrist who never gives up on this poor soul, delving into his
motives as much as possible. Get to the heart of your antagonist’s role in the
story to see why this
particular person is playing this particular role. Readers ultimately want to
know why something bad is happening in the story and why they should even take
time out of their busy lives to read more than 200 pages about it. If you
don’t know why you’ve
got this insane monster running about in your created world, aimlessly drifting
from one scene to the next, your readers won’t, either. They may put your book
down and watch a Law & Order show instead. Read The Criminal Mind: A
Writer’s Guide to Forensic Psychology by Katherine Ramsland to help you
explore your antagonist’s psyche.
Taking a cue from actors, fiction writers can boast, “I’m not a mad
scientist but I play one in my story.” It is not impossible to write a
true-to-life antagonist in your story and make readers think there must be
something wrong with you. Your goal as a fiction writer is to do this job
beautifully while ensuring in the end that there isn’t.
Dana Mitchells is the online pen name of the writer Dawn Colclasure, who
writes for both print and online publications. She is also the author of a
poetry chapbook, Take My Hand, available from Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1561671290/
. She has been published on sites such as e-fido (http://e-fido.net/archives/050101/working_dogs050101_1.html),
Write From Home (http://writefromhome.com/interviews/329snipes.htm)
and The Writer Within. She’s also had poetry published under her real name in
the newsletter AIA (http://poetry.allinfo-about.com/newsletters/poetry-newsletter62.html)
and Chris Lindsay’s Pro-Life Poetry Page (http://www.geocities.com/potatoessays/guestpoets.htm).
She has a book review at Crescent Blues E’Magazine (http://www.crescentblues.com/6_2issue/bk_radke_Pro.shtml).
While at work on rewriting one of her three unpublished novels, she lives in
California with her husband and daughter.
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