Introducing your main antagonist.

Personally, I try to detach myself as much as possible to the antagonist after the first draft. I don't want to fall in love with them, I don't want to know their hobbies or favorite colors. Everything I feel about the antagonist should come from my main character(s) POV only.

I know you posed the question "to authors who have written a novel", but I hope you don't mind if "authors writing a novel" also respond?

I'm trying to write my antagonists no differently than my protagonists. My antagonists are as much a mixed bag of characteristics as my protagonists are. Both can be charming or assholes. Both have goals and history.

So, I introduce them when it makes sense in terms of the plot, and advancing that plot. One of my antagonists is introduced in the second chapter and seems little more than an incidental player from a protagonist's POV, because the plot doesn't yet need him to be more.

All characters are effectively the same. They need to feel like real people with believable goals and aspirations. Bad guys are not bad because they're bad, they are the heroes of their own narrative. They think they're doing the right thing, at least from their own perspective. Otherwise, you're writing a cartoon character with a long mustache being evil for the sake of being evil. How and when you introduce them is no different than how and when you introduce the protagonists. Once you understand the conflict, you need to have someone to be the other side of the fight. That can come anywhere in the book, but I usually introduce it near the beginning, but there is no right or wrong way to do it, so long as it allows the story to flow.

With my antagonists, I do my best work when I remember that no matter how evil they are, they are meant to be real people with feelings and motivations, doing their own things when they're not on the page. When I don't view them that way and only focus on the protagonist, the stories fall flat. When I remember and plan their own story paths around the hero's path, planning out where they intersect and where they affect each other when apart, the story comes out stronger.

+1 to all that's said here. (Full disclosure: I've written one novel which may get queried and may get trunked, and I'm shin-deep in another one, so not a lot of experience.)

I've heard so many actors say this that it might be a cliché, but it's stuck with me: everyone is the hero of their own story. I've tried to write my antagonists that way and probe into what makes them believe, feel, and cat the way they do and why they might see the protagonists as villains. Not only do my villains feel more well-rounded but my protagonists' character flaws stand out in sharper relief. As a result everyone moves further into the gray area, which is right where I like it!

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+1 to all that's said here. (Full disclosure: I've written one novel which may get queried and may get trunked, and I'm shin-deep in another one, so not a lot of experience.)

I've heard so many actors say this that it might be a cliché, but it's stuck with me: everyone is the hero of their own story. I've tried to write my antagonists that way and probe into what makes them believe, feel, and cat the way they do and why they might see the protagonists as villains. Not only do my villains feel more well-rounded but my protagonists' character flaws stand out in sharper relief. As a result everyone moves further into the gray area, which is right where I like it!

E. Stirling said:

So before I go any further I want to make clear, that I am writing my first novel. So I am not a professionally accomplished author with many books of experience to draw upon , hence why I pose my question here.

Also I am writing this novel mainly to get this story I have in my imagination on paper with hopes of sharing it so that maybe someone can find happiness and entertainment in reading it. Even if it means simply sharing the final product on the circles of the internet for those interested in giving it a read.


Moving on wards, without getting into the plot points I am posing this question to authors who have written a novel. What was your experience like introducing your main antagonist? Did you feel attached to your character? Did you find any identity with that characters motivations? Also did your main protagonist represent anything other than just being the "bad guy" in your story to move the plot along?

For me I felt electric finally introducing my main antagonists, and I have so much planned for him in my first novel. My first serious writing project, It's simple, it's story smaller in scale to keep things easy to follow and to keep you in the world. The setting is intentionally devoid of over embellishment to allow the reader to focus on the epic struggle that is occurring between the main protagonist and the character I just introduced.

Anyway that is all for now, I won't put too much rambling in my initial post here until I see how the conversation develops.

Thank you for your time, - E.

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An antagonist is just another character - they won't be viewing themself as "the antagonist". I don't remember feeling anything different about them, but if it works for you I would say embrace the excitement!

In my first couple books the villains were based on people I knew (or had many of their traits I wanted to show as evil) so they were very real to me, but were nevertheless caricatures so I didn't pull it off well. As I got more experienced with writing, as well as my plots got more intricate, it became easier to develop the bad buy into a real person by ironically being less based on people I knew.

I agree with everyone above, particularly the bit about the villain being the hero of their own story--or maybe the victim. A lot of terrible things have been perpetrated by people who think of themselves as the victims. Germans, for instance, felt wronged by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles after WWI, and the Nazis fed that feeling of victimization and came up with the Jews as the "victimizers". Actually, this works with the "hero of their own story" concept because if you're the "victim", then you're a hero for fighting your "oppressor/victimizer".

I only have two mss where there's an actual antagonist of sorts (I've written seven novels, though none are published, to give you context). In one, the antagonist is pretty simply trying to seize power, though the real antagonist is the MC himself (he makes bad decisions). In the other, the antagonist (of sorts) feels wronged by fate or God or what-have-you because the man he loved died and his father was terrible, and woe is him, basically. I don't exactly identify with him (because he's terrible), but I understand why he is the way he is. I empathize. I have to, in order to make him a more-rounded character. He's still pretty terrible, but I try to show what drives him (without ever getting inside his head, since he isn't a POV character).

My main antagonist is a goddess in a mortal body who has been significantly crossed by humans she knew. Fed up and realizing she has immense power she sets out to destroy humanity.
She is actually a very strong minded person with a leadership mentality. She loves her sisters and would do anything for them. She is just traumatized and coping in a very... dramatic manner.

I always identify with my antagonists, because I make them people who have just gone too far down rabbit holes of otherwise understandable thought process.

The main antagonist in my fantasy book Fall's End is an accelerationist who wants to put the worst people possible in power. Seeing that the world is literally falling apart due to climate change, I am highly sympathetic to political accelerationism, but I still think it's "wrong" (if right and wrong can be quantified into such simple terms). I'm not an accelerationist, but if I spent all day inundating myself with political nihilism (doom scrolling, as it's often called), it would rewire my brain. Thought patterns are created through habit.

I like when antagonists act as a sort of temptation. Every character is susceptible to toxic beliefs or mindsets. The antagonists are just the ones who lose themselves to it. Duality and all that. I love when a villain could be right, or at least starts from a sympathetic point of initial thinking, but goes just way too far, showing the logic (and dangerous) conclusion of what that thinking actually is. It's not that the antagonist is correct, or that good and evil don't exist (though you could argue that), it's that the antagonist's logic is so sound you could understand why THEY believe it, even if you don't agree with it yourself. Re-routing toxic thought patterns is hard, and it can take years, decades, or an entire lifetime. It's easy to see why someone becomes an antagonist.

I always go back to Tywin from Game of Thrones. He recognizes that maintaining power requires making cruel decisions, He recognizes that human life is limited, and so he is obsessed with his "legacy." When he speaks, it's extremely convincing. What he says is not "wrong" per se, he is right that everyone dies, he is right that he has a reputation to uphold, but his obsessions lead to unhealthy thought patterns. He sees Tyrion as a burden because having a dwarf son messes with his legacy. He's not wrong about that, he's just wrong that his legacy is more important than a real, lasting relationship with his son.

Spoiler for A Storm of Sword, third ASOIAF book:

Tyrion shoots him with a crossbow. Tywin's legacy is dying on a toilet because his son hates him, and he craps himself in his final moments.

If you feel "electric" introducing your antagonist, that is often a really, really good thing.

The novel I'm currently working on has an open antagonist who's a drill sergeant blackmailing a recruit for sex. The real antagonist actually seems to be one of the good guys. He's part of a terrorist infiltration to attack the training base, but as preparations are being made, he plays the friend with the other MCs.

This guy is principled, and he's got some valid reasons for joining a group opposed to the military (uh...in the previous generation, the military massacred his hometown. the survivors have never even managed to get an acknowledgment of the atrocity). He even takes risks to help the recruit being preyed on by the sergeant, because he's genuinely pissed off about it.

But then at the end, when the attack starts, he's on the side of the terrorist infiltrators that the remaining MCs are defending against. The recruit that he'd helped ends up killing him to save the base commander.

It's the first novel in a series, so the fallout (both political and psychological) will be handled in subsequent stories. But as the narrative progresses, the two surviving MCs will essentially end up on the terrorist's side when a military coup occurs.

I like messy, psychologically traumatic scenarios.

I always like the antagonists that just sneak up on you. Like, you think something or someone is an antagonist but it turns out that it was just a victim while the real antagonist reveals itself partway through the story.