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where to start my Antagonist off
Hi everyone I would like your help in trying to decide where to start my antagonist of at in my novel which I am having problems wriitng as it would help. where would you start your antagonist off either in the begining of story or the middle which makes more sense to me. any ideas would be kindly accepted.
Phil.
Comments
Even if the actual person doesn't show up until the middle surely you must set it up with foreshadowing, backstory etc in which case you need elements of the antagonist in there to construct that. On a personal level I always try and have the antagonist in there as soon as possible to set up the conflict, which is what story or drama really is anyway. Even from a readers point of view that's what I expect.
As I say without knowing too much about your novel it's difficult to say, but that is how I'd approach it. Others may disagree.
It all depends on what you're writing though, all rules are relative when it comes to writing.
Or have you written some of the book and are now wondering if the antagonist should have been introduced earlier?
It's very difficult without knowing what the story is, or even what genre, because there are so many ways of introducing them. After all, if it was a detective novel, the antagonist could be actually someone else entirely from the suspect.
ALL books, stories etc need to start with action, action means people, people mean conflict and dialogue and movement.
Go write!
It really does depend on the situation though.
Just had a thought, in my novel, the antagonist is causing my protagonist issues, but it is unknown. A lot of the main body of the story would be around internal conflict of my protagonist, which was caused by the antagonist. As a result, my antagonist doesn't really need to walk on stage, just that he needs to have a mention in dialogue or as a memory. But if it is an external conflict, I would say the sooner the better. In my example, my story will be character led. If yours is action led, you need them in there asap. But don't make it forced, don't enter your antagonist as if he is a puppet that the audience needs to see, but the audience doesn't know why.
HTH x (I am really going to work now!)
I think it depends on the book, and what fits or feels right for your story. There is no hard and fast rule about this though. I agree with what the others have said. Stop worrying so much about this, and just get down to the business of writing. Let the story write itself, and see where it ends up. Good luck!
*SA*
I go with what Dorothy says: the book has to hit the ground running. Action on page 1, so something pretty conflict-like has to be where the story opens, although that may be a few pages before the $+-t hits the fan big time after another piece of information has been thrown in. The reader needs to know where the whole story is going in the first chapter or three.
You may be familiar with Macbeth. Shakespeare starts the story with his antagonists, the three witches who will tempt Macbeth into his downward path to self destruction. A lesser playwright might have thought winning the battle was a nicely dramatic start to wow the theatre audience. Instead, we see these hags gloating that the successful battle means that everything has fallen into place for an horrendously ugly blood-fest. And it's the pure hero Macbeth who will be the ideal agent to make it happen: he can be persuaded to kill the King - the blackest depth of evil known to society in Shakespeare's day.
So having met the antagonists, we then meet the hero, and are constantly saying to ourselves, No, don't listen. Don't do it. Look for a way out.
I wonder if any of this can be applied to your story?