Motivation is Everything: Writing Believable Antagonists

         

  Last year, my school put on Happy Days as our annual musical. I was in the ensemble, so I was at practices. I learned the songs, the dances, and some of the lines. One lyric in the opening song, Welcome to Wisconsin, caught my attention and made me think.

            Every story's gotta have a hero; he's the most important person to the plot.

            It made me wonder, who is the most important person to the plot? Which character could the story not exist without?

            The protagonist is important, as are the best friends, the love interest, etc. But I would say that the antagonist is actually the most important character.

            Your antagonist provides the conflict. He or she directly opposes the main character. Without the antagonist, your main character wouldn't have a problem. They wouldn't be forced to become heroes, and they'd have no stories to tell.

            So how do you create this all-important character?

            My rule of thumb, for any character is this--Motivation is Everything.

            Your villain sees himself or herself as the protagonist. He doesn't believe he's evil. (I'm going to use one or the other pronoun at this point, since the he/she stuff is getting long) She has a reason for her behavior that's just as valid in her mind as your protagonist's. Your protagonist is the antagonist to her.

            Evil for the sake of evil rarely works. Villains who are evil for no reason often end up flat or cheesy. Plus, the best villains are the ones who truly believe they're doing right. If you can understand his logic, you might see a bit of him in yourself. In my mind, that is what makes a villain truly terrifying. Seeing the evil in a fictional character is one thing. Seeing it in yourself is a completely other thing.

            Some common villain motivations include lust (the Phantom in Phantom of the Opera), Justice (Javert in Les Mis), power (Voldemort in Harry Potter), or revenge (Darth Vader from Star Wars). But you can push it further. What if you had a villain motivated by love? Not lust, but actual love? Trying to protect their family? What about a villain motivated by desperation to escape her mundane life? Villains are people, too, with motivations and hopes and fears. Make sure to treat them that way.

            What are your villains' motivations? What problems do they cause for the protagonist? Tell me all about them in the comments!