 Hello and welcome back to my channel. If you are new here, my name is Jackie and I'm aspiring fiction author who is currently struggling with her work in progress. So for those of you who are new, I am currently working on an obsessive romance story where one woman becomes enamoured with another woman and sets about to orchestrate an all-consuming relationship. And it was going okay for the first 15-18,000 words, but yeah, now I am around 25-26 and it's just been a real slog to try and get through it. And I've identified a couple of issues, but I think one of them is that I don't have very compelling antagonists in this story. So today I want to do some work on fleshing out my antagonists. And to do this, I've been looking at on writing a well-building by Tim Hickson who also runs the YouTube channel Hello Future Me and he has an awesome video on villains and antagonists that I will link in the description and in a card. In his book, he breaks down the discussion on villains into a chapter on villain motivation and then a chapter on the relationship between the protagonist and the antagonist. And I really liked this approach because I've tried a lot of different plotting and prepping methods and what I find is that even in the ones where they have work on character and they have work on antagonists, by the time I get to the stage where you're actually mapping out the events in the book, that early work almost gets pushed to the side and you're just focusing on events to make up the story. And maybe that's just me and maybe I'm doing it wrong, but what I find is that there is a disconnect between the events that happen in the story and the work you've done on character. So what's interesting about this book is it covers antagonists and villainry in a more academic sense, so analyzing different pieces of fiction that do them really well and what they do well, as well as ones that mess them up. So in this discussion, the key points Tim covers are one, values and scale. So first, what does the villain value and what do they value above other things? So if they believe family is more important than anything else, what do they value family above? Or if they think money or power or something else is more important, what is it more important than and what will they sacrifice for that value? Likewise, what won't they sacrifice? And this is something I've never really thought about before, so looking forward to getting into it. When it comes to scale, this talks about how important that value is, so what will it motivate them to do? And this is obviously linked to the values and what they're willing to sacrifice in order to achieve what they want. The next thing he talks about is goals. So what does the villain want? And he uses a quote from The Anatomy of Story, which says, a true opponent not only wants to prevent the hero from achieving his desire, but is competing with the hero for the same goal. Find the deepest level of conflict between them. Ask yourself, what is the most important thing they were fighting about? So what this means is that in order for the conflict to be really compelling, both the antagonist and the protagonist should be working towards getting, achieving, doing the same thing, and that's what brings them into conflict. The next thing he discusses is the idea of passive motivation versus active motivation. So an example he gives of a villain with passive motivation is Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre, where she is this figure in the attic who wants to stop Jane from marrying Mr. Rochester. So her motivation is actually focused on stopping the hero from doing something. She doesn't actually have her own active goal that she's pursuing. By contrast, an example he gives of an active antagonist is the Queen in Snow White who wants to be the most beautiful one of all and that makes her go out and try to kill Snow White in order to be the fairest one in the land. Continuing with the motivation discussion, he also talks about good guy antagonists. So people who are the hero of their own story, they're doing what they think is best, even though it conflicts with what the hero wants to do, as well as the idea of saving the world. So this is a story where the antagonist wants to destroy the world and the hero needs to save it. I don't think either of those points are relevant to my story just because I don't think, I don't think anyone sees themselves as a bad guy, but I don't think they see themselves as good guys either. They're just humans doing what they need to do to get to where they want in the world and saving the world, this is a romance, not really relevant. So chunk one of the work is looking at their motivations, then once you've looked at the motivations, the next chunk is looking at the relationship between the protagonist and the antagonist. Now one of the first points Tim makes about this which I found really interesting was the idea of necessity. So if I read a quote from the book, a lot of good protagonist-antagonist relationships can come down to what we will call necessity, that a great antagonist is necessary for the protagonist. It is simply not enough to say that they fought because plot. To put it in the simplest way possible, John Truby argues that, the main opponent is the one person in the world best able to attack the great weakness of the hero. This forces the hero to overcome his weakness or it destroys him. The necessary opponent makes it possible for the hero to grow. And this is something I've known about in theory but I've never done before or I've never done well. So once I've got my antagonist motivations down, the next thing I need to look at is how does this highlight the protagonist's weaknesses and how does this force her to grow or change or take action? So let's get started. Before I get into doing some questions and brainstorming, I'll give you a little bit of context for who's who in this world. So Cecily is the protagonist, so she's the stalker person. Kara is the object of her affection. Kara has a boyfriend called, I'm going with Brian, I'm going with Byron at the moment because I thought it would be funny to have a moment when he's introduced to someone and they're like oh did you mean Brian? It's like no Byron. But I'm not committed to that name. So Byron is her boyfriend and then Ren is her close friend. Aside from that, Kara also has parents and siblings but they live in the other side of the country so they're not that pressing an obstacle for our protagonist. She also has another couple of friends but they're more acquaintance type friends who she catches up with every month or so rather than people who are a part of her day-to-day life. So when it comes to the question of antagonists, I thought I could have different antagonists for different parts of the book. So if I split the book into five sections that are 20% of the content each, the first 20% is getting to know the world and the characters. It's when Cecily discovers Kara, it's when she starts stalking her and learning about her and we learn both of their backgrounds and characters. The next 20%, so after they've met officially and Cecily's trying to push it into a relationship, I think Byron is the logical antagonist and that works with what I've written so far. It's just I need to have more... I need to make Byron a bigger threat because at the moment what I'd written was basically he interrupted a conversation they were having with a phone call and that led Cecily to go well. I need to lock him up in this vacant apartment I have now, which is probably a little bit fast and I think I originally went straight into that because I didn't really know what to do with Byron. So that's what the focus of today is. So for the next 20%, Byron can be the major antagonist. Then once we get him out of the way and Cecily thinks, okay, great, everything's good to go. I can be with Kara. She just needs a little bit of time to come around because her boyfriend's just disappeared. Then I think Wren, the best friend could be the antagonist. I'm not sure what the dynamic will be here. I'm not sure whether it should be like Wren has a crush on her or maybe it's just a controlling friendship. So again, something I need to look at. So what's that? That's 60% of the way through the book. So we've got the beginning, we've got 20 to 40% where Byron's the bad guy. 40 to 60% where Wren is the bad guy. Then, so 60 to 80%, I think Kara can be the antagonist because Cecily doesn't just want a relationship with her. She ultimately wants to control and consume her. And when it comes to the idea that the antagonist and the protagonist both want the same thing, controlling Kara's life is something that both Cecily and Kara would want. So it makes sense that once Cecily finally gets Kara and they have this brief moment of euphoria, then things start to, the cracks start to appear as Kara starts asking questions and it develops. And then the last 20% is obviously where everything gets wrapped up and I know how I want to wrap things up. So what I want to do now is one, the motivation questions. Two, I want to look at the relationship between Cecily and each of these antagonists and the necessity of them. And I'll also go back into the book with the different ways Tim outlines for how you can communicate this. And then once I've done that, I want to go back to the outlining work I've already done. So I have my story clock workbook here, where this is the outlining I was doing for this book back before Camp NaNaraymo. I also have my snowflake, I was going to say snowflake grid because I did the snowflake method and the story grid, but I have my snowflake method spreadsheet, which also has a list of scenes. So what I will do after I've figured out all of my motivations and relationships, then I will go back to the structure I've already outlined and see how it needs to change and what still works. The good news, I think, even though I'm just at the beginning of this process, is that I'm pretty sure the stuff I've already written largely works. Like I think about 80% of it I can still use because it is that first 20% and we haven't really got it into the conflict yet. It's just the getting to know everyone. I'm hoping I feel the same way once I've been through all of these exercises, but the only way to find out is if I actually do them. So let's get started. I've now been through those questions for all three of my antagonists. I think Byron is going pretty strong now. So his main value is he wants to prove himself to his father. He wants to prove that he can be a self-made man and entrepreneur. He doesn't want to lose face by admitting that he messed up. He's losing his money, so he's looking for a way to cover it up. And because Kara happens to have money, this leads him to one, want to keep her close, but two, also keep her checkbook close. He also is very keen on maintaining the appearance of success in terms of his clothes and the car he drives and where they go out on their dates and so on. When it comes to what he values, well, where the values hierarchy sits, he values success and then that sits over how he values Kara and his relationships with people. It also sits over the value of honesty because obviously he's lying to try and cover things up. What does it motivate him to do? Well, steal from his parents, borrow money from Kara, throw away money at connections and opportunities that probably don't have a lot of substance, and also he values those connections and opportunities over the genuine relationships in his life. When it reflects the protagonist's wants, this is fairly simple. They both want to control Kara, so Cecily feels like she wants to do it for love. She also sees unhealthy patterns between Kara and Byron and thinks she almost thinks she's saving Kara from a little relationship, whereas Byron wants to keep Kara under his control because she dresses up well as the potential future society wife. She has money and he can control the money. So that was fairly straightforward. I'd already been thinking about the money angle for a day or two. Now when we get to Ren, so the best friend, I thought it could just be an obsessive friendship. I don't want to get too much into the romance because I think that's going to be too close to Cecily and her motivations. I also think it's too much of a ripoff of You by Caroline Kepnes, which this book is already very similar to. So in her case, she values keeping Kara close above everything else. She doesn't really have any other close relationships because she puts everything into Kara. What does it motivate her to do? This is something I struggled with because again, even though it's platonic, it could still be very similar to Cecily. So it could be things like she's following Kara, but Cecily's already following and stalking Kara, things like constant checking in, potentially getting between Kara and her other relationships. So I'm not too sure about how this manifests. The good thing is that I have like another 20% of the book to write before I really need to worry about it, but I do or at least I would like to get this sorted. So I'm hoping when I go back through my list of scenes later, that will spark some inspiration for how this can work. And then the final antagonist who is Kara herself, I feel like Kara's character is going to evolve and might not even be like a straight evolution. It might just be sort of this back and forth and a continuum of longing for freedom and independence and wanting stability because she is a 22 year old woman, she's moved away from home, she's starting her own business, you know, she's trying to come into her own as a woman in the world. So there are clear things she's done to establish her independence and freedom. However, there are a lot of things she's set up to create more stability for her, things like she runs a bakery where she makes all of the cakes she learned from her grandmother, things like she still regularly talks to her mother and sister over the phone, she's a painter in her spare time and most of what she paints is her family members. Because there's this vacillation between these values, I've struggled to figure out what she, you know, what that value sits on top of, like what was she willing to sacrifice in order to achieve those things because they're different things. So I need to think about it. It also has an influence on what goes wrong in the relationship once they do get together because I already have, and I already have mapped out how that should work and I'm not sure if that will still work if this is the angle I'm taking. So it needs more thought. In terms of what does it motivate her to do, in terms of freedom and independence, that's a value that leads to her pursuing Cecily because Cecily is someone new who's completely unconnected to anyone else from Kara's life whereas Ren is a friend from high school and college, Byron, his family was connected with her grandmother's family. So there is a certain stability and familiarity in those relationships whereas Cecily is completely new, she's a mystery. In terms of certainty and stability, I know that when they're together and it feels like Cecily is pulling away, Kara ends up following her. So that's a way of trying to regain control or regain an understanding of what's happening and what might be going wrong. And when it comes to the reflection of the values, so how does that reflect what the protagonist wants? Well, both Kara wants control over her own life and Cecily wants control over Kara's life, so there's a clear reflection there. Now that I've looked at the motivations, the next thing I need to look at is the protagonist-antagonist relationships. But to do that, I'm going to move to the dining table because it is not as comfortable sitting on the floor as I thought it would be. So after covering the antagonist motivations, the next step is to look at the antagonist-protagonist relationship. And the reason for this, which comes from John Truby's Anatomy of Story, is that characters do not exist in isolation, they exist in a web, and the main reason you include different characteristics in the book is to see how they play off other characters within that book. This then builds into what I mentioned earlier about the necessity of the antagonist and how this person is necessary for the protagonist to grow and change into who they need to become in order to achieve victory. Or they're the ones who demonstrate that the hero has not grown and changed in the way they need to, and that's why the hero loses. So, how do you do this? Well, according to Tim, there are three different areas you can look at. The first element is structure, which is when both the antagonist and the protagonist want the same thing, which is definitely the case in my book, because in this book all of them want to control Kara in some way, including Kara herself. The second element is ideology, so this is where the protagonist believes and values one thing, whereas the antagonist believes and values something else. And Tim says this can work well when they both want the same goal, because they might have two totally different ways of approaching it. This is also where the discussion of whether the ends justify the means comes in. So, one person might think that the ends doesn't justify the means, and even though they want the same end, they will not go to the same extent or sacrifice the same things in order to achieve it that the antagonist might. So, this is where the conversation of values comes up again. Which values do they stick to while trying to achieve their goal, and which ones do they bend or break? And then the final element to consider in this relationship is similarity or difference between the antagonist and the protagonist. This is where the antagonist acts as the character foil of your protagonist and helps highlight different traits and strengths and weaknesses. And although they won't be identical, they will be different characters. The fact that they share a number of similarities helps further highlight how they are different. So, they might have similarities, they might have similar personalities or beliefs, or they might have similar backstories. And if you have enough of these things being similar, it helps show almost what the character is made of because it highlights how they are different. So, one of the examples Tim gives is Voldemort and Harry Potter. They both grew up as unloved orphans, and yet one of them became the King of Darkness, he shall not be named, and the other one became the hero of the story. He went to Hogwarts, he discovered the power of friendship and love, and that drove him through his journey. So, when it comes to my book, off the top of my head, everyone does ultimately want the same thing in terms of Cara and her freedom or independence or control. When it comes to ideology, I need to have a think about how this fits into my book. I think with Byron, probably it's not going to be such a big thing because like Cara isn't actually his ultimate goal. His ultimate goal is to prove that he's successful, to prove himself to his family, to prove that he's a self-made man, and owning or controlling Cara is a way to achieve that. So, she is actually a means to an end, and because she is not the end, I don't think the ideology discussion is as relevant. When it comes to Wren, because she does want Cara and Cecily wants Cara, I think this ideological split could actually be what distinguishes them as characters. So, I need to do a little bit of brainstorming to figure out what Wren is willing to do, which value she's willing to sacrifice, which she isn't willing to sacrifice, and then do the same thing for Cecily so I can contrast them. When it comes to Cara, the situation there is a little bit different because when it comes to control, she wants to control herself. She wants autonomy and independence, whereas Cecily's desire for control is to control someone else. So, I'm not sure how the ideological piece fits into that because it's not really a case where they're going up, they're not both going after the same external goal and taking different routes to get there. When it comes to similarity, this is something I'd already thought about in terms of Cara and Cecily, because they do both have a desire for control, and I've already thought about how Cecily wants to control others, whereas Cara just, you know, she wants to control herself and the world around her and create stability. With Wren, maybe controls the wrong word for Wren, maybe it's more about possession. I need to have a think though because, again, I am a bit worried about Cecily and Wren being too similar, so this is a good exercise to do so I can clearly get down where they are similar and where they aren't. In terms of Byron, I don't think it's relevant here, and I will still do a bit of brainstorming to see if I can find some parallels between Byron and Cecily, but I don't know if it's necessary given that they already want the same goal, given that I've already got quite a different motivation for him, so I'll see how it goes. Having said all of that, I've realized that I am not going to finish this today, so I will check back in tomorrow when I will have finished this exercise, and then tomorrow I will be going through the structure I've already mapped out to see how it needs to be rejigged. Yesterday I finished doing the structure, ideology, and similarity exercises, so for structure I feel like that was always fairly simple, everyone wants Cara. For ideology, I really got stuck so I need to spend some more time on that, and for similarities I've started doing a matrix where I've listed basically all of Cecily's traits and then I've like ticked who matches what, which I'm not sure how useful or apparent it's going to be, but I'll continue developing it and see what comes out of it. Today what I'm going to do is go through all of the scenes I had planned for my plotting work back in March, and I want to see whether those still work in the context of this structure of 20%, where there's the setup 20%, the Byron antagonist 20%, the Red antagonist 20%, the Cara antagonist 20%, and then the wrapping things up. So to do that, I'm going to basically create a storyboard, this is a technique inspired by Save by the Cat, where you have a wall or a pinboard, or in my case a piece of A3 paper, and you write each one of your scenes on a card, or in my case a post-it note, and then you can have them all in front of you on one page and you can rearrange them as needed. So I'm going to start by doing that with my original list of scenes, and then I'm going to think about the work I've done on the antagonists and remove and move things around and fill in gaps where needed. I've been through the book so far because some of it does deviate from the original outline I had, my spreadsheet and my story clock diagram, and I have, and I hope none of these post-its fall off, my storyboard, wow. Now as you can see, there are some gaps. The first row has already been written, along with the first two post-it notes of the second row, so that's what I still have to write. And what's interesting is that I already had it set up with these three antagonists, so I'm not having to completely throw out what I'd done, thank god. And I feel like the next 20-25% is already fairly well outlined, like I know what each of the scenes are, though a couple of the later ones I need to figure out what actually happens in them, so when Cecily and Kara go out for the first time and they meet up with her friend who doesn't gel with Cecily, so I don't actually, I know that's what's supposed to happen, but I don't know what actually happens if that makes sense, I don't know what is said or done, that means Ren is immediately suspicious about Cecily. Similarly there's, so Cecily locks up Byron, I always thought she could use him to learn about Kara, so I need to think about what she's going to learn from him that she doesn't already know, because at this point there are already like three separate stalking information gathering scenes, so we do have a lot of information at this stage. When it comes to the second and third row that's where the gaps are, in terms of post-it notes, each of them have space for three more post-it notes, however in the third row it is a lot more up in the air, some of these post-its probably aren't a full scene, so for example there's one post-it that says they meet up with Ren who says there's something off about Cecily, then the next one says Kara and Ren argue and Ren orders her to choose between them. Now those are probably going to be the same scene, so they shouldn't be two separate post-its, so that means there is a bit of work to do to both flesh out the relationship between Cecily and Kara that's developing at the same time as this animosity between Ren and Cecily. Then in the final row that one, if you take a look again, oh I lost to post it, but that one basically has an initial post-it note that says euphoria dot dot dot until it isn't, so obviously I need to figure out what their euphoric relationship looks like when it comes to the end and how it falls apart. I'm very comfortable with that, I do have that sequence of scenes, they are actual scenes as opposed to me just saying epic battle and not knowing what happens, like I do actually know what happens in the climax and resolution of this, it's just figuring out how we get from the stage where they have this unencumbered relationship, there's nothing standing between them anymore to the point where they start growing apart, Kara starts getting suspicious of Cecily, perhaps Kara starts getting on Cecily's nerves a bit, so I need to figure out how I'm going to demonstrate that transition because I know, this is what's frustrating, I know what the transition is, I know how the relationship evolves, but just thinking of actual scenes to communicate that is, yeah I'm drawing a bit of a blank, so if you have any ideas of how to think of scenes that deliver the transition you want to deliver, please let me know. So from here I'm going to do a bit of brainstorming about Ren, the second antagonist, and their dynamic and see if I can fill out this third row. The final row, part of me goes I don't need to think about that later so maybe I should think about it later, but then I know that in a month's time I'm going to be in the exact same place, complaining on YouTube about how I thought I was done plotting and clearly this shows there are gaps, I'm not done plotting, so I'm going to brainstorm the Ren and Cecily relationship, see how much mental energy I have and maybe even continue this tomorrow rather than trying to squeeze it all in this afternoon. I've now been looking at my antagonist for five days and I'm still not done, so in that time I have looked at their motivations, I've looked at how they and the protagonist ultimately want the same thing, I've looked at similarities they share with the protagonist, I've also reviewed all of my plot work from earlier this year to figure out where the gaps are and whether having these separate antagonists for different parts of the book actually works, which I think it does but there are still gaps. What I really wanted to get from this process was to fill in the gaps in my story, to get a jump start with my writing again and to have really strong protagonist antagonist dynamics, like I wanted the characters to start driving the story rather than me just plotting through it and one of the things I thought would really help with that was something that Tim talks about which I think is also in the anatomy of story, which is the necessary opponent moment and this is a moment when the antagonist and protagonist faced off and the antagonist attacks the protagonist in a way that no one else can, so they attack them in a way that targets their weakness or vulnerability and when this is done well it's really powerful, it is one of those things that shows how these two characters are the perfect match for each other. In a lot of fiction though, it isn't actually done that well, the antagonist and protagonist are sometimes just thrown together because plot or they want the same thing but they're not really matched in terms of character. In my case, because this is such a character focused story, I would love to have each of my antagonists attack one of Cecily's weaknesses or highlight of vulnerability or an insecurity and even though, even before I started doing this exercise, I already knew what the final confrontations would be for each of these characters, I didn't think about it from that angle and now that I'm trying to think about it from that angle, I'm really struggling to not even reposition what I already have in the context of it targeting Cecily's weaknesses but figuring out what Cecily's weaknesses are and even creating a new scene around that, I'm really stuck and this is frustrating because I've put five days of work into this exercise and I've really been thinking about it and I've really been trying to attack the story from a different angle and I feel like the work I've done is valuable but at the same time I also don't feel like I'm any further along than I was this time last week and what's frustrating is that not only do I feel like I'm no further along in terms of plotting and character development and having more clarity around my story, I'm also no further along in terms of word count because I've been focusing on this the last week or last five days rather than actually sitting down and writing. So I've gone to this point where this video is going to be a long one and I think it's probably time to wrap it up. In terms of my story though, I think there are three potential paths I can take from here. The first one is to keep playing with this antagonist puzzle until I get somewhere so that could involve looking at more books and videos about really strong antagonists and villains. It could also involve looking at some comparative pieces of fiction to see how those authors and those directors tackle this problem. The second option is to go back to writing and assume that my brain is still mulling this over in the background and hopefully I can figure it out as I go or if I don't figure it out as I go at least I'll have a first draft and then Future Jackie can figure it out in the revision process. Then the third option is actually considering whether it's time to put reciprocal stalk into the side because it has been a really challenging project. It's been almost two months since I started writing and I still have less than 30,000 words and I'm at the stage where I feel like the longer I get stuck on this the more it's holding me back from potentially writing something else. So what do you think? Have you been at a similar crossroads with one of your books in the past? And which path did you take and how did you decide it was the right path for you at that time? And finally on the more general topic of figuring out antagonists, how do you create really strong antagonists in your writing and how do you create a really strong antagonist protagonist dynamic? And do you have any tools or resources you can recommend? I would love to hear them because as you've probably gathered this is not my strong suit. So if you like this video please give me a big thumbs up to keep the gods of YouTube happy, leave a comment below and subscribe so you find out the next time I post a video. Bye.