Got Bad Guys?

Who can be an antagonist?

An antagonist is anyone or anything that stands in the way of the protagonist achieving his/her goal.

It can be the loan officer at the bank who won’t give you a loan, the bank robber pointing a gun at the loan officer, the bank robber’s mother-in-law whom he blames for his insanity, the serial killer who is after the mother-in-law, the serial killer’s boss who has just figured out what his employee does after hours, or the hurricane which has knocked out the electricity and cell towers in the boss’s community so he can’t call the police for help.

Anyone or anything can be an antagonist. The one requirement is that an antagonist deter, overwhelm, or hinder the hero or heroine in some way.

Let’s say a man and a woman finally admit over the phone to each other that they’re head-over-heels in love, and they agree to meet behind Mr. MacGregor’s garden, which is midway between their homes. But as soon as they get two hundred and fifty yards from each other, a tornado touches down, ripping up the farmland between them. They can see each other and long to hold each other, but there’s a tornado keeping them apart. Before the bunny clothes start flying off the scarecrow, the man and woman each have to make their own plan of escape from the antagonist. (Okay, it’s not a deep story, but it illustrates how weather can be a character in a story.)

An antagonist can be something innocent like a pet cat or even little Billy from next door. If you’ve owned a pet cat (or a cat has owned you) or if you’ve been around an active little boy, you know that there are plenty of ways these characters can create havoc for the protagonist.

So here’s a “Hurray!” for antagonists. For without them, novelists wouldn’t have much of a story.