In any narrative, the shadow provides opportunities for the plot. Whether it is a person, a creature, or a natural disaster, the antagonist represents darkness (evil), against which light (good) is shown more clearly.
Best of all, the shadow, whether a person, place, or thing, provides the roadblocks, the cause to hang a plot on.
When the antagonist is a person, I ask myself, what drives them to create the roadblocks they do? Why do they feel justified in doing so?
If you are writing a memoir, who or what is the antagonist? Memoirs are written to shed light on the difficulties the author has overcome, so who or what frustrated your efforts? (Hint: for some autobiographies, it is a parent or guardian. Other times it is society, the standards and values we impose on those who don’t fit into the slots designated for them.)
In a character-driven novel, there may be two enemies, one of which is the protagonist’s inhibitions and self-doubt.
Many times, two main characters have a sharply defined good versus evil chemistry—like Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty. (Trust me, the antagonist is a main character, or the hero has nothing to struggle against.)
The characters on both sides of the battle must recognize and confront the darkness within themselves. They must choose their own path—will they fight to uphold the light? Or will they turn toward the shadow?
When the protagonist must face and overcome the shadow on a profoundly personal level, they are placed in true danger. The reader knows that if the hero strays from the light, they will become the enemy’s tool.
The best shadow characters have many layers, and not all of them are bad. They are charismatic because we can relate to their struggle. We might hope events will change them for the better but know in our hearts they won’t.
Antagonists must be fleshed out. Characters portrayed as evil for the sake of drama can be cartoonish. Their actions must be rational, or the reader won’t be able to suspend their disbelief.
The most fearsome villains have deep stories. Yes, they may have begun life as unpleasant children and may even be sociopaths. Something started them down that path, reinforcing their logic and reasoning.
When the plot centers around the pursuit of a desired object, authors will spend enormous amounts of time working on the hero’s reasons for the quest. They know there must be a serious need driving their struggle to acquire the Golden McGuffin.
Where we sometimes fail is in how we depict the enemy. The villain’s actions must also be plausible. There must be a kind of logic, twisted though it may be, for going to the lengths they do to thwart our heroes.
A mere desire for power is NOT a good or logical reason unless it has roots in the enemy’s past. Why does Voldemort desire that power? What fundamental void drives them to demand absolute control over every aspect of their life and to exert control over the lives of their minions?
The characters in our stories don’t go through their events and trials alone. Authors drag the reader along for the ride the moment they begin writing the story. So, readers want to know why they’ve been put in that handbasket, and they want to know where the enemy believes they’re going. Otherwise, the narrative makes no sense and we lose the reader.
Most of us know what motivates our protagonist. But our antagonist is frequently a mystery, and the place where the two characters’ desires converge is a muddle. We know the what, but the why eludes us.
This can make the antagonist less important to the plot than the protagonist. When we lose track of the antagonist, we are on the road to the dreaded “mushy middle,” the place where the characters wander around aimlessly until an event happens out of nowhere.
The reader must grasp the reasoning behind the enemy’s actions, or they won’t be able to suspend their disbelief.
Ask yourself a few questions:
- What is their void? What made our antagonist turn to the darkness?
- What events gave our antagonist the strength and courage to rise above the past, twisted though they are?
- What desire drives our antagonist’s agenda?
- What does our antagonist hope to achieve?
- Why does our antagonist believe achieving their goal will resolve the wrongs they’ve suffered?
None of this backstory needs to be dumped into the narrative. It should be written out and saved as a separate document and brought out when it is needed. The past must emerge in tantalizing bits and hints as the plot progresses and conversations happen.
The hero’s ultimate victory must evoke emotion in the reader. We want them to think about the dilemmas and roadblocks that all the characters have faced, and we want them to wish the story hadn’t ended.
The villains we write into our stories represent humanity’s darker side, whether they are a person, a dangerous animal, or a natural disaster. They bring ethical and moral quandaries to the story, offering food for thought long after the story has ended.
Ideas slip away unless I get them on paper first, so I create a separate document that is for my use only, and I label it appropriately:
BookTitle_Plot_CoreConflict.docx
It’s a synopsis of the conflict boiled down to a few paragraphs. Whenever I find myself wondering what the hell we’re supposed to be doing, I refer back to it.
In my current unfinished work-in-progress, Character A, my protagonist, represents teamwork succeeding over great odds. Character B, my villain, represents the quest for supremacy at all costs.
- Each must see themselves as the hero.
- Each must risk everything to succeed.
- Each must believe or hope that they will ultimately win.
When I create a personnel file for my characters, I assign them verbs, nouns, and adjectives that best show the traits they embody. Verbs are action words that show a character’s gut reactions. Nouns describe personalities best when they are combined with strong verbs.
They must also have a void – an emotional emptiness, a wound of some sort. In my current WIP, Character B fell victim to a mage-trap. He knows he has lost something important, something that was central to him. But he refuses to believe he is under a spell of compelling, a pawn in the Gods’ Great Game. He must believe he has agency—this is his void.
This void is vital because characters must overcome fear to face it. As a reader, one characteristic I’ve noticed in my favorite characters is they each have a hint of self-deception. All the characters – the antagonists and the protagonists – deceive themselves in some way about their own motives.
My task is to ensure that the stories of Characters A and B intersect seamlessly. Motivations must be clearly defined so the reader knows what their moral boundaries are. I like to know their limits because even cartoon supervillains draw the line somewhere.
For me, plots tend to evolve once I begin picturing the characters’ growth arcs. How do I see them at the beginning? How do I see them at the end?
As I write the narrative, they will evolve and change the course of what I thought the original plot was. Sometimes it will change radically. But at some point, the plot must settle into its final form.
I love a novel with a plot arc that explores the protagonist’s struggle against a fully developed, believable adversary, one we almost regret having to defeat.
If you are currently working on a manuscript that feels stuck, I hope this discussion helps you in some way. Good luck and happy writing!
Nowadays, I am rarely able to do in-person events due to family constraints, but I used to do four events a year. However, I have some tips to help ease the path for you.
The final thing you will need is a way of accepting money. I have a metal cash box, but you only need something to hold cash and some bills to make change with. A way to accept credit cards, something like 
Investing in some large promotional graphics, such as a retractable banner, is a good idea. A large banner is a great visual to put behind your chair. A second banner for the front of the table looks professional but requires some fiddling with pins.
Make your display attractive, but I suggest you keep it simple. People will be able to see what you are selling, and the more fiddly things you add to your display, the longer setup and teardown will take. The shows and conferences I have attended offered plenty of time for this, but I’ve heard that some of the big-name conventions require you to be in or out in two hours or less.
Aaron’s interpretation of this classic is spot on. He has gotten all the voices just right, from kindly Fred down to Tiny Tim.
“Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.”
As I mentioned before, this book is only a novella. It was comprised of 66 handwritten pages. Some people think they aren’t “a real author” if they don’t write a 900-page doorstop, but Dickens proves them wrong.
Artist: Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1526/1530–1569)
But they are indistinct and far away, shown in a fantastic, mountainous landscape rather than the flat terrain of the Netherlands. It is almost as if they are visions of what winter could be if only the harvest had been good rather than the truth of the lone fox, hounds with empty bellies, a bankrupt tavern, and the rabbit that got away.
Directors will tell you they focus the scenery (set dressing) so it frames the action. The composition of props in that scene is finely focused world-building, and it draws the viewer’s attention to the subtext the director wants to convey.
As I work my way through revisions, I struggle to find the right set dressing to underscore the drama. Each item mentioned in the scene must emphasize the characters’ moods and the overall atmosphere of that part of the story.
We can bookend the event with “doorway” scenes. These scenes determine the narrative’s pacing, which is created by the rise and fall of action.
The opening paragraph of a chapter and the ending paragraph are miniature scenes that bookend the central action scene. They are doors that lead us into the event and guide us on to the next hurdle the character must overcome.
When the next chapter opens, he steps into an opening paragraph that leads into the next action sequence. We find out who and what new misery is waiting for him on the other side of that door.
When you begin making revisions, take a look at the opening paragraph of each chapter. Ask yourself how it could be rewritten to convey information and lead the reader into the action. Then, look at the final paragraph and ask yourself the same question.
These transitions are often small moments of conversation, italicized thoughts (internal dialogues), or contemplations written as free indirect speech. These moments are a form of action that can work well when a hard break, such as a new chapter, doesn’t feel right. The reader and the characters receive information simultaneously, but only when they need it.
A character’s personal mood can be shown in many ways. A moment of 
Trim that back to 
The main thing to watch for when employing indirect speech in a scene is to stay only in one person’s head. You can show different characters’ internal workings, provided you have a hard scene or chapter break between each character’s dialogue.
As stories unfold on paper, new characters enter. They bring their dramas and the story goes in a different direction than was planned. When I meet these imaginary people, I assign their personalities a verb and a noun.
Julian’s noun is chivalry (Gallantry, Bravery, Daring, Courtliness, Valor, Love). He sees himself as a good knight and puts all his effort into being that person. He is in love with both Mags and Beau.
Next, we assign a verb that describes their gut reactions, which will guide how they react to every situation. They might think one thing about themselves, but this verb is the truth. Again, we also look at sub-verbs and synonyms:
Have you thought about the two words that describe the primary weaknesses of your characters, the thing that could be their ultimate ruin? In the case of Julian’s story, it was:
Julian Lackland took ten years to get from the 2010 NaNoWriMo novel to the finished product. He spawned the books 
I hate it when I find myself at the point where I am fighting the story, forcing it onto paper. It feels like admitting defeat to confess that my story has taken a wrong turn so early on, and I hate that feeling. Fortunately, I knew by the 40,000-word point that last year’s story arc had gone so far off the rails that there was no rescuing it.
The sections I cut weren’t a waste, they were a detour. In so many ways, that sort of thing is why it takes me so long to write a book—each story contains the seeds of more stories.
Sometimes, something different happens. In 2019, I realized the novel I was writing is actually two books worth of story. The first half is the protagonist’s personal quest and is finished. The second half resolves the unfinished thread of what happened to the antagonist and is what I am currently working on. Both halves of the story have finite endings, so for the paperback version, I will break it into two novels. That will keep my costs down.
For those of you who are curious—I have the attention span of a sack full of squirrels. Proof of that can be found in the 4 novels currently in progress that are set in that world, each at different eras of the 3000-year timeline, each in various stages of completion.
think of 
Life in the Realm of Fantasy 