7 Amazing Tips for Writing an Antagonist: Writing is an art that can be mastered with time, skill and passion. But yet writing for some characters or storyline may appear as a cake walk while writing for few topics or characters is like solving an unsolved classic mystery. This is what makes writing so exciting and fun. While writing for an antagonist’s character may appear as an easy task. But the people who know the importance of an antagonist in a storyline will know how difficult it is to write an antagonist’s character. As they are the make or break characters of any storyline. So, let’s take a look at some simple yet amazing tips that can help you in writing for an antagonist’s character.
7 Amazing Tips for Writing an Antagonist
Give your Antagonist proper Attention and Treatment
Giving your antagonist character proper attention and treatment is the first and most important step in writing an antagonist. You need to give your antagonist the same amount of attention that you provide your protagonist. You also need to treat your antagonist the way you treat your protagonist. It is mostly seen that many people don’t give their antagonists proper time and attention. Which ends up making their storyline and even the protagonist one dimensional or boring. The mindset shift of giving your antagonist the same amount of attention and importance is very important and can be a gamechanger for any writer or creator.
Characterization
Personalization and Characterization of any character is very important. It gives you a base for the character and also adds layers to your character. If you wanna get out of the trap of creating the typical character of supporting lead, villain or anti-villain. You should create and personalize every aspect of your character. From voice to dictation and from clothing to body language, every aspect should be carefully personalized and created. Giving proper time to characterization can do wonders in the character formation of your antagonist.
Create a separate Storyline for your Character
While you’re writing a character and working on its characteristics, giving or creating a separate storyline for your antagonist can be a great idea. You need not add the storyline in the final draft or story but this separate storyline is very useful. Creating a separate storyline gives you more clarity, scope and better understanding of the character. This can help you in improving your character and will also provide layers, depth and a backdrop to your antagonist in the final draft.
Don’t shy away from making your Antagonist Strong and Powerful
Many people think that making their antagonist too strong can overpower or over shadow their main protagonist. But never shy away from making your antagonist strong and powerful. The bigger the villain is the bigger the hero becomes is thumb rule of writing and creating characters. There are numerous examples which illustrate how powerful & strong an antagonists makes the storyline and main protagonist more strong & impactful. So, never shy away from creating strong parallel characters in a storyline. If your characters are well written then they will always compliment each other and make the final product more impactful.
Provide your character with a solid Goal and Motivation
We as humans do everything because of some purpose or motivation. Forget about humans, even animals’ acts are backed by some purpose, aim or motivation. So, even if you create is a larger than life or unique character. Without any purpose, motivation or aim it will be of no use as the character will appear to be incomplete. So, always provide your character with a solid goal, motivation, purpose or an aim. But remember the purpose and motivation should be aligned with the character and the storyline.
Make it Relatable
It’s very crucial to make your character relatable. Be it a good, bad or gray character, establishing reliability with viewers or readers is very important for any character. Many people do all the hard work but barely focus on making their characters relatable. Your character can be weird, scary or dark in nature but it should have a trait or storyline which can create the character’s relatability and connect with the readers or viewers. Any character which fails to create a connect with people will eventually fail on the big stage.
Make your Antagonist Stand Out
The last but the most crucial aspect is making your antagonist stand out and unique in nature. The uniqueness of a character always excites and hooks people to a storyline. For making your character stand out and unique you need to give your character time, focus on its characterization, storyline and make it relatable & strong. An Antagonist with an independent storyline, a proper characterization and relatable purpose or goal will always stand out and attract people because of its strong character and uniqueness.
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