Your main character has a goal, and now you need to find someone who’s going to keep them from achieving that goal. An antagonist, a villain.
Now, it’s possible that all your secondary characters will play the antagonist role at some point in the story. That they’ll somehow mess things up for your MC (main character). But you should have one or two in particular who’s really trying to get in the way.
Like if you’re writing a book about an investigator tracking down a serial killer, your main villain would be the killer. (Generally speaking, anyway.) But there also might be another antagonist on the police force. Someone who’s on the same side of the law as your MC, but who isn’t listening to his or her ideas, who’s slowing down the investigation. Does that make sense?
Developing your antagonist or your villain requires as much care as developing your main character. I hear lots of agents and editors talk about 1-dimensional villains. Don’t let them say this about yours.
The exercises we talked about for secondary characters can go a long way in developing your villain. Give them a back story, find those personality traits that seem to be in conflict with each other, and make sure they have their own goal.
The biggest thing, I think, is make your villain active. It’s not enough for them to simply sit in the corner, twirl their mustache, and give the occasional evil laugh. They need to be doing things. They need to be taking matters into their own hands and working to take down your MC.
And I’m not just talking about villains like The Joker. Often the most powerful villain is someone your MC considers to be a close friend. In Me, Just Different, the villain is Skylar’s best friend. Jodi works hard to take Skylar out of the picture. (Of their social circle, that is.)
Next Monday there’ll be a new writing prompt (yay!) and then on Wednesday we’ll start talking about settings.
Oooh, one more thing. Huge thanks to Nicole McLaughlin for designing a beautiful new banner for Go Teen Writers! It looks so chic, as my 3-year-old would say.
Have a great weekend guys!