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Comments on Letting a (secondary) antagonist leave mid story - Should it be avoided?

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Letting a (secondary) antagonist leave mid story - Should it be avoided?

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I have a powerful antagonist perform important functions within my story. At the midpoint, he just leaves. Several Plot developments depend on this character.

I tried replacing him with other character(s) or causes within my world, but I am getting into extremly convoluted territory with it and I am really uneasy and not satisfied with those solutions.

There is still a main antagonist and another secondary antagonist in the story, so conflict is not the issue.

Do you think letting a major player leave mid-story should be avoided at all costs?

Is there a way to mitigate potential maleffects?

NOTE: We witness his departure by ship mid story from the point of view of another character.

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This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/48401. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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One way to make the leaving of that secondary antagonist satisfying could be if it gives a problem for the protagonist. Now how could an antagonist leaving be a problem? Well, it is a problem if the protagonist's plans against the other antagonists required the presence of that antagonist.

Maybe the plan of the protagonist was to plot a clever scheme against the antagonists, causing the two secondary antagonists to go against the main antagonist together (not knowing that they themselves have been manipulated, of course). With the main antagonist gone and the secondary antagonists weakened by the fight, it would be much easier to win against them.

But now as the intrigue begins to work out, the one secondary antagonist gets too afraid of the main antagonist and leaves. The other antagonist, seeing that he has no chance alone, now decides to side with the main antagonist, making it look like all that already happened was solely the fault of the now gone secondary antagonist.

In other words, not only did the protagonist's original plan fail, but in addition the problem got even worse, since now the remaining antagonists are united instead of fighting each other.

In short, if the secondary antagonist leaving mid-story makes things worse for the protagonist, it is a good thing for the story.

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Amadeus‭ wrote almost 5 years ago

+1, that's clever. With that idea, we can make the MC's plan to GET something from the 2ndary antagonist with which to fight the others. So when 2ndary leaves with his stuff out of fear, MC's plan is useless, and on top of that 3rd Ant joins with 1st Ant. That would be a good middle-of-book crisis: MC's plans are dead and the stakes just doubled.