How can I make believable motivations for antagonists?
I am writing a book. However, I can't quite wrap my head around making my character do bad things, while still making their actions and/or motivations for their actions believable.
Here is an example of what I'm tying to achieve, from Season 2, Episode 24 of House: A former patient walks into House's office and shoots him. However, its revealed that the patient's wife committed suicide after House made him confess to cheating. The fact that he was cheating didn't turn out to be medically relevant, so the former patient decided to get revenge and put House into pain (to make House feel the pain he felt when his wife died).
What I'm really trying to avoid in my story is the whole "evil for the sake of being evil" thing. I'm not trying to make the antagonist look like a good guy, but to make the reader question themselves for just a second and wonder, "Is the protagonist really doing the right thing?" or "Is the antagonist really doing the wrong thing?" Because I can't make my antagonist, I haven't really been able to determine what the plot or conflict will be, though I am pretty sure thre will probably be a group / organization of antagonists, not just one or two, and that the genre is fantasy. Thanks for any advice or examples!
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/17149. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
3 answers
I actually have the same problem you do. I'm writing a story with more than one antagonist. For the first antagonist I created a motivation for him to act as a "bad guy". The context is about two company owners competing to get a client's account.
- Protagonist makes an offer to the antagonist as if the protagonist is going to win the contract, even though the antagonist is pretty sure of that mainly because he has a very strong contact acting as an informant inside the client's company. The offer is about both working together even though the biggest share is going to be the protagonist's.
- Antagonist refuses the offer. "Absurd offer" from his perspective.
- The insider was actually bought by the protagonist, arranging the contract to be his.
Having the insider providing privileged information is not ethical to start with , so the protagonist also acted unethically to get the deal.
It's hard to tell precisely what you want for your story since I don't the overall context, but hopefully that can give you an insight. :)
(I am still strugling, however, to give a better motivation to the other antagonist)
Cheers!
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/17150. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Two dogs. One bone.
The dogs are antagonists.
Which is the good dog? Which is the bad dog?
One dog may have the objective right to the bone, but that does not change how each dog sees things. Each lives in a world in which that bone is their bone.
Your antagonist lives in a world in which the bone of contention in your story is his bone.
Understand that world and describe it.
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I write my antagonists to truly believe they are doing the right thing. They just begin with different beliefs about the world than my protagonists, that also truly believe they are doing the right thing.
For example, my antagonist may believe that a few dozen politicians, by their votes, are literally causing hundreds of thousands of people to live in misery and die from lack of medical care.
Now my antagonist sees an opportunity to rid the world of these politicians, one at a time, but each time will demand an explosion that he knows will kill hundreds of innocent men, women, children and infants. But for my antagonist, as much as he regrets ending those hundreds of lives, on balance he is protecting hundreds of thousands, so what he does next is a no-brainer to him.
Again, and again, and it is my protagonists job to stop him. My protagonist believes these lives are not worth the cost, and the corrupt and evil politicians will just be replaced by another round of corrupt politicians, that there is an infinite supply. So the antagonist is creating misery with no point.
The antagonist disagrees, if there is another round he will kill them too, until politicians are too afraid to vote for their vile policies under the threat of his wrath.
The protagonist knows sooner or later the antagonist will make a mistake and be caught or killed, and that goal will never be accomplished, so it is all a waste.
I could go on! But the point is that what is in conflict here is two fundamental belief systems that won't be shaken, each also driven by emotional investment (anger for the antagonist, sympathy & justice for the protagonist).
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