The protagonist can't defeat the antagonist without the antagonist being stupid

Actually, most stories that have a specific antagonist depend on the antagonist being stronger than the protagonist, so logically the antagonist should win most of the time -- unless they do something stupid.

We love to root for underdogs. After all, most of us are underdogs. If the hero was clearly going to win, it would not be much of a story. So what is an author to do?

• Have the hero win anyway
• Have the hero lose heroically
• Have the hero lose realistically

You will find all of these in literature but in popular works the first is obviously the most common. So the question becomes, under what circumstances is it satisfying to the audience that the hero wins anyway, even though the antagonist should clearly win.

The key to this question is virtue. Why do we want the hero to win? Because they are more virtuous. Why do we want the antagonist to lose? Because they lack virtue. So the difference between winning and losing must itself rest on virtue. This can take many forms:

• The antagonist loses, despite their advantages, because their signature vice leads them to make a mistake. Not a random mistake, but a mistake that they make for the very reason we hated them in the first place. Because of their cruelty, a henchman rebels against them; because of their treachery, an ally abandons them; because of their arrogance, they leave their flank unguarded; because of their idleness they do not discover the secret that will be their undoing. All of these will seem dreadfully contrived, of course, unless they are seen as the direct result of their faults and the past actions they have taken because of those faults.

• The hero wins because of their signature virtue: because of their courage, they keep fighting when all seems lost; because of their compassion, a minor character they have been good to shows them a secret passage; because of their loyalty, a friend sacrifices himself for them; because of their learning, they discover a secret unknown to the antagonist. Again, all of these will seem dreadfully contrived unless they are the direct result of their established virtues and the past actions they have taken because of those virtues.

posted about 7 years ago

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Mark Baker‭

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They could have a harder fight and still give the win to the antagonist. Or use mind games: let's say the underdog comes up with a plan that gives the impression to the antagonist that he's winning and that everything is going as expected and underestimating his opponent. Then the underdog makes his play and wins. But a well structured mind game.

posted about 7 years ago

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jm8FE‭

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The idea of a protagonist "magically getting super strong" is not one you should entirely throw out the window, depending on the type of story you are telling. Luke "magically got super strong" at the end of the original Star Wars trilogy, but there were multiple dimensions to what it took for him to achieve that strength and the sacrifices he had to make that made it interesting. Your story is probably (but not certainly / necessarily) going to be more about your protagonist than your antagonist anyways, and so the ability to defeat the villain should be something that said protagonist manages to achieve by some means throughout the story before our eyes.

posted about 6 years ago

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Garrett Gutierrez‭

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If the antagonist will win in a fair fight, don't have the protagonist engage him in a fair fight. One way to make this happen is to make the protagonist's objective something other than killing/defeating the antagonist - maybe the antagonist is trying to execute some nefarious plan, and the protagonist finds a way to disrupt the plan without having to fight the antagonist directly (or with only skirmish/guerilla type fighting).

If your protagonist has to fight the antagonist directly, he can try to out-prepare or out-maneuver the antagonist. For the former, perhaps he coats his sword in poison so he only has to scratch the antagonist to kill or weaken him, sabotages the antagonist's equipment before fighting or takes performance-enhancing drugs before the fight. For the latter, instead of challenging the antagonist directly the protagonist can ambush him, or start the fight in a place more advantageous for him.

posted about 7 years ago

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IllusiveBrian‭

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If your hero can't possibly win, then don't have him win. Have him survive, but just barely! Then apply all of that effort which you were willing to invest in a total rewrite, into writing a sequel. In this second volume, you can strengthen the hero and weaken the villain or even change the nature of their conflict into something else (a.k.a. introducing a bigger villain to unit the former enemies).

Don't force your book into a fairy tale ending, just because it has gotten to the length where most stories end. Instead, take your characters through some unexpected plot twists; find an alternative victory for your hero and leave your villain's final fall for some later tale.

You've spent your entire novel creating and fleshing out two wonderful characters. Seems a shame to not keep them both around for your next book.

posted about 7 years ago

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Henry Taylor‭

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The antagonist doesn't have to be particularly stupid (or the protagonist particularly clever), the protagonist needs to just find a piece of information that the antagonist doesn't have, not because they are stupid, just because different people have access to different information.

posted about 7 years ago

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colmde‭

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-WARNING: TV TROPES LINK SPAM INCOMING-

There's nothing at all wrong with having your villain make a stupid mistake. Villains do it all the time. A better question is why your villain would make such a stupid mistake in the first place. Here's a few suggestions:

He's arrogant.

• "Why should I bother guarding the secret entrance to my base? There's no way the hero will ever find it!" The hero finds it.
• "Why would I just shoot him when I can throw him into an elaborate deathtrap that'll kill him slowly and painfully? There's no way he'll get out of it alive!" Except he does, and now he has the element of surprise because the villain assumes he's dead.
• "Why should I waste time finishing/testing my superweapon before using it? There's no way anything can go wrong!" Something goes wrong.
• "The hero's infiltrated my lair? No matter. My super laser is already armed and fires in three minutes! There's no way he can stop me now!" He stops him. Most likely with two seconds remaining.

I could go on all day with this trope but you get the idea.

He doesn't understand good.

• Instead of trying to kill the hero, the villain tries to turn him to the dark side. He's shocked when the hero refuses and then beats the tar out of him, because he legitimately can't comprehend why someone would choose to remain on the obviously weaker side.
• If you're willing to consider a heroic sacrifice, then perhaps the villain didn't consider that the hero might do such a thing.

He's just that evil.

• The villain is such an evil psychopath that he commits crimes without caring whether they might come back to bite him. He'll raze villages to the ground, even though someone might survive and come after him. He'll betray his loyal second-in-command, even though they know the secret to shutting off his doomsday device. He'll break a promise ("You said you'd let them go!" "I lied!") when honouring it might actually have been the better option. It might not make sense for him to do something, but he'll do it anyway just for the evulz.

posted about 7 years ago

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F1Krazy‭

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A is strong, B is weak, they fight and B wins because he's the good guy is indeed a boring story.

There is probably more to the story, so tell it. "Rocky" is an entire movie about nothing other than how the hero gets to the point of having a chance.

Use foreshadowing.

Exaggerated example: If the big bad evil guy gets a stroke while fighting the hero, and dies, use the previous chapters to mention his blood pressure issues, and a history of previous strokes in his family.

Also, the big bad evil guy can also make a mistake that isn't stupid, just a result of the circumstances, as happens in Rob Roy.

posted about 7 years ago

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Peter‭

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It much depends on the story that you are trying to tell.

The quest for something (item, allies, knowledge, etc.) that levels the playing field and gives the hero a chance against an (initially) superior enemy is actually at the core of many stories.

Overcoming a great, even impossible, obstacle by sheer willpower, resilience or stubborness is another angle you can take, if that fits the story you want to tell.

If your story revolves around the antagonist being superior and staying that way until the very end, there is always the War of the Worlds or Mars Attacks solution of a surprise weakness discovered by sheer luck, or any other variation of the Deus Ex Machina. I personally find this doesn't give the story closure, however, unless it was carefully set up and foreshadowed from the start. Watch the movie Demon for a fantastic example of how to do this kind of solution right, with proper foreshadowing that makes the reader/watcher reframe the entire story once the end is revealed.

posted about 7 years ago

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Tom‭

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Being opponents can take lots of forms, leading to a lot of different outcomes.

1. Direct Combat
   This could be a physical fight with bare hands or weapons. This surely is the least complex form for a writer but also the one which leaves least room for ideas on how to form the outcome. Either you make it realistic based on your setup (then the villain should win in your scenario) or you introduce surprises (e. g. any kind of deus-ex-machina or unbelievable incidents like the villain stumbling while charging or similar).

2. Indirect Combat
   This could mean to choose a different battleground than expected, e. g. charging Al Capone with tax fraud. This opens way more options for ideas. Of course, all these can seem constructed (which of course they are); one trick to lower the appearance of being constructed is to place hints on these options in the beginning of the story when the reader does not yet think about these aspects. Good hints come disguised as something else which fits neatly into the story without raising too many red flags.

3. Seizing Attacks
   This is like grabbing the fist which is going to punch you and doing something with it, like biting it, hurling yourself up on it, pulling yourself towards the opponent along it. It can mean to take a punch to get in a better position (like a gambit). In a way this could mean to let the opponent strike first to change the situation. Lure him into a trap, e. g. make him appear cruel or unjust or dangerous to the rest of the world, which can help raise supporters against him.

4. Evading Combat
   This could mean to let the opponent run into empty space again and again until his resources are diminished and another form of combat seems more promising. A policy of scorched earth is such a strategy in which an opponent is lured into coming deeper and deeper into one's own territory but where no resources are to be found. Another form could be setting up meetings and not appearing again and again (while giving excuses or even better: while staging independent reasons like problems with the meeting place). Such situations can exhaust the one who always has to prepare for the fight.

5. Changing the Perspective
   This is closely connected to plot-points. Introduce new information which lets things appear in a different light so that the complete enmity is questionable. The information can be fraudulent, and the created confusion can shift the power. E. g. make someone tell your opponent in the box ring that you are about to be shot in round two by a mobster. Combined with a sudden loud bang in the hall in round two this makes it believable enough for lots of things to happen.

6. Staying the Underdog
   Several other answers deal with this option. To be the apparent underdog opens options which derive from the arrogance of the villain. Typical ways of exploiting such a situation can be to surprise the villain with an action which does not fit an underdog, e. g. being beaten down and kicked around for some time, but in the last second thrusting a poisoned dagger into the villain's foot.

7. Forming and Shattering Alliances
   The basic difference between protagonists and antagonists is that between good and evil. Being one of the good ones often means to (be able to) form alliances while being one of the bad ones often means to have trouble keeping them (more betrayal, less confidence, more jealousy, more general hatred). Forming alliances based on being one of the good ones can shift the power, especially if the alliance is a surprise to the villain. That's what happened on Endor when Luke befriended the Ewoks. It turned the "pitiful little band" of rebels into a force which could beat a whole Imperial Legion.
   The other option is to let alliances of the villains shatter at the right moment; this could happen repeatedly in a chain reaction when started, causing significantly more effect.

8. Strengths and Weaknesses
   Being strong or weak, being smart or stupid, and being good or evil—all these can have multiple dimensions. Achilles was very strong but had a weak heel (similar stories for Smaug and Siegfried). A hobbit is a weak creature but can resist the One Ring longer than other beings. Sauron is not depicted as stupid but is outright stupid when it comes to considering whether others would want to destroy the One Ring (it would have been ridiculously easy to guard Mount Doom). The shrewdness of stupid characters like Stan Laurel's or Forrest Gump leads to believable successes. So if you say that your "villain is stronger than the protagonist" you maybe just lack multidimensionality in strength.

9. Avoiding Combat
   Your protagonist could avoid any combat, go into hiding, support an underground movement, a rebellion, a resistance, leave the country. This can lead to many people changing their positions, shifting powers, etc.

10. Losing Combat
    Losing any kind of combat also is an option which should be considered. Sometimes a loss can be turned into a victory later, given time situations can change, powers may shift, maybe the story is taken up by descendants, by colleagues, by friends, by allies.

posted about 7 years ago

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Alfe‭

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