How To Make a Non-Cliche Antagonist

So I’ve been meaning to write a post like this for a while. It’s companion post How To Make  Non-Cliche Protagonist can be found here was one of the few posts on this blog written by Margaret… and also our most popular post. Am I bitter? What? No…

The reason I’m writing this now is because I myself am working on revamping my own antagonist. I like certain aspects of him, but there are also a lot of things that I don’t like about him. So I’m writing this post not only to help all of you, but to also sort of work things out in my own head.

For the purposes of this post, we’re going to assume that the antagonist is always going to be a person. That’s not always the case. Antagonists is only a force that is working against the main character. It can easily be a circumstance or an event or even the protagonist themselves. Bad guys/villains are the typical antagonists though.

So, without further ado:

What is a Cliché Antagonist (And Why Do I Not Want One?)

Despite what everyone (or what we) may say about main characters and world or the plot… let’s face it the most important part of a book is the conflict of the book. Without conflict or something that the protagonist is supposed to overcome… there isn’t a book. No one wants to read a book about an average high school girl going to school, studying, and getting good grades. They want to read a book about a girl who goes to school and finds out that her best friend committed suicide and has to figure out why her best friend would do that and discovering that someone made her do and then fighting against that person.

As I said before, for the case of this post we’re going to assume that the conflict is/is coming from an actual person. And since this antagonist is the conflict… she/he is the most important part of the book. Without him there wouldn’t BE a book.

That being said, it is vitally important that that antagonists is worthy of being read. That means not cliché. I’m sure everyone’s read a book or watched a movie with a pretty lame villain. That would be just about any villain that wears a long black cloak with a pointy beard and evil eyes and a diabolical laugh. MUWHAHAHAHA.

Yeah no. It’s pretty safe to say that any antagonist that cackles/laughs diabolically is a no go. It will induce large amount of eye rolling.

What makes a Good Antagonist?

Just like everything else in the world, not everyone will like the same things. I could love the villain in one book and not take another seriously while someone else could hate the first one and love the second. There is no perfect recipe for a villain just like there isn’t for anything else in writing.

However, in all my 16 years of reading and story-telling movie watching there are some things that tend to make better villains that others.

In my experiences the best villains are the ones that people can empathize with, to be honest. They’re characters with as much depth as the main character. A deep antagonist is always a good sign for a novel. I’ve read books for no other reason than a rich antagonist.

They have reasons for doing what they’re doing. They have history. They have a goal. We can feel sorry for them. We can understand what they’re trying to do, we might even agree with some of the things that they preach.

When you have a deep antagonist, you have a deep struggle. It makes it more real to us when we’re reading.

Now you don’t have to purposefully make your antagonist someone that you would want to be besties with or anything. And you don’t have to make them someone you can empathize with. There are more than a few successful villains that you can’t really empathize with. Any psychopath or sociopathic villain would fall under that category, the Joker from Batman among them. Or at least I hope none of you can sympathize with a true psychopath.

Step 1: Motivation

I would say that this is probably the most important thing about making a non-cliché antagonist. A cliché antagonist is evil just to be evil. That is almost directly contrary to that whole depth to an antagonist thing we just talked about.

Now this non-cliché antagonist we’re talking about has a reason to be evil, or rather, a reason to be working against our protagonist. You have to be able to actually identify what this motivation is.

Perhaps the most common ones are power, revenge, and because they believe he's trying to do something good. There are a lot of subcategories to these of course.

Power: Wanting to rule the world definitely falls under the category of power. It could also be money. Maybe your villain is trying to take over the protagonist’s company. Of the three I mentioned, power would probably be the most cliché motivation for a villain, but it’s also an acceptable one if you can make it work. Because let’s face it, most people in the real world are motivated by power. A lot of bad things that have happened in the world’s history can be traced back to someone being greedy.

So it’s certainly a viable motivation. But you do have to be able to pull it off right. Taking over the world is usually not a very good motivation unless there’s a better reason behind it.

Revenge: Just like the desire for power, it’s a great motivator because it’s real motivation for awful things. If in the past someone killed the antagonist’s family and now she’s killing the families of everyone involved in their deaths. It’s also a motivation that a lot of people can empathize with. It’s also a great exploration for revenge versus justice and where the line is and such.

Trying to Do Something Good: This is probably one of my favorites. It’s a motivation that’s become a lot more popular recently, so you may want to be careful with it… but I love it. It’s one of my favorites.

It also probably has the most subcategories. You can have the typical type of situation where a boy steals medicine for his ailing mother, if the protagonist is a cop or something. The antagonist is trying to do something good, trying to help someone, but often he’s hurting other people and doing bad things to do it, which is why our protagonist is fighting them.

Or maybe she's doing something that she thinks will benefit others in the long run. That’s the one that’s been popping up a lot recently. The “you have to destroy the world to rebuild it” mindset. To save humanity you have to first destroy it.

Step 2: Background

This goes pretty much hand in hand with motivation. What gave him that motivation? Why does he want revenge? Was his family killed? Was a close friend’s family killed? Was there an attempt on his own life?

Why does she want power? Is she trying to prove something? Was she mistreated in the past and is trying to gain the power so that that will never happen again? Is she trying to get large amounts of money to help her sick mother?  Does she think she just deserve money/power?

Did he serve in a war and want to stop it from ever happening again? Has he been mistreated and wants to eliminate the chances of that happening? Maybe he's trying to purify the world of evil and happens to think that pretty much everyone is evil… There are a lot of way to go with this. The other type of trying to do something good is a lot easier to determine the background. If he's trying to save their mother the background is his mother is in danger.

More than just explaining the background behind your character and where her motivation is coming from, you should probably take the time to figure out more about the character themselves. If you haven’t already, determine how he grew up. Poor family, rich family, mother and father or only one? Raised by a distant family member? Brothers and sisters? Did she have a good relationship with his family? Did he go to school? Did he do well in his classes? Has she ever had a job? How many? What did she do? Does he have a history of unemployment?

If you know it about your protagonist, you should know it about your antagonist.

You don’t have to tell the readers everything you know about him, but just knowing the information gives you the ability to write him in a way that shows that he has depth. Even if you never actually tell the readers her birthday or the grade that she got on her 10^th grade Chemistry Final.

Step 3: Traits

All of this will make it a lot easier to determine what traits he’s going to have. Coming up with some of her traits will make it easier to figure out that information about her past. If he’s smart, he probably got good grades. Or maybe he’s so smart that he hated school and almost failed.

Just like determining your protagonist’s traits, it’s a good idea to look at yourself and the people you’re familiar with. Take some of their traits and take some of your own. Take some of the ones you like and some of the ones you don’t. Because this is an antagonist, it would be appropriate to give your antagonist more negative traits than positive, but you can give them just as many as your protagonists or maybe even less. That’s your playground.

I personally like it when antagonists have the same flaws that the protagonists do. It just creates even more conflict for the protagonist and allows for him/her to do some soul searching that’s great for character development.

I also, personally, really like it when villains are classy. Classy villains are the best.

Step 4: Appearance

There are a lot of things you can do with your antagonist’s appearance. They can look evil or they can look normal or they can be beautiful. My advice is that whatever you do with his appearance, it has some sort of relevance. Don’t make her beautiful just to make her beautiful (the same with terribly ugly). Give it a reason. Give it relevance.

Step 5: Obsess

Here I’m going to quote my dear sister when she gave the same advice with non-cliché protagonists.

“Guys, at this point, you've got the basics. The rest of it is you obsessing and thinking about the character on a fairly consistent basis. Characters will evolve on their own and become their own person - but it takes thought and writing and time.

Lots and lots and lots of time.”

Just keep thinking about. Have fun with it. Villains can be a lot of fun to create.