CREATIVE WRITING BUILDING BLOCKS
THE BUILDING BLOCK OF CHARACTER: PART FIVE
Give your stories more depth and resonance by creating rounded antagonists, advises author and tutor Ian Ayris
In the final part of our look at the Building Block of Character, we will be looking at the role of the Antagonist. As with the other character types, we will be using a story of mine called ‘Sundays’. You can find it here: www. writers-online.co.uk/how-to-write/sundays-a-shortstory-by-ian-ayris/
Before we look at the Antagonist in ‘Sundays’ – Dad – I want to speak a little about what an Antagonist is.
The German psychoanalyst, Karen Horney – stay with me here – described three ways children create or adjust relationships in order to cope with anxiety. That is, they either move toward (become compliant), move away (become detached) or move against (become aggressive). An Antagonist would normally fall into the latter category, in that they are actively moving against the Main Character. The Antagonist, therefore, is a kind of obstacle in human form - or at least a form with a consciousness.
But an Antagonist is not just any obstacle.
An Antagonist is the overriding obstacle – the obstacle that links or arcs over all the others. They are normally presented as the villains -Voldermort, Sauron, Moriarty, the murderer, the criminal, the jilted lover, etc. But the stories we write, the characters we write, they are more complex than good versus evil, right versus wrong.