I realized that I never finished this series, so here's the last entry in my Character Ideas series of posts. I've already talked about where I get the ideas for protagonists, side characters, and love interests. Now it's time for the antagonists.
Typically my antagonists come from the needs of the story. Most of the time when I'm coming up with the story, the antagonist is one of the last big pieces I work on before writing. I've never had an idea that starts with the antagonist, but that could happen in the future.
I don't want to tell you too many specifics about the antagonists in my two novels because that might give too much away. Instead, I'll just talk in generalities. Both needed specific qualities to cause the plot events for both stories. The mean specific skills and back stories to make their motivations make sense. I actually probably spent more time on their motivations than my main characters. This could be because I have a tendency to write stories where the MCs get thrown into situations, whereas the antagonists are causing the issue so they need to have a specific plan and course of action and the motivations to make that plan take place. So I know exactly why both my bad guys did what they did, what drove them too it and why they didn't choose a nicer path.
I guess you could say that the plot is really what gives me the ideas for my antagonists. Again, this might not always be the case, but at the moment, it's what I have.
Next Firday, I'm going to be starting a new series, but it's not going to be about writing topics. I've decided that since this blog is called Writing through Life, I should probably talk a little about my life. So next week, I'll start doing just that.
Until then.
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