Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (14 page)

Antagonists are not always villains. Cecily von Ziegesar's
Gossip Girl,
discussed in the last chapter, is an ensemble novel about the lives of rich private school girls in Manhattan. Chief among them is Blair Waldorf who pines for (well, truthfully, lusts for) handsome Nate Archibald. What prevents her from carrying out her plan to lose her virginity with Nate? The reappearance of her former best friend, stunning Serena van der Woodsen, at the upscale Constance Billard School.

Serena is Blair's opposition in the novel. She is the antagonist. But Serena is not evil. She is just a girl who is too rich, too beautiful, and too lost to know what she wants. Her junior year abroad in France turned into a journey into dissolution. On returning to New York, she hopes to recapture some of the friendship and fun that she formerly enjoyed with Blair, as we see when she arrives at a dinner party thrown by Blair's parents:

Serena hugged them happily. These people were home to her, and she'd been gone a long time. She could hardly wait for life to return to the way it used to be. She and Blair would walk to school together, spend Double Photography in Sheep Meadow in Central Park, lying on their backs, taking pictures of pigeons and clouds, smoking and drinking Coke and feeling like hard-core artistes. They would have cocktails at the Star Lounge in the Tribeca Star Hotel again, which always turned into sleepover parties because

they would get too drunk to get home, so they'd spend the night in the suite Chuck Bass's family kept there. They would sit on Blair's four-poster bed and watch Audrey Hepburn movies, wearing vintage lingerie and drinking gin and lime juice. . . .

Serena's memories may not be particularly warm and cozy, but her nostalgia is nonetheless heartfelt. When Blair and her friends snub her and begin spreading vile rumors about why she was kicked out of her last boarding school, Serena is understandably confused. She does not plot revenge, though. Instead she goes her own way, getting involved in student filmmaking and eventually crossing paths with a Riverside Prep scholarship boy who worships her from afar, Dan Humphrey, who to his amazement becomes her love interest.

Blair and Serena have a partial reconciliation at the end of
Gossip Girl,
but remain at odds. Only future novels will tell whether Serena will remain the series antagonist, or whether that role will fall instead to another—possibly even Blair.

The antagonist in a breakout novel can even be invisible. Some mystery novels are like that: The killer is unknown until the detective reveals his identity. Stephen L. Carter's
The Emperor of Ocean Park
is not a murder mystery, as such, since the agent of opposition in the story is dead.

The mystery in
The Emperor of Ocean Park
revolves around the "arrangements" left unfulfilled by Oliver Garland, an African-American judge whose nomination to the Supreme Court was ruined by scandal prior to his death. Garland's son, Talcott, is drawn into an investigation of his father's shady connections. His father's misdoings complicate Talcott's life, which is already encumbered by his wife's own bench nomination, the suspicion of his law school colleagues, and a fake FBI agent who is following him around.

Talcott chases his father's cryptic clues, which are based on chess strategy, and in the end learns the truths of his own life and the dark secrets of the inner workings of Washington, DC. Plenty of people stand in his way, of course, but the person working most against him throughout is his own dead father.

Sometimes the antagonist in a breakout novel is nothing more than life itself. For an example, read Patricia Gaffney's powerful story (also set in Washington, DC) about four women friends who form a support group,
The Saving Graces.
Over the course of several years the friends grapple with infertility, divorce, married lovers, thwarted creativity, terminal cancer, and other challenges. Is there a villain, here? Various characters stand in, but ultimately in
The Saving Graces,
Gaffeny makes the antagonist nothing more than the relentless, small, unavoidable domestic tragedies that happen to us all.

As you can see, antagonists come in many shapes and sizes. They can be villains, or they can be life itself. Who, or what, is the antagonist in your novel? How can you develop this opposition for maximum effect? Certainly not by settling for a motive that is nothing more than evil intent.

Evil is more interesting than that. Villains are best when they are complex. Use the exercise that follows to develop those depths. You may wind up with an antagonist that your readers fear or even adore. Hey, why not shoot for both?

__EXERCISE

Developing the Antagonist

Step 1: Who is the antagonist in your novel? Write the down the name of that character.

Step 2:
Create an extra dimension: write down your antagonist's defining quality. Write down the opposite of that. Now create a paragraph in which your antagonist demonstrates the opposite quality that you have identified.
Start writing now.

Step 3: Create an inner conflict: Write down what your antagonist most wants. Write down the opposite of that. How can this character want both of these things simultaneously? How can they be mutually exclusive? Make notes, starting now.

Step 4: Create larger-than-life qualities: Write down things that your antagonist would never say, do, or think. Find places where this character can and must say, do, and think those things. Make notes, starting now.

Step 5:
Define your antagonist's personal stakes: What is his main problem, conflict, or goal? Next, write down what would make this problem matter more, and then matter more than life itself.
Make notes, starting now.

Follow-up work: Follow the steps above for a secondary antagonistic character who supports your villain.

Conclusion:
No one is bad all the time. Villains are people, too. Rather than build a villain who is unlike you, use this exercise to build one who resembles you. That might be the most chilling adversary of all.

____________________EXERCISE

The Antagonist's Outline

Step 1: What is your antagonist's main problem, conflict, or goal? Write that down.