No Antagonist

No Antagonist. Apparently, it's one of the essential highways to take if you want to make your work Literary Fiction. And there's good reason for that. It's the sort of conflict everyone faces, all the time.

• Man Against Himself: Our greates enemy is none other than ourselves. You Suck: This Loser Is You, and you'll probably stay a loser, in a fundamental sense, no matter how much you've achieved.
• Man Against Nature: Flaws Inherent in the System. An inhospitable environment, which presents constant challenges to overcome. It's not just thriving that's a challenge: surviving may be a constant worry. Even the strongest person dies of a fever. Even the richest may ruin themselves overnight. Even the beloved may be disgraced in an instant.
• Man Against Man: Poor Communication Kills. Ridicule kills. People kill. But even when they don't, people can make each other wish they were killed, in all those mundane, simple ways, that people do every day, without thinking any less of themselves. But frustration and conflict aren't the monopoly of the venal and vicious: you can also strangle yourself, and each other, with the fetters of honor and duty and responsibility.

So, faux-poetry aside, how does one achieve good storytelling without an awesome villain for the audience to latch on to? Not that I've ever really understood "Evil Is Cool". You'd think there's more to making a conflict interesting than the gadgets of the side you're supposed to disapprove of...

More than "good" storytelling, I'm talking about enjoyable, dramatic storytelling. The sort that makes you forget your priorities because you just can't put the story down until you've finished it. The sort that, once you've finished the story, you go on thinking about it.

If there's a sense of growth and progression within your characters that sticks closely to the story's themes, readers will be engaged.

A bit of nitpicking. Man Against Man does have an conventiona antagonist — unless the other Man in the setting is only the catalyst for Man Against Himself.

But the other guy ain't out to getcha: you just happen to be in each other's way, or working at cross-purposes. Say you've got a family: none a dem's nastier than the rest, an usually they want what's best for each other, but there's still tons of bickering and competing and rivalry and bloody-mindedness, not to mention Laziness and its sisters Stupidity and Unhigiene. Lots of conflict to go around, but can you point your finger and say: here's the antagonist. Actually, a lot of Friendship Is Magic episodes are like that... Look Before You Sleep, for instance, or Party Of One. It's Pony Against Pony, but who's the antagonist?

edited 11th Jun '12 3:42:04 PM by MarkThis

Man Against Man is being used to say "Man Against Humanity"

Which is usually called Man Verus Society.

Yeah, they're two separate things.

The usual breakdown is something like this:

• Person vs. person
• Person vs. self
• Person vs. society
• Person vs. nature
• Person vs. fate

(I use "person" here because "man" can get really confusing under the right circumstances.)

edited 11th Jun '12 8:17:01 PM by JHM

You know, I find that to be sort of misleading to say there's no antagonist. It's just more that the antagonist isn't a villain. There's almost always conflict in a story, something a character struggles against and that something is your antagonist, whatever you wish to call it.

Therefore, a more accurate name for the trope would be No Villain.

But if it's ain't broke...

Why call it "antagonist"? That implies agency and deliberation. What about "obstacle" instead?

I've often said that my stories don't really have protagonists and antagonists; just two sets of protagonists working at cross-purposes. Despite this, I do think "no villains" is a more accurate term for this; the antagonist is whatever acts against the characters. No antagonist, no story. That's not too important, though.

The trick is to make all the caracters likeable; set up the conflict from both points of view, not just from the perspective of the main characters. Make sure that everyone has a reasonable motive. Every side of a conflict has people with a good reason to support it; just show all the sides. Somewhat paradoxically, this kind of conflict seems to work best in light comedies and very dark dramatic works.

I find that great even for non-elitist literary works. Like with space operas or military sci-fi (I don't like labels but they do make it easy to give you a general idea of the types of stories I'm talking about), if they have straight up villains it just seems... childish. Even people who commit great evil are, from their perspective, believing they are doing the "right" thing. People who believe in dictatorships, people who believe that extreme violence is pragmatic and so on, really just the way they're portrayed affects the light they are shown in and they don't necessarily need to be a villain to have done villainous acts.

That's not what he's talking about. An Anti-Villain Big Bad is still an antagonist. As are Mooks Quirky Miniboss Squads, and all the associated villain character tropes.

Indeed.

Literary Fiction need not be elitist. Doesn't even need to stop being Genre Fiction. See Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Neal Stephenson, George RR Martin, JRR Tolkien, Charles Stross, and many, many others.

And as a matter of fact, there are people who engage in villainy for the sake of villainy, for the sake of fun... especially when they think they can get away with it. GIFT is one example. Bullying is another. If these types even bother to come up with justifications for their actions, expect them not to hold water under scrutiny. At best they're Knights Templar filled with Irrational Hatred, at worst they're simply sadistic narcissists.

edited 12th Jun '12 1:18:28 PM by TheHandle

I'm not talking about an anti-villain either. I have my own setting where my war has characters on both sides. But they may commit acts that look bad.

I wanted a backstory for a character who gets intel to ambush an incoming enemy fleet at a solar system at its FTL entry point, while hiding on the other side of the gas giant that the fleet was trying to hide behind. The ambush is a resounding success when the enemy ships are obliterated in a nuclear barrage. However, turns out the intel was wrong, those were merchant marine ships. She just obliterated 37 000 civilians.

And I would like to point out that while *we* appreciate the works named above, we're specifically not a group of literary elitists. Only LOTR broke the barrier for being a "fantasy" book by virtue of Tolkein just being super duper amazing.

While I know that there is a belief that people engage in bad stuff just for the heck of it, psychology and human behaviour is a bit quirky. In a fictional work, though, there's a certain demand for rhyme and reason even if it doesn't match real life.

edited 12th Jun '12 1:44:17 PM by breadloaf

Wow, this is really eye opening. I'd been starting to think there was somthing wrong with my work because there was no Big Bad, and my characters have no real enemies. (I mean there are a few genuinely bad people that show up, but if you get mugged and then never see the mugger again that doesen't really count as an "enemy". Right?)

My characters's are just a bunch of people trying to survive/cure a plague and rebuild some kind of life.

So I guess my lack of a villains may be a good thing

Antagonist literally means "that which acts against." It need not actually be a character.

Possible.

A sugar overloaded fair tale could qualify.

Not much appeal to anyone over the age of 10 though.

There are only so many perfect sunny days with clear blue skies and delicious picnics on a green field full of flowers that can be told before it gets old.

edited 13th Jun '12 12:44:31 AM by Natasel

I suppose that you mean a story in which there is nothing acting against the protagonist? I'm not sure that such a thing can exist. Even Teletubbies had some form of conflict. No active character-antagonist, on the other hand, is actually extremely common.

edited 13th Jun '12 12:43:26 AM by JHM

Well, I think I saw something like it in a commercial.

For a luxury resort.

Had the usual stuff in it. Tropical ocean, sandy white beaches, fruity drink, palm trees, hamock, the works.

Sound good?

You can have a story with "nothing acting against the protagonist", but then it's not so much a story as it is a description or a song or something...

A commercial is not a story (some commercials can tell a story, but those do have conflict).

So let me get this straight: a narration of a sequence of events, regardless of how meaningful or sensuously interesting they are, isn't a story unless there's some sort of struggle somewhere?

A narrative in general is defined by conflict, even if it is not immediately apparent.