starseed

I don't have one in my story. I was just wondering because there doesn't seem to always be one. There is always some sort of issue to overcome, but not always a person. Maybe I'm confused about what an antagonist is?

lin

You don't have to have one. Nor do you need a protagonist. My advice is forget these words completely. They can't help you write and will only, if you let them, fuck up your head.

As you see.

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starseed

Thanks. I do have a main character. The "problem" to be overcome in this story is a problem he overcomes within himself with the help of the other characters. Thanks for your reply, those words are now forgotten.

lin

Sounds good. The idea of gathering friends to help is an ancient one that often gets brushed aside by all the antag/protag or Hero's Journey bullshit. The guy on a quest who gathers a collection of friends, often with unique characteristics, by kindness and ends up needing the unique talents of each one to accomplish his task is seen in all those "Prince with a problem" Grimm tales, Momotaro, Munchausen flick by Gilliam, Wizard of Oz, on and on.

It's also possible to have a group of people equally sharing the "main character" status. (Big Chill, "Friends" and many, many sitcoms, lots of YA "our gang" stories, etc.)

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starseed

It's sort of "friends" like I suppose.
Basically, it's just a simple little story about a very bored young man with a lot of potential who is stuck in a rut and decides to just randomly leave his mundane little life behind to go travel and work on an organic farm. He meets friends who make him realize all there is to life that he had never seen in the isolated little world of his small hometown. He also falls in love and gets really inspired to do the things he never knew he always wanted to do (travel, write, etc).

I think there are a lot of amazing, epic and dramatic stories out there, but I wanted to create something that was very enjoyable, and has a lot of heart while still being a simple and realistic story that a lot of people may be able to relate to. I think we have all had the experiences of being stuck in a rut and what it's like to climb out if it with the help of new friends and new experiences.

It's not a dramatic, good verses evil, fight to the death thing. Just real people, living, growing, loving. Sounds cheesy but it's the type of story I would love to read, and I hadn't read one like that in awhile, so I wrote one.

tucanbundy

I don't have any antagonists.I have villains, but no antagonists.

qwertyman

Antagonists are not essential but conflict is. The conflict doesn't have to be on an epic scale it can be very personal.
It could be hunger or illness.

It has to be threatening to a degree that it motivates the character into responding.

It's unfair of me to say so just on the few words above, but I worry that it might be a bit too comfortable.

Good luck with it anyway.

lin

NOT TRUE.

A kid wants to be a circus star or rock guitarist. Not easy. But nothing there is threatening.

This is one of the mind-traps you fall into when you get too involved with these critical analyses and second hand information about writing.

Actually, it's quite possible to have books without conflict. It's CERTAINLY possible to have books without "threat". Like most of the "literary" books, for instance.

Most people in the world are not motivated by threat, but by will to become or desire or some such.

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qwertyman

A kid wants to become a rock star - he becomes a rock star.
Sorry, that is not a story and about as interesting as a man standing on an escalator.

Kid wants to become a rock star but is prevented by illness/poverty/evil uncle/whatever conflict you can dream up- which he either overcomes or doesn't = story.

I think you over stating the use of the word 'threat' as I intended it. Threat is not holding a knife to the throat. It's whatever obstacle that is threatening the character in achieving his goal. It could be that he's left-handed - as benign as that.

OK Lin, I'll buy it.... WOT BOOKS FOR INSTANCE?

starseed

There is a lot of internal conflict. My main character lost his mother pretty brutally (painful and slow death from lung cancer when he was fifteen) and he has spent the last ten years of his life trying to come to terms with it. Everything he experiances in the story sort of helps with that. It's hard to explain, but to explain it in a short way, his mother and himself had a lot in common where his dad was sort of his opposite, and they clashed on everything. So after she died he was left feeling more alone because his dad never helped him with it much. His friends he meets are sort of more like him and help him in a lot of ways. There is also conflict within the story, for instance, does he stay with the girl he meets and has grown to love, or does he let her go in pursuit of seeing the rest of the world?

HippoHead

an antagonist doesn't have to be a person. It can be the rut he's in at the moment. That's an antagonist - an obstacle.

If there's nothing but good times, then be prepared to have the majority of your target audience made up of old people.

HippoHead

IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?!

qwertyman

OK Starseed - sounds good, sounds as though you need to write it.

Good luck.

lin

Get real, okay?

Nobody is suggesting anything as stupid as that. What I am saying is there is no need for an antagonist or "threat".
As noticed in SO many books and films.

You don't need an "antagonist". (But if you did, it would be an entity, not a mountain or something. That's what it means. Sorry)

You don't need "threat".

You don't even really need conflict, though that's rare.

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evadri

There was a story I wanted to write about three friends having the best year of their lives. Soon after I began working on it, I realised that no one other than me would want to read it, because the characters were all too happy and comfortable!

So I deepened the characters a bit, and conflicts for the plot arose from that. There is no antagonist as such. I have three protagonists, and most of the conflict is internal - mainly about their place in the world, why they are here, should they be here etc. But as the three lives collide and coinside, at different times one or other of the three becomes an 'antagonist' in the lives of the others. They share the title, depending on the circumstances.

So the story changed from being 'the best year of our lives' to 'the most important year of our lives'.

From this writing experience, I don't think there has to be an antagonist. But I do believe that, in the type of story you seem to be writing, there needs to be internal conflict measured by a certain amount of external difficulty. (For example, if he's working on an organic farm, he's going to run into problems because he's never worked on an organic farm before and doesn't know how to do it. And these problems might spike his internal issues, right?)

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