On Writing: hero-villain relationships [ Batman Joker l Sherlock Moriarty l Doctor Master ]

hey superiors when talking about the relationship between the hero and their opponent I'm not referring to the romantic Adventures of the Joker and Batman that I'm sure a hidden in the deep dark fantasy and corners of the Internet no the rivalry between your protagonist and your antagonist is inherently one of the driving elements of your story but how does an author weave and develop that relationship into a good story that's what we'll be talking about today now it's one thing to design a great hero and give them a fascinating opponent but it's another to write a story where those two characters work well within the same narrative Susan from Terry Pratchett's hogfather is a fantastic hero and likewise father from Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood is a well-developed opponent but there's a reason that these two aren't placed within the same story neither the protagonist or the antagonist exist in a vacuum they exist in what we'll call a character with a web of people relating to one another Susan only makes for a great hero and father only makes for a great villain because of how they fit around the other people in their character whips even if the author isn't actively using this web to compare and contrast characters in their story readers certainly are we understand characters better by looking at the characters around them and very few relationships with in this way by usually more important than the rivalry between the protagonist and the antagonist it's through their struggle that the author can build dramatic tension develop themes and set up stakes for the story as it unfolds but let's break this down a lot of good hero opponent relationships can come down to what we'll call necessity that a great opponent is necessary for the hero it's not enough to just say and then they fought because plot to put it in the simplest way possible in John troubies book the anatomy of story he argues that the main opponent is the one person in the world best able to attack the great weakness of the hero this forces the hero to overcome his weakness or a destroys him the necessary opponent makes it possible for the hero to grow now this concept of necessity can manifest in a number of different ways throughout your story but like every recent rehash of the young adult dystopian novel we're going to be talking about it in a trilogy structurally ideologically and in similarity the first way to develop this rivalry is purely structural the protagonist and antagonist have to want the same thing this can be more explicit like in the Lord of the Rings where the site of good and evil are battling for control of middle-earth for it can be more abstract like in Batman The Dark Knight in that story it may appear that Batman is fighting for order and the joke of chaos but and it's hard the story is more nuanced than that you didn't think I'd risk losing the battle for Gotham saw in a fistfight with you they're both fighting for the soul of Gotham in writing a story characters can be written to be passive or active active characters are the ones who choose to change the direction of the story passive characters are the ones who react to the direction of the story throughout the Dark Knight Batman and the Joker both have to react and plan against one another as they Duke it out both are active players and building their rivalry having your heroes and opponents want the same thing immediately establishes the stakes early on that by the end only one side will stand by making both the protagonist and the antagonist active rather than passive characters in the story it creates a tense back-and-forth meaning the winner hero loses control in the story the stakes feel much higher for the reader when structuring their rivalry it's important to think about the necessary opponent moment this is the scene where you as the author demonstrate that the necessary opponent is the best person to attack your hero and not only does the author need the reader to understand this but the hero needs to understand this as well though it can come across as weak if it's just some pithy throwaway line like we see in some cartoons by don't leave my support character this man is the greatest threat we have ever faced just like last week's episode there needs to be a definitive moment in the rivalry where the necessary opponent harms the hero in a way that no other person has before or perhaps even could only in the lost pain and consequences of this moment can the author truly articulate what sets this rival apart as the necessary opponent like for me my necessary opponent would take my beautiful cat from me our supreme leader Mishka or at least they'll die trying there's an interesting example of this in Doctor Who in the episode the last of the Timelords the doctor defeats the master and takes on captive but the mask to get shot time lords like the master and the doctor can regenerate essentially meaning they can come back to life but the master stops himself from doing that in the scene you're not dying de mysteriis only a bullet just regenerate I guess you don't know me so well please please just regenerate come on the doctor was desperately clinging to the idea that he was no longer the last of his species and the master was the only person in the universe who could take it from him and he did it was a really wonderful heartbreaking scene where you tear up over the loss of the villain but there are a couple of interesting ways that you can use the necessary opponent moment in your story in the Legend of Korra season one it was only at the end of the story that I'm on devastated Korra in a way that nobody else ever could have by taking away the one thing that she had defined herself by for much of her life her bending abilities by placing the necessary opponent moment near the end of the story a writer can build the dramatic tension around whether or not that moment will happen for the hero alternatively placing an area that beginning of the story immediately confronts the hero with the threat of their rival and demands a darker tone for the remainder of the story whether at the beginning or the end what's important to note is that to turn a villain into a necessary opponent this moment must happen on a side note it can be interesting to have the reader understand the threat of the hero faces but not the hero until much later and placing the necessary opponent moment near the end of the story can make for a powerful scene of dramatic irony this is particularly common in stories where either the hero underestimates the villain or doesn't know who the villain is until this moment when building a rivalry it's usually more interesting when their conflict isn't just physical but ideological giving a character a unique set of beliefs and values helps characterization but as CID characters exist in a way but not in a vacuum while your hero might be a devout vegan moment in your opponent a separatist of the king communists unless these two ideologies come into conflict during the story they add little to the narrative my favorite example of this is in The Dark Knight Returns it's what the Batman V Superman movie was largely based on but they really failed to capture the themes I recommend you go check out the comic or watch the animated movie it's pretty accurate the rivalry that evolves between Batman and Superman isn't just the to physically battling it out for the sake of Gotham as an amazing fight as it is broadly speaking it's an ideological battle between the individualist Batman Act as own morals and the collectivist supermen acting on behalf of the government to tie this in with our previous point if your hero and their opponent are both after the same thing their ideological differences may contrast two different approaches to the same problem by making the protagonist antagonist rivalry ideological the antagonist is better equipped to challenge the hero in a far more personal way not only does it integrate the main dramatic three to a theme but it more easily allows for character development by forcing both the protagonist and the antagonist to examine their motivations and values which values do they stick to which do they Bend and where do they break the standard formula for this kind of stories that are culminates with the opponent's to feed and only the hero realizing something about themselves but in reality it's very rare that one side has it all right and the others are just pure evil unless it's your sibling then you're always right or if you prefer cookies / muffins then you're objectively wrong one way to distinguish your story from this common pattern is with something called a double reversal where both the antagonist and the protagonists have a realization at the end in the Doctor Who episode the waters of Mars the doctor realizes at the end that he has become too controlling and gone too far a nettle a brook while she has more of an opponent's than an antagonist at the end realizes she can't go changing time like she originally intended the viewer comes to understand the moral version of the story through the actions of both characters not just the protagonist a double reversal not only humanizes the antagonist by giving them a character arc but it gives the ideological rivalry between the two a more nuanced resolution however this doesn't mean that your antagonist has to wonder are we the baddie it's just as interesting to have them evolve but not switch sides or allegiances this is of course next to impossible if your opponent has never given a chance to do anything but eat puppies and consume the souls of orphans as any good Dark Lord's menu would have in Stephen King's magnum opus The Dark Tower series the Crimson King lays claim to such titles as the Lord of discordia Satan and the Antichrist it would be a little bit unusual for him to suddenly turn around and say by golly maybe I shouldn't destroy worlds of course if you write your story to have this kind of villain that's perfectly fine there are plenty of stories that work with this of character a third way to built an interesting rivalry is with similarity between your protagonist and your antagonist though this point is often misunderstood as we talked about before characters don't exist in a vacuum but a whip because of this readers come to better understand your characters by comparing and contrasting them to other characters in your story or where two characters are specifically sits in a contrast that highlights the differences between them this is called a character Foyle and it's about the oldest trope and the literary books I mean this is everywhere for example Sherlock's tendency to be rude or condescending highlights Watson social skills while Watson's more methodical approach to problems highlights Sherlock's impulsiveness more often than not a good rivalry will naturally evolve when the antagonist is the character foil for the protagonist and vice-versa however this contrast between the two will be weak unless you also have strong similarities to make them stand out to the reader one way is to give them similar abilities in own cultures Artemis Fowl both Artemis and opal are tech geniuses smart enough to manipulate those around them to their own ends but the similarities here highlight their differences in values and how Artemis Fowl has grown as a person since the first book another way to make them similar is through their personality or beliefs in arrow Malcolm Merlyn and Oliver Queen are both utilitarian vigilantes with trouble building meaningful relationships and a strong sense of Independence and like many of our favourite heroes and love for somewhat impractical weaponry Oliver Queen changes over the course of the series but it's only through his rivalry with Merlyn that he is forced to do so making him the perfect foil finally authors often opt to give their heroes and their opponents similar backstories in Harry Potter both Harry and Voldemort or finesse raised by muggles felt they didn't belong and thought Hogwarts is home more than anywhere else and these similarities also highlight a key difference while they both started off feeling unloved when Harry went to Hogwarts he soon learned the power of friendship something that would change the course of the Wizarding war the necessary antagonist says the one best equipped to attack your protagonist not only do similarities allow the opponent to better understand and predict and thereby undermine the hero but it narrows the dramatic focus in their rivalry to a limited number of differences that the Raider can become more invested in now there's been a tendency in recent times to take this to an extreme to make the hero and the villain alike in virtually every way possible except what's required to make one a hero and the other a villain and this can work well there's something uniquely satisfying about the rivalry and BBC's Sherlock between Sherlock Holmes and Jim Moriarty they dress the same the actors look similar they have similar eccentric personalities one calls themselves the consulting detective while the other the consulting criminal and the show is just rife with scenes that parallel the two of them and the symmetry reads well and looks great because who doesn't love literary symmetry I know I do maybe a little bit too much there's a reason the comic books tend to do this all the time despite this a high degree of symmetry is not required to design either a necessary opponent or build their rivalry it can make it more interesting but focusing too much on similarity often leads to stale or simplistic villains that aren't allowed much characterization outside what has already been seen in the hero because the reader tends to understand the protagonist well it makes it more difficult to make the antagonist in any way mysterious in using this paradigm it's important to be careful of miss fitting moments in the story where the protagonist and the antagonist are going at it and the antagonist will say we're not so different you and I just to unnerve the hero and the hero will go even though this isn't even remotely true but it just feels like it is because they might have some similar backstory or abilities these scenes can come across as weak if they're not done well instead allowing the hero to grapple with their limits both morally and psychologically throughout the stories so that they question how similar they are to their enemy will make the moment when their opponent says we're not so different far more damaging and persuasive alternatively subverting this in any number of ways can make for a great twist on this trope in Sherlock this even amount where Sherlock explicitly says Ian Moriarty begins to realize here the hero instead is trying to throw the villain off by taunting them with that and it's a fantastic moment on the opposite side of the scale of similarity given the opponent a completely different set of abilities can also be interesting Batman is a genius planner and martial artist while the Joker is impossible to predict and relies on conniving and subterfuge to combat his enemies The Joker using such drastically different strategies makes him a unique challenge for Batman he has to fight on a battlefield that he's not as equipped to enter pitting your protagonist against an antagonist with radically different abilities creates a unique opportunity for your protagonists to change their usual tactics no longer work and the new strategy needed to stop them may require either a change in morality or Allegiance so how might we write a hero opponent rivalry firstly a well-written rivalry pits the hero against their necessary opponent having them both after the same goal helps change them into active characters rather than passive ones secondly an opponent only becomes necessary when they harm the hero in a way that no other character has before and there are a number of creative ways to take this thirdly by making their rivalry ideological it integrates their struggle with both theme and the character development of both the protagonist and the antagonist fourthly making the opponent of the foil for the hero can narrow the dramatic focus of the narrative but this can lead to cliche moments and there are other unique ways to approach developing your antagonist one final point we've talked a lot about necessary opponents as the one person in the world best able to attack your hero but that doesn't mean that your hero can only ever have one necessary opponent characters change and evolve they overcome weaknesses and develop new ones depending on where the character is at the necessary opponent may change but it's also totally understandable that as writers we want to have that one person who can challenge them like nobody else ever could and this still acts as a guide for developing those sorts of antagonists but that's all for me a meta thank you to the supporters of myself and supreme leader michiga over on patreon you guys really do mean the world to me and if you'd like to support me and Supreme Leader Mishka all hail Mishka then patreon it's definitely the way to do that 11 more direct line of communication with me and other perks as well my question for today is who are your hero and your villain what's their rivalry like let me know down in the comments below and let me time I know if you can follow me on Facebook or Twitter or email my stuff you may address the links in the description below stay nice of URIs and we will see you in the future

Channel: Hello Future Me

Views: 229,632

Rating: 4.9713087 out of 5

Keywords: HFM, httyd, avatar, legend of korra, legend of aang, the last airbender, atla, hero, villain, antagonist, writing advice, how to, rivalry, tension, climax, joker, batman, the dark knight, superman v batman, the dark knight returns, doctor who, the master, the doctor, waters of mars, sherlock, moriarty, the reichenbach fall, literary symmetry, amon, kuvira, zaheer, korra, the lord of the rings, the return of the king, the two towers, fellowship, two face, hogfather, stephen king, the dark tower

Id: jkyANruLXZI

Length: 15min 9sec (909 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 24 2018