The Complex Antagonist: A Topic Workbook, #5

By Devon Ellington

This Topic Workbook will help you create exciting antagonists that truly challenge the protagonists in your work, creating interesting, exciting, complex characters. Learn how to create the antagonist's circle and develop the antagonist as a fully-developed individual, not an idea or a cipher. Combination of topics, exercises, and examples that you can re-visit with every story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DEW Books
• Release date: Jul 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201516581

Devon Ellington

Devon Ellington publishes under half a dozen names in fiction and nonfiction. She is also an internationally-produced playwright and radio writer. She has published six novels, dozens of short stories, and hundreds of articles under the various names. She spent over 25 years working backstage in theatre, including Broadway, and in film and television production. 

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Introduction

This Topic Workbook is similar to the companion handbook for the Amazing Antagonists Workshop I teach, both online and in-person throughout the world. The workshop is designed to help you create complex, interesting antagonists that are a good match for your protagonists. We discuss different variations of antagonists and learn how to craft them into unique individuals.

Stories with weak antagonists or antagonists who are cardboard cutouts of ideas rather than actual individuals are frustrating. They don’t work. If the antagonist isn’t a strong, interesting individual who is an actual threat to the protagonist, I feel cheated. I want there to be the possibility that the antagonist will win. That the protagonist will lose. That threat has to grow over the course of the story and make me believe.

The Try This exercises as the bottom of each topic are short ways to play with the ideas we discuss in the topics. Use them to explore a current WIP, or get fresh ideas for something new. In live, on-site classes, we usually spend about 10 minutes writing on each—but no one’s got a timer on, so do them at your own pace.

Limited word counts force you to focus on what’s most important and impactful in the scene, getting rid of extraneous words and tangents.

Enjoy!

Scenes, Beats, and Cadence

Those of you familiar with my other workshops and Topic Workbooks, especially on dialogue and scene-building, will recognize this topic.

Cadence is the way people talk, their individual musicality. Each person has a distinct speech rhythm based on environment, region, education, background, etc. Some people’s cadences are fluid and change depending on where they are, to whom they speak, and what they want.

Dialect is a sticky wicket in writing. Too little, and it’s confusing. Too much, and the reader can’t follow it. Eugene O’Neill was a brilliant playwright, but if you ever READ his one-act sea plays rather than watch them, it’s a slog because of the overuse of dialect. At the time, it was something new and different and an important breakthrough. Now, it loses the reader.

Think of it like seasoning in a recipe—a little goes a long way.

You can change a person’s cadence and indicate their region/environment/background by rearranging a few words and carefully choosing punctuation. For instance, when I was in Australia, often people use an upward inflection at the end of most sentences, so they sound like questions, even if they’re not. In certain areas of Britain, many statements end with a phrase that’s a question, such as dinna it? or innit? Some people in New York end everything with, ya know? or really? Some people overuse like when they talk to such an extent that it’s hard to find anything likable about them.

Again, even if that’s the way people talk is true, overuse in writing can give your reader a headache.

Scenes are