A Certain Antagonism

Heroes tend to have villains. And the more the villain is thematically or stylistically linked to the hero, the stronger the story is.

One classic trick is to have the villain be just like the hero, only evil. Whatever advantages the hero has, whatever makes him or her special – this villain has them too. Holmes has his Moriarty, someone smart enough to challenge even the great detective. The Doctor has the Master, another Time Lord with a TARDIS and a screwdriver of his own. The trick is older than the popular examples I’m using, of course. MacBeth has his MacDuff, after all.

And then there is the archenemy who goes the opposite route, literally. The Joker is the classic example, here. Everything Batman is not: colorful instead of somber, crazy and unpredictable instead of rational and methodical, and, of course, murderous.

Both these villain types serve a double function in the story. They not only provide a high level of challenge even to their competent protagonists, but they also serve as foils – characters that the illustrate something about the nature of the protagonists.

While I tend to favor adventure fiction, these techniques are hardly exclusive to genre. A romantic rival could just as easily tell us something by being everything the romance protagonist is not. In the classic French Harlequinade, Columbine’s rivals, Harlequin and Pierrot have been described as sunlight and moonlight, laughter and sorrow.

Being Contradictory

Any Doctor Who fans out there? I've observed, on more than one occasion, that The Doctor is the oldest, wisest, smartest, idiot child in the universe. Sometimes driven and serious, but just as often clownish and disrespectful. I love that. I've discovered that I am intrigued by characters that contain contradictions. Gentle killers, shy exhibitionists, civilized savages, whatever.

Characters that carry their own contradictions can be unpredictable. They can take a wider range of actions without being seen as acting out of character. We know what the brave hero does when faced with certain peril. But the coward who sometimes finds his courage? We know what we want him to do but we don't know what he will do. And that creates dramatic tension.

Contradictions may be inherent in the personality of the character, as with The Doctor, or they may be introduced as the characters grow and overcome (or fail to overcome) challenges. A shy, unnoticed, habitually quiet person may find the strength to stand up and take charge when no one else will. A stone-cold assassin my hesitate when a child enters the kill zone.

These movements are tricky and must be handled with care. The goal is to surprise the reader or audience with something unexpected but not totally unbelievable for the established character.

If the character is changed completely, if they don't go back to whoever they were before rising to their particular occasion, then no contradiction is expressed. Their experience is merely a life-changing event. But they can't go back completely, either. They must now carry the potential to contradict their established pattern and the reader or audience must see that potential at least occasionally. Otherwise whatever happened was just an aberration, a break in character that was convenient to the author.

I will not claim, as some might, that characters who are always brave, heroic, steadfast, and true inherently boring. Like all other types of characters, they just want to be written well. At best, such characters can represent what we aspire to be. But characters that have contradictory natures? Characters that can be heroes today and still fail tomorrow, or who can be brave and uncertain, all at once? I think such characters are closer to representing what we really are.