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antagonists

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Advanced Wordsmith
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Hello everyone,
I was just wondering if anyone has ever thought to write a story from the antagonists point of view instead of the protagonists point of view. As every book I have read has been from the protagonists point of view and I think it would be a good idea to have a story from the antagonists point of view to see what they are thinking as they go through cause trouble.
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I have, I just never got around to it, then again my protagonists are not squeeky clean either.
Lurker
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Ah yes, I don't have it posted on here but I have a story called Unbelievable World, were the antagonists is the one leading the story. Of course it is quiet breathe taking by learning how and why he does the things he do. Very fine line of work but still needs a lot of editing until I ever post it for the public eye.
Advanced Wordsmith
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I think it would be cool because we get to see what happens from the bad guys point of view and what they were thinking when causing the trouble.
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Actually I did that the first three chapters of this book I wrote with a friend of mine. It was interesting seeing the bad guy before the protagonists knew he was the bad guy.
Lurker
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I agree, Nekala. In this form of work, you can build better feeling for the antagonist. Good or bad.

Just a lovely twist in its purist form.
Active Ink Slinger
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I think if you're going to write an antagonist and feature their perspective of things try to make them as human as possible, perhaps more so than your protagonists/heroes. Do a nice script flip and make it seem liek the 'heroes' are the villains to him/her as they stand in the way of his/her ambitions smile
Advanced Wordsmith
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That is the sort of thing that I was thinking of Starfall, seeing things from the antagonist's point of view so that we can see what the think of the protagonists and what they are thinking what they think while they are doing there evil and if they know it is bad or if they think it will help people
Active Ink Slinger
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I think there is a fundamental problem with the line of thought that is being followed. A protagonist is by definition the primary character of the story. Many of the posts here seem to be misintrepiding protagonist/antagonist as good/bad. That is not true. Justine (Entangled Fate) understood this. I am not sure it is even possible to write a story like discussed here. Even if you wrote using second person prospective; the second person view, by definition, can not be the antagonist because they are the main character. It seems this whole thread is actually about is a story where the protagonist is evil, or the bad guy. This is not uncommon at all and, as mentioned by Jake (Starfallfantasy), is a great way to humanize the 'villain.' I think it is important when writing from this point of view to consider that the 'bad guy' usually does not think they are bad. Darth Vader believed he was doing the right thing throughout most of his life and it was not until his death that he realized his mistake. I may be wrong, but this seems like nothing more than a mistake in terminology than anything else. I know that Rebs (Rebellious Soul) has written using a main character that could easily be considered less than heroic and more nefarious, but that does not constitute that the main character is the antagonist; they are still the protagonist. The characters opposing them, good or evil, are the antagonists.
You can't get there from here, because when you get there you're still here and here is now there.
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I think a few of my stories or poems fit into this category. I can't think of any offhand, and I'm a bit too tired to sift through them at the moment, but feel free to have a look yourself. It's interesting writing from the villain's point of view, if a little disturbing.
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Divine Rapscallion
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Nekala, you're talking about an antagonistic protagonist, or anti-hero. It's really difficult to pull off, but there are a few examples. Most notable is Patrick Bateman, the main character of "American Psycho" by Bret Easton Ellis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Bateman
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Advanced Wordsmith
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Sorry Roland that is what I meant. As Maggie says an antagonistic protagonist.
Active Ink Slinger
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Quote by nekala20
Sorry Roland that is what I meant. As Maggie says an antagonistic protagonist.


Michael Moorcock wrote a series of stories based on the champion eternal where many of the main characters where evil. For and American classic, The original Batman comics and stories portrayed him as a complete vigilante. He killed the villains and if law enforcement got in the way he killed them too. He felt that torture, blackmail and even kidnapping innocent people including children were acceptable tools in his battle to stop the bad guys. He truly was the Dark Knight.
You can't get there from here, because when you get there you're still here and here is now there.
Advanced Wordsmith
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Okay, I didn't know that. I have never been a batman person. I also haven't seen any books with an Antagonistic protagonist.
Active Ink Slinger
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Yeah many stories do feature the protagonists as heroes or heroic characters rather than villainous. Which is completely understandable since we're all the heroes of our own stories (and such tend to write our lead characters as such). And other times the antagonist is something as simple as a shark (in the case of Jaw's) it was an Antagonist by all means but it wasn't evil it was simply looking for it's next meal and it found it, (in the form of tasty tasty humans :3).

Anyways the point being is that an Antagonist can be just about anything that is an opposing force to your Protagonists. As Roland said in the case of the Batman the Antagonist in there were not just the criminals he pursued but also the police trying to stop him or maybe even other heroes (like Superman vs batman biggrin).
Lurker
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I recently published a story here called 'The Day I Shot the Devil' which is told from the protagonist's point of view. Whether he is evil, an anti-hero or what is open to question...