After getting my antagonist’s physical description and personality down yesterday, I continued working on him today, fleshing out habits, his motivation, and the background that brought him to this point.
One of the keys was to give him a pressing fear that would drive him to atrocities, and I think I nailed that both as an external threat to him as well as an internal conflict. During that process, a possible patricide emerged, which would cement his personality and disposition to use force and violence to achieve his goals when his back is against the wall.
Several parallels with my hero also appeared and I think they make a good protagonist/antagonist pair. Plus, there is a reasonable explanation as to why my antagonist has all of the power at the outset.
It’s not often that I’m this pleased with my writing progress, but I like the way this is coming into focus.
While not directly related to today’s writing, yesterday I was listening to The Creative Penn on my commute and they talked about character change in series, with the point that a series character cannot overcome their flaw. Their flaw has to be tested, and they may change in some small way to overcome the problem thrown at them in that particular book, but they cannot see any true character growth until the series is ready to come to and end.
While that advice was intended for thriller series, etc., I found it very helpful for my epic fantasy series. One of the things that ruined my last project, making it too mopy and introspective, was my belief that I had to overcome a major character flaw or wound in each book of the series.