What Makes An Antagonist Effective?

A teacher sent in a sequence of questions they had developed.

  1. Who is the primary antagonist in your novel?
  2. What makes this antagonist effective?
  3. How does the antagonist cause problems for the protagonist/other characters?
  4. What antagonist from another story, movie, or game is similar?
  5. If you could give the protagonist one gift to help him or her overcome the antagonist, what would it be?

Not bad! There’s definitely a movement from low-level to high-level questions.

What I’d Change

It’s really fun to take an already good sequence, tweak it, and get something even better! Here are some small changes that popped out to me:

  • I’d want to triple check that students know what it means for an antagonist to “be effective.” In fact, that might be my first question: “What makes an antagonist effective?”
  • Then, instead of “What makes this antagonist effective?”, I’ll ask “What would make this antagonist more effective?” A minuscule change that really opens the question up.
  • “What antagonist from another story, movie, or game is similar?” This question naturally sets up an evaluate question like ,“Which of these two antagonists is more effective?”
  • And then that sets up the question, “If you switched the stories’ antagonists, who would be more effective in their new story?”

Basically, as I look at the sequence, I want to make sure each step is focused on one idea. I went with the idea of the “effectiveness of an antagonist.”

My Final Sequence

Here’s what I might go with:

  1. What makes an antagonist effective?
  2. What would make the antagonist in your story more effective?
  3. What antagonist from another story is similar to the one in this story?
  4. Which of these two antagonists is the more effective antagonist?
  5. If you switched the stories’ antagonists, who would be more effective in their new story?
  6. Rewrite the ending of your story using the new antagonist. Show how this would affect the story’s climax.

Notice how that last task can expand and expand. Illustrate the story. Make a video advertisement. Print it out and bind the book. You won’t have the, “I finished, what do I do now?” problem (and I wrote more about those early finishers here)