What makes a character an antagonist?

Here’s a quick and simple definition: An antagonist is usually a character who opposes the protagonist (or main character) of a story, but the antagonist can also be a group of characters, institution, or force against which the protagonist must contend.

What do you call a protagonist that is bad?

A protagonist just means the lead in a given work of fiction. An evil protagonist means that the lead is evil. If we use this definition of evil , then the evil protagonist is a villain.

Can an antagonist be society?

The antagonist is a force, entity or person that gets in the way of the character getting what he or she wants. Antagonists can be “bad guys” but they can also be natural disasters, an oppressive society or even the protagonist himself.

Should the antagonist be a hero or a villain?

If our protagonist is a hero, then the antagonist must be a villain. If our protagonist is an anti-hero, then the antagonist must be a moral antagonist. If our protagonist is at odds with the world, they must be suffocated by it; and so on and so forth. But to fully understand character conflict, we need to look at protagonists as well.

What is the role of the antagonist?

Like the protagonist, the antagonist can take many different forms. From the traditional villain working alone, to a group of people, a force of nature, or even an intrinsic conflict, the one uniting factor of all antagonists is that they challenge the protagonist in some way.

How do you explore antagonists in literature?

Perhaps a good way to explore antagonists is to examine their opposite: the protagonist. Here’s an example of how conflict is created and resolved with a protagonist and an antagonist. Things X and Z are opposite each other. Let’s plug in for those variables, working with The Lion King.

What is an antagonist in screenwriting?

The simplest explanation is that an antagonist represents the opposite of the protagonist. But there’s much more to the term than that. By understanding how antagonists are used in screenwriting, we’re better equipped to handle story conflict in our own scripts. What’s the Antagonist Meaning? What does antagonist mean?