Is Your Antagonist Also Your Influence Character?

The Antagonist and the Influence Character do two different things, but both of those jobs can be given to the same person in your story.

The Antagonist fights against the Protagonist over the goal; The Influence Character fights against the Main Character’s morals or philosophy.

When the Antagonist and Influence Character jobs are done by the same person, the story tends toward melodrama because both the plot and message are anchored in the same place, muddying the waters so that it is hard for your readers/audience to follow the plot and/or understand your message.

Similarly, the Protagonist and Main Character have two different jobs.  The Protagonist tries to achieve the goal and the Main Character tries to solve the moral or philosophical issue that is causing them disquiet, angst,  or difficulties with others.

Full-on melodrama occurs when the Protagonist is also the Main Character AND the Antagonist is also the Influence Character.  Then, both the plot line and the message line are completely on top of each other, and the points you are trying to make are all mixed up with each other, losing the details and creating a much more “primary color” story than one of depth and shading.

Most often, those two parallel story lines, the plot line and the message line, are pried apart at one end to separate them, creating a Dramatica Triangle.  So, the Antagonist is one person and the Influence Character is another.  But, the Protagonist and Main Character jobs are still done by the same person.  This creates the typical Hero at the anchor point who is trying to defeat the Protagonist in the plot and also prevail against the Influence Characters in the message.

In Dramatic Triangle stories, the Antagonist is often the Bad Guy or Villain, and the Influence Character is often the Love Interest, or someone the Hero loves, as in a child or someone he wishes to protect.  The Antagonist tries to stop the Hero and the Influence Character tries to argue for, or represents value standards in conflict with the Hero.

In the end, the Hero must choose to stick with his values  or adopt those of the Influence Character, and how the Hero chooses (often in a leap of faith) determines whether the goal will be achieved or not.

And to make matters even more dramatically tense, you can have the Antagonist put the Influence Character in danger and arrange a dilemma for the Hero so that he can only save his Love Interest if he violates the Love Interest’s value standards, thereby losing their love, or he can hold to the Influence Character’s value standards and lose the one he loves.  The message is, which is the right choice?  And the proof often comes with a surprise boon of success if the Hero chooses properly, or with a surprise failure or cost if the Her chooses improperly.

Famous Influence Characters are the ghosts in A Christmas Carol, Obi Wan Kenobi In the original Star Wars movie, and Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, who pressures Clarice Starling to let go of her angst and ultimately asks her over the phone, “Tell me , Clarice… Are the lambs still screaming?”  Clarice, the Hero, chooses not to give up her angst and still suffers for it into the future.  But, on the plus side, it is that angst that drives her, which helps her solve crimes and protect others, so it is a good choice for her good works, but a horrible choice for her own peace of mind.

Finally, sometimes the plot and message lines are completely split, as in To Kill A Mockingbird.  In this story, the Protagonist is Atticus, the lawyer in a small southern town in the 1930s trying to get a fair trial for a black man accused of raping a white girl.  The Antagonist is the girl’s father, who wants the man lynched.

But the Main Character is Scout, Atticus’ daughter, and the Influence Character is Boo Radley who she has always presumed to be a dangerous child-killer, buying into the town rumors.  Turns out Boo is simple-minded but good hearted and has been protecting Scout all along.

When the father of the girl tries to endanger Scout, Boo stops it and saves her.  And scout comes to realize that she was wrongly basing her feelings about Boo on hearsay.

This makes the story’s message point.  That any of us, even a child, can buy into prejudice, and it doesn’t have to fall along race lines.

So, in this case, it was important to separate the plot line to run in parallel to the message line, rather than anchoring them together in a Dramatic Triangle, in order for the point to be made.

NOTE: This has been an excerpt from my upcoming book on characters. You can read samples of all my published books on my author page on Amazon.

Developing Your Characters’ Points of View

Here’s another excerpt from my upcoming book, Some Thoughts About Characters.

Developing Your Characters’ Points of View

Although you may have a clear plot that you have created from the position of author, it is going to look quite different to each of your characters, depending on their particular situation and tempered by where they are coming from and how they see the world in general.

Now your characters aren’t going to be thinking about the plot the way you do. They can’t even see that there is a plot. Rather, they see their situation and have attitudes and feelings about it – some modest and some passionate.

They do their best to understand what’s going on, where things are headed, what their options are, and what they might try to do to bend things more in a favorable direction for themselves and/or those they care about.

Your story will become much more involving if you can convey all your characters’ different perspectives, including information about why they feel that way, what they want, what they don’t want, and even how they feel about each other.

This information can be doled out over the course of your story – a little bit each chapter or act. In this way, an air of mystery envelopes each character and your readers or audience are drawn eagerly forward to learn more about these people that they are becoming attached to.

To begin this process, review what you have developed about your characters and your plot. Now stand the shoes of each of them in turn and write a first person description of how they see themselves and their situation, perhaps telling us about their hopes and dreams, but most of all, let them tell you about their place in the story and what it looks like to them, in their own words and through their own voice, mannerisms, and attitudes.

Here’s a couple of examples from a sample story of mine – a comedy about 105 year old man who was just elected sheriff in an old western town besieged by a gang of cutthroats:

James Vestibule – The New Sheriff

You’d think at 105 I’d be entitled to some peace. But NO! I was born in 1765 when there was no US of A and served in the Revolutionary War. Fought in the War Of 1812 too, and met my good friend Francis Scott Key. In fact, it feels like it was one war on the heels of another. First as a soldier, then as an instructor, and finally as an informal adviser in the war between the states. Too much experience for them to let me be, I suppose.

I had always reveled in the patriotism and glory, but this last conflict left me sour – brother against brother – father against son against grandson (oh, my dear beloved Jonathan). And I think it was that – the loss of Jonathan – that tore me and my wife Armoire asunder. My son, Jacob, had sided with the Rebels, and he was a hard man, even cruel at times. His son Jonathan joined up with the Union. One day Johnathan came home on leave to visit us on our family farm in Kentucky, not knowing Jacob was already there. Jacob just saw the uniform and shot him dead. Once he saw it was his son, he turned the gun on himself and we lost both of them that day.

Armoire and I were cut with such grief we couldn’t even talk, and in short order we divorced. I left her to go out west and try to find some peace in my remaining years. But no sooner do I get here but they thrust a badge at me for the honorary position of sheriff (due to my military experience) and now I have to attend meetings, sit in that rat hole of an office from time to time, and coddle the drunks, cheats, and ne’er-do-wells. Fine life. Honestly, I was still dreaming of that ranch Armoire and I had always wanted, but under the circumstances, I guess that really is just a dream…

NOTES: Okay – this has clearly taken a more dramatic turn than I intended in a comedy. Can I use it? Don’t know yet. Sometimes a good dramatic foundation can enrich a comic character by giving it more depth than simple superficial laughs. You can be sardonic, cerebral, philosophic, and ironic. And in the end, you can make their dreams come true, adding a feel-good experience and a sense of relief to what would just have been a simple comedy if the dramatic depth had not been plumbed.

One thing is sure. This character inspires me.

Let’s try the same thing with a really minor character in my story and see what happens:

Nancy Lacy – Blacksmith

They made fun of me as a child. Mancy Nancy they called me on account of my size. And then I’d bash ’em in the face and they wouldn’t call me that no more. But truth be told, there’s a big difference between how you look and how you feel. You think I dreamed of a life as a blacksmith? Well, you’d be right. I did. I just love bending metal to my will. I love bending anything to my will. But don’t let that fool ya… I only do that to make my life genteel. I have iron daisies over my mantle, just above the 12-gauge.

I pretty much keep to myself, aside from clients – ‘cept for that new sheriff. He’s just so sweet. He sees beyond my looks and can tell that beneath it all, I have a heart of steel.

NOTES – Okay, a potentially comic character here. She needs more development and I can probably write some good material standing in her shoes. But, she doesn’t strike me as having the potential to be a major character at all. Nonetheless, I can see calling on her in the plot from time to time, and even perhaps a touching comic scene when she quenches a blade with her tears.

And that is why this exercise of having each character write about their situation in your story in their own words in first person is so important.

The whole point is to get to know how your characters see themselves, their lives, their role in the story and even how they see each other. Your story will be the richer for it.

You can read samples of all my published books on my Author Page on Amazon here:

https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0744CGDLV

What I Know About Narrative | Part 1

Here’s the opening salvo in a new book I’m writing called What I Know About Narrative.

Preface

For almost thirty years I’ve wanted to write the definitive book on narrative. This isn’t it.

Though I co-created the Dramatica Theory of Story with my partner Chris Huntley, which was hailed as rather revolutionary (and I don’t mind saying so myself), after that herculean three-year effort concluding in a text-book style documentation of the theory and interactive software that employs the theory to predict perfect structure, I have become so burned out on single-purpose processes that I no longer have the discipline to do a proper job of it.

Still, I am in possession of Great Secrets of Narrative – what it is, where it came from, how it works, and how to use it both in the creation and analysis of fiction, and also as applied to personal interactions and social movements in the real world, from whence it originated.

Therefore, I have abandoned my previous desire to carve a little niche in history with some dry technical tome, and you are stuck with this instead.  Good luck.

NOTE: New sections of this book will be posted here as I write them. You can browse all of my fiction and nonfiction works on my author page on Amazon.

Monolith | Yosemite Valley, California

The story behind the picture:

Though this is far from my best work, I’ve always had a soft spot the image, and even more for what it represents.  This is a single, solid block of granite on the way to the Mist Trail that winds up from the Yosemite Valley Floor to Vernal Falls and then Nevada Falls beyond that, eventually to connect to the John Muir Trail.

This was the first backpacking trip to Yosemite for Teresa and me. I’d previously stayed there with my parents for a few days, and  later brought my kids there the same way.  But though I had a love of the outdoors and had hiked and camped in scouting, including one twenty mile hike with a sleepover in the woods under the stars, I’d never actually backpacked and neither had Teresa.

I had taken Teresa on her first ever to Yosemite, just the year prior, as I recall.  She had always avoided going there because so many of her friends had told her how spectacular it was that she didn’t want to see the reality of it and be disappointed.  But, she went with me, and as we came out of the tunnel that reveals that classic view of the valley topped by Half Dome, she cried because it was all real and more wonderful even than she had been told.

So, shortly thereafter, we began to plan our first excursion into the Yosemite backcountry for three or four days, and our route began with a climb up the Mist Trail, a visit the last porta-potty before entering the wilderness (the out house had solar lighting, strangely), and then we left civilization truly behind for the first time in our lives.

This picture represents to me that moment of the first taste of freedom and real independence, just us and nature and whatever gear and supplies we carried on our backs.

Compositionally, this isn’t much, but I am taken with the sense of size and upward thrust, partly due to the shape of this massive stone and amplified by the tilt of the pine trees, all reaching up to a point in the sky above the material plane.  I like the color contrast as well, the rich blues and vivid greens against the slate grey monolith.

What to me is most surprising is that this image was taken on a second generation digital camera with 800×600 resolution.  Later you’ll see some really remarkable shots taken with all kinds of cheesy cameras.  Sometimes camera flaws and limitations can be used to artistic effect.

NOTE: This image and commentary are part of a new book I’m compiling of my best images that have stories attached.

You can find my existing published books of photographs, as well as my fiction an nonfiction on my author’s page on Amazon.

Winter Sun

Winter Sun | Pine Mountain Club, California

While living in Pine Mountain Club in the early 2000s, I was driving home from the dump (which had the best view in the valley) and spied this interesting scene of a chilled tree on a frozen landscape desperately reaching up toward a distant sun.