The Journey to Writing a Successful Story: a tip book

Do All Stories Need An Antagonist? + More

Yes and no.

The main definition of what the antagonist does is that they're the bad guy or the person that tries to make the protagonist look bad for conflict - like they don't agree, etc.

Every story needs conflict somehow and probably needs someone to be in the way of the protagonist's goal for the main character to struggle. That's basically the main idea for any story.

But not every story does need a full on antagonist - like someone to be willing enough to keep destroying the character's life.

I had just watched the movie Toy Story the other day and for an example, I'll use that. When Woody first found out that Andy got Buzz for a present, your main antagonist was Woody because he didn't want Buzz and because of how horrible he treated Buzz, it seemed as if he was the bad guy. For example, he accidentally knocked Buzz out of the window and everyone thought he did it on purpose because he was jealous of Buzz. However, the viewer knows that Woody is a good guy and is trying to make things right, even though he made mistakes. So he's not exactly a full on antagonist, especially since the rest of the movie as well as the trilogy showed how Buzz became one of his best friends. But who was the true antagonist in the first movie? Sid.

Sid was the true antagonist because once he found out that Buzz was taken by Sid, he went to go save him which then resulted in finding out how crazy the child was. He destroyed his sister's toys and blew up others. The toys, even though scary, were afraid of Sid, but in the end, they helped Buzz and Woody go back home.

From research, it seems that the only actual way a book is written without an antagonist is either if A) it's a non-fictional work or B) the main issue is on natural issues. For example, a book about cancer. I remember watching the movie Letters to God and there was no antagonist because it was just mainly about the mail man who was having issues of his own, getting letters from a kid who had cancer who was writing to God. In the end, obviously, the kid dies and the mail man as well as the kid's friend, are inspired by him.

Another question that some people ask is if the main character (narrator, person telling the story) can be an antagonist? The answer is yes. Anyone in the book can be the person telling the story from how they see it or how it is seen through their eyes (in a way, I guess?)

Think of the movies Sleeping Beauty and Maleficent. In the movie, it shows Maleficent being the antagonist, the bad guy. It shows how she was just purely evil. However, in the newer version with Angelina Jolie, it actually shows her side of the story. Why she was purely evil. In fact, in her movie, it was actually King Stephan, Aurora's father, to be the bad guy. How it showed was that Maleficent grew up to be a guardian of the fairies, etc. and she was a happy, fun fairy. And as a child, she met Stephan who was just a normal human. But as time went by, he became a servant to the King and the King wanted revenge on Maleficent because she had won a war that the King started.

And because the King was on the verge of death, anyone who went and killed Maleficent, would be crowned king. So Stephan went, but instead of killing her, he took away her wings. This was how she became evil and mean.

But of course, by the end of the movie, it shows how nice she becomes once Stephan dies or is thrown into prison (I can't remember what happened to him).