Recently someone left a review on my Narrative Nods android app. Part of their review was about that user’s narrative not having a narrative antagonist, and therefore, as he said, he didn’t need the option.
That review got me thinking. I realized that there must be many authors out there who probably don’t understand the concept of a narrative antagonist. As I explained in my article on the types of fiction characters:
The antagonist, as the name implies, functions as the force keeping the protagonist from achieving the given goal. The antagonist actively keeps the protagonist from achieving his/her/their goal. In other words, the antagonist’s opposition is not a result of error, tragic irony, or other such literary device – see information on the character type of the opponent, below.
This seems straightforward enough. However, I also mentioned in that article that:
In most complex narratives, the author can achieve the most powerful effect by having a character play a dual role. For instance, the protagonist and the antagonist can be one and the same actual character. Imagine someone who half the time works toward some goal (say, to find peace of mind over a past trauma), only to undermine his own efforts due to fear or suspicion.
This is probably the part about a narrative antagonist that many authors misunderstand. So, let’s take a closer look at this.
