without an antagonist

Sunandsh., let's face it, not all stories boil down to a good guy and a bad guy. Hamlet is the protagonist of Hamlet. Clearly, his stepfather is a bad guy – but Hamlet is always getting in his own way, so he's his own antagonist, too.

Hamlet is a tragedy. The protagonist starts out depressed (he complains that everything is "stale, flat, and unprofitable," a good statement of how the world looks in depression), and things go downhill from there. Had it been constructed as a story of personal growth, Hamlet would have overcome his psychological difficulties and learned to act more effectively.

I think you've hit on something by identifying the heroic theories of fiction as masculine. I remember little boys playing Superman or cops and robbers; girls played jacks or jumped rope. A story is nothing without conflict, but fights aren't the only kind of conflict. Some stories rely on a conflict between opposing values, good versus good. These values may exist in different characters or in one character.

Reph is right on. You're too hung up on the Good guy/Bad guy plot and simply not understanding that as long as there are conflicts, someone or something is going to be the antagonistic force, albeit briefly. It depends on your POV characters -- your protagonists, who you want the readers to identify with. Even in a story with multiple main characters, there are still a few that the readers will identify as the "protagonists." So anything that hinders or prevents them getting to their goals (e.g. the storm in "The Perfect Storm") would be the antagonist.

I would also like to point out that the Jarvis Method, basis for StoryCraft and NewNovelist writing software and based on Joseph Campbell's description of the Hero's Journey...

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These are only types of stories. There are other types of stories that involve conflicts between "protagonist" and "antagonist" that do not adhere to the "hero's journey."

Like UJ said, stop the theorizing and start writing.

James D. Macdonald said:

See commentary on Dramatica here.

Ignore the theory. Write the book.

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After it's finished I would hesitate before telling your agent you have just finished a book with no antagonist.
Os.

I'm saying I have 4 viewpoint characters, each with their own goals, and they conflict with each other but the climax isn't about a final large conflict or any of them defeating the others, they end the book by unifying to become a family. The plot of the book could be stated as "Four misfits defy society to become a family." But the four characters are themselves part of society, so they are struggling against their own and each others' socially conditioned preconceptions of who they ought to be and how they ought to live.

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The society is the antagonist. It doesn't matter if they're part of the society. They're struggling and fighting against it.

Also, it's a man vs. self X 4 story. Thus they each other their own antagonists, and to each other.

Pretty clear to me.

oswann said:

After it's finished I would hesitate before telling your agent you have just finished a book with no antagonist.
Os.

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By the time you've finished the book you'll know what the conflict is.

Take one of the 60K novel beginnings.

Drop two lines, type: Suddenly, without warning, a naked woman screamed!

Go from there for another 20-40K words.

Pick up the next novel beginning.

See who's in the first chapter, and where they are. From the point you left off, get those same people back to the same physical place, but in opposite situations from how they had been. Do it in 20-40K words.

Take the last two 60K beginnings.

Alternate the chapters. Chap 1, Chap 1a, Chap 2, Chap 2a, etc.

Change all the proper nouns so they match from chapter to chapter.

Now boil down the resulting mess to 80-100K words.

You will now have three novels ready to start shipping around while you're working on the theory for the next one.

Meanwhile, by reaching THE END three times, you'll have learned more about writing a novel than any theory book on the planet can teach you, or any software program will give you.

sunandshadow said:

I'm saying I have 4 viewpoint characters, each with their own goals, and they conflict with each other but the climax isn't about a final large conflict or any of them defeating the others, they end the book by unifying to become a family. The plot of the book could be stated as "Four misfits defy society to become a family." But the four characters are themselves part of society, so they are struggling against their own and each others' socially conditioned preconceptions of who they ought to be and how they ought to live.

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Sounds kinda like The Breakfast Club.

What I don't understand is: If they unite in the end, something must be the factor that gets them to unite. Some common conflict that will cause them to see the error of going about it alone and become one.

If there isn't, what is the dramatic factor that causes them to reach this conclusion? Do they just wake up one day and simultaneously decide:

"Hmmm, I think I'll become closer to those other three misfits and we can be like a family."

Whatever this factor is will most likely be the culprit you're looking for - the elusive antagonist.

If this factor is not there, then I can see the problem you are having with your plot.

sunandshadow said:

I like theory. I want to understand what I'm doing, have a plan and understand the purpose of each piece and how they interact. I don't have a problem with starting stories or doing BIC - I have 4 ~60k word novel beginnings laying around, which died because of fundamental plot unsoundness. So I feel that I need to study the theory of plot and lay out an outline for my current novel project if I want to have a good chance of actually finishing the thing. Maybe after I have one complete plot under my belt I'll feel comfortable enough to go back to just writing, but right now I want to learn the principles of design for fiction and carefully design my story.

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I like theory. I love theory. I don't like anything that purports to be a definitive all-encompassing all-answering theory that chokes the story I want to tell. There's a big difference between a theoretical structure and step by step instructions.

sunandshadow said:

I want to have an orderly protocol for painting in the numbers and theoretical structure for laying the numbers out to be painted - if someone else can design such a system to work for a hero's journey type of story, I see no reason why I can't or shouldn't make one which will work for the kind of story I want to write.

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A young painter who is trying to learn how to paint like a certain master, say Vermeer, doesn't go out and buy a paint-by-numbers set.

They go, sit in front of the original painting with a paint box, and paint the image in front of them, trying to imitate the master's strokes as closely as they can. They use their own paper or painting board or canvas. They use their own paints, their own brushes.

They get up and look at it even more closely when they just can't see what they're doing from a distance, compare stroke by stroke, the glimpses of underpainting seen when it's inches away, not just colour by colour, something you definitely can't do with a paint by numbers.

(Have you seen Amelie? The artist doing the same Renoir Painting over and over again? But he's doing it from a blank board, not a set of instructions. And it's implied that he feels he's learning something new each time, in part because he's doing it from nothing. And note also that at the end he stops imitating it at the point when he can't learn anything else new from exact copying. You can debate over and ver whenther he'd stagnated before that but needed an external push. You're here, involved in a community, you can get that external push...)

And someone trying to paint a Vermeer definitely doesn't go out and buy a paint by numbers of Van Gogh's Starry Night, which is a close analogy to what you're trying to do. Your story isn't a Heroic Journey, but it is a real story structure.

You'd probably be better off taking three or four books as similar to yours as you can find, and examining their structure directly, then shamelessly imitating the overall structure. (One way, but not the only way: Write a scene by scene summary of each, and based on those four summaries, create an overall structure which indicates at what point in each story the common threads occur. And yes, that will mean fudging a bit on the rougher fits, but you'll have a relatively strict structure.)

I will say that some very professional writers who've published books have done something not too dissimilar -- and not just ones like Terry Brooks. Jo Walton's Tooth and Claw has been hailed as highly original (And it is - go, read.) But. She's also admitted the plot & structure is a direct theft. (And no, that does not make it unoriginal. There's a line somewhere about the sum of the parts...)

Here's some more Uncle Jim Commentary that seems Relevant:

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?p=82386#post82386

(Before you think this is the wrong post, wait until you get to the bits about "The Trojan Women" and the commentary to follow. That's the part I'm thinking about.)


And here's an old essay from Jaws:

http://savage.authorslawyer.com/storystructure.shtml

(Quick definition: IFS = Interminable Fantasy Series.)

Theory

sunandshadow said:

I like theory. I want to understand what I'm doing, have a plan and understand the purpose of each piece and how they interact. I don't have a problem with starting stories or doing BIC - I have 4 ~60k word novel beginnings laying around, which died because of fundamental plot unsoundness. So I feel that I need to study the theory of plot and lay out an outline for my current novel project if I want to have a good chance of actually finishing the thing. Maybe after I have one complete plot under my belt I'll feel comfortable enough to go back to just writing, but right now I want to learn the principles of design for fiction and carefully design my story.

I want to have an orderly protocol for painting in the numbers and theoretical structure for laying the numbers out to be painted - if someone else can design such a system to work for a hero's journey type of story, I see no reason why I can't or shouldn't make one which will work for the kind of story I want to write.

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I like theory, as well. I've spent a bunch of time studying theory, both in college and on my own. The main thing I learned in all this study is that theory doesn't write novels, and is mainly useful in dissecting novels that have already been written and published, not in writing new one.

The hero's journey is a nice theory, but even it works best when looking back. It doesn't work nearly as well when looking ahead.

You can certainly write a novel using a paint by numbers approach. It may even be a publishable novel. But will almost certainly read the way a paint by numbers picture looks. From my experience, poor plot comes from the paint by numbers approach more often than from any other cause.

Just write the novel. Novels don't die. Not from plot unsoundness or anything else. They die solely because the writer stops working on them. Plot is the easy part. Just tell a story and the plot comes along for free. Even when plotting, you shouldn't finish with a plot, but with a story.

If I learned anything about plot from all the theory I've studied it's that plot theory doesn't make for good plots. Good story makes for good plots. Plot takes place in chapter one, and quite often in scene one. The rest of the novel isn't plot, it's the story the plot in scene one generates.

BIC really doesn't mean a thing unless you finish what you start, regardless of any perceived weaknesses. You can study theory until you die of old age, and it won't help much in writing a novel. You learn to write novels by actually writing novels, beginning to end. Writing half a novel doesn't even teach you how to write half a novel. You don't even learn how to write the opening of a novel until you've written the end.

Theory works best when looking back, not when looking ahead. So finish a novel or four, and use theory, if you much, when looking back at them. Even the hero's journey came about after someone finished a novel. And in my opinion, the number one thing the hero's journey is responsible for is a bunch of novels by new writers that look like paint by numbers pictures start to finish. Just write the novel. Just tell a story.

The thing with the plot is this--when you look at finished books you are seeing the plot how it ended up. And I think those story programs only make it look like you must have your book all mapped out to start with, you must know this guy is the good guy, you must know who the bad guy is and you must have this or that element to make a story good.

When you write plots evolve, they come into being. You may have a plot line and write from that, but most of the time plots are seen when the writer types “the end.”

It seems you may be putting too much into the idea of I have to know ver element of the story right now, and that may be why you have not finished the others, when they tried to take you away from a defined path you fought the will of the story and tried to make it turn left when it wanted to go right--stories often fizzle then.

In 8 completed novels I have had no idea where I am going to end up, I’ve had a general idea, but I can only see and state the “plot” when looking back.

Just write the book without trying to make it fit into a cookie cutter--give it permission to make odd turns, and stop thinking you need a cut and dry white hat and black hat setup.

The heros journey and man vs man are only a couple of plot bases, there are many more as have been named here.

conflict is the key, even if it's internal conflict.

Michael Cunningham's THE HOURS is about three women from three different times. There are no "bad guys." Most of the conflicts and struggles are internal. The common antagonist in the novel: loss of self (identity/worth, etc.). The manifestation of such: depression and withdrawal from life. At the end, these women deal with their struggles in very different ways. Each finds her own solution, with consequences.

my point exactly, but not so well put and illustrated.

Exactly, The whole "protagonist" theory package is not all that useful to writing (as opposed to analysis and criticism) and there are lots of stories that work without those elements.

It's interesting to see here how many people endorse that and offer the sentiments of just writing your dam story and ignoring the labels.

Intersting because I am used to posting on screenwriter forums where people get literally histerical at the idea that a movie might not have a protagonist (nevermind there is a huge argument going on about who the protagonist of "Pulp Fiction" is and somebody has just declared that the antagonist in "Die Hard" is the building itself.) The idea that buddy movies and loves stories don't fit that scheme drives them wild. Not to mention the cult of "Hero" with it's calls and shape-changers and such.

So I'm glad to see a healthy distancing from these concepts. Your story and characters are your guides here.

Jamesaritchie said:

I like theory, as well. I've spent a bunch of time studying theory, both in college and on my own. The main thing I learned in all this study is that theory doesn't write novels, and is mainly useful in dissecting novels that have already been written and published, not in writing new one.

The hero's journey is a nice theory, but even it works best when looking back. It doesn't work nearly as well when looking ahead.

You can certainly write a novel using a paint by numbers approach. It may even be a publishable novel. But will almost certainly read the way a paint by numbers picture looks. From my experience, poor plot comes from the paint by numbers approach more often than from any other cause.

Just write the novel. Novels don't die. Not from plot unsoundness or anything else. They die solely because the writer stops working on them. Plot is the easy part. Just tell a story and the plot comes along for free. Even when plotting, you shouldn't finish with a plot, but with a story.

If I learned anything about plot from all the theory I've studied it's that plot theory doesn't make for good plots. Good story makes for good plots. Plot takes place in chapter one, and quite often in scene one. The rest of the novel isn't plot, it's the story the plot in scene one generates.

BIC really doesn't mean a thing unless you finish what you start, regardless of any perceived weaknesses. You can study theory until you die of old age, and it won't help much in writing a novel. You learn to write novels by actually writing novels, beginning to end. Writing half a novel doesn't even teach you how to write half a novel. You don't even learn how to write the opening of a novel until you've written the end.

Theory works best when looking back, not when looking ahead. So finish a novel or four, and use theory, if you much, when looking back at them. Even the hero's journey came about after someone finished a novel. And in my opinion, the number one thing the hero's journey is responsible for is a bunch of novels by new writers that look like paint by numbers pictures start to finish. Just write the novel. Just tell a story.

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If you read nothing else on these boards, ever, remember this post.

Os.