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The REAL Antagonist of Your Story #writer #writing #author #writingcommunity #writing community

6 Aug 2026 · 2 min

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1:47

In this concise writing tutorial, the speaker redefines the antagonist not as the traditional "bad guy" but as whoever creates disruption for another character at any given moment. The antagonist is the source of the inciting incident that forces the protagonist to react. The speaker illustrates this with everyday examples—a broken gas pump that halts a driver, turning the pump into the antagonist, and then the driver becoming the antagonist when he confronts the store clerk. The concept is extended to narrative structures like detective stories, where the investigator may be antagonized in one scene and become the antagonist in the next when interrogating others. The key takeaway is to stop searching for a static villain and instead ask, "Who is causing the disruption right now?" This role can shift scene‑to‑scene or even within a single scene. The video ends with a call to subscribe and like for more writing tips.

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The antagonist of your story is not the villain or the bad guy. This is something that trips up almost every writer I work with. The antagonist is simply whoever is causing the disruption in somebody else's life in that moment. If somebody is causing a reaction, that person is the antagonist. It doesn't matter if they're the good guy or the bad guy in your story. The antagonist is the character that causes your inciting incident. They are the one that disrupts the protagonist's life and kicks off the next story event. Let me show you what I mean. Say I go to a gas pump and the machine breaks. That machine is antagonizing me because something unexpected just hit me. I'm standing there hitting buttons, nothing's working, and now I've got a crisis. Do I get back in the car and drive away, or do I go inside? So let's say I go inside, but watch this. The second I walk into that store to tell the clerk that the pump is broken, I become the antagonist because now I'm the one disrupting the clerk's life. Whoever was the protagonist of one scene becomes the antagonist of the next scene because they take their resolution and go do something else to someone else. If you watch Knives Out or read any detective novel, something happens to the investigator, he gets antagonized in one scene, So in the next scene, he goes to interrogate somebody else. Now he's the antagonist. It doesn't matter that the detective is the global protagonist. If they are the one disrupting somebody else's life, they become the antagonist. So stop asking who's the bad guy and ask who's causing the disruption right now. That's your antagonist. And it can flip scene to scene or even inside a single scene during your book. Subscribe and like for more writing tips.