What the Shadow Knows
Why do our stories require oppositional characters? Life throws enough our way to keep us stressed with adversity at all times. Can’t life itself be enough? Do we actually need “an opponent?” Yes, it turns out, we do.
In the previous blog on the source of main and secondary characters, I prattled on about how all those other characters arrive within the conscious and unconscious life of the protagonist. None of these stowaway characters is more important than the antagonist, a fancy term for “the enemy.” If this opposing force is an incarnation of some aspect of the main character, aren’t we saying that our protagonist is not made of only good things? That’s exactly what we’re saying, and going further, our antagonist is not a form of evil walking.
And that makes both of them human. They both have needs and weaknesses, likely leveraging those in favor of their own fulfillment. If the opposition becomes sympathetic to the reader, if that “scary” character is growing and learning their own lessons in the way the protagonist grows and learns, then what exactly is the opposition meant to convey? (The Jungians call out in unison…)
Writing can be difficult not because of what we need to say but because we don’t want the vulnerability of having the world know we said it. We don’t want to be judged. We don’t want to be shunned.
For those who shouted “the Shadow,” give yourself a gold star and a cookie. Our stories need an antagonist to make the protagonist a real human being. The enemy provides the reader with insight into our hero’s shadow side. The hero does the same for the villain. The object of creating character is to bring fully-human human beings to the page. The more vulnerably human we can make all our characters on levels of both sympathy and empathy, the richer the story and the deeper the reader’s suspension of disbelief. Sympathy plus Empathy equals Complicity—the reader’s willingness to follow and feel the events of the story.
The Shadow is those aspects of our beings that either we or society have deemed unacceptable to indulge, let alone think about. Your protagonist’s needs and weaknesses are glimpses into their minds, hearts, and souls. The same goes for the antagonist. What do they hold dear? What are they afraid of in themselves? Opponents, too, have hearts, minds, and souls. They are capable of choices and therefore can change direction toward the brighter places or the deeper shadows as they define them. What they end up doing is not only an element of the plot. It’s a measure of who they are. Bringing characters to vivid life is a matter of open-book intimacy.
The challenge in this complexity of being and interaction is that it requires us writers to go to the shadow places in ourselves. Writing can be difficult not because of what we need to say but because we don’t want the vulnerability of having the world know we said it. We don’t want to be judged. We don’t want to be shunned.
I once wrote a scene that stopped me in my tracks for six months. I spent that time contemplating if I could live with my words. What halted me was neither what protagonist nor antagonist had done on the page. What halted me was my clearer view into my own shadow.
If we want to write the book that holds the reader captive for however-many pages, we have to fill it with life as the readers recognize life in themselves. A story must be rationally and emotionally logical. Owning up to one’s shadow self, resolving the mystery of what happens when we say or do what we want, finding out the universe keeps turning, this is what readers want proven to them. Our characters say what they say so that others, on the page and off, might feel brave enough to speak, too.
This is how a story can change the world.
Writing Exercise
Write a scene involving your current story’s opponent in which you explore an aspect of that character’s humanity, the trait(s) that readers will empathize with. You can do this with a dramatized interaction or an internal monologue. Try to be as unexpected as possible. The unhappy childhood with inadequate or dangerous parents is a go-to explanation. See if you can come up with something surprising. Remember “Rosebud” in Citizen Kane? Bonus Points: Do the same for your protagonist, but this time focus on the recognizable human flaw.
Photo by Martino Pietropoli on Unsplash