Mike Says: This is an AMAZINGLY insightful guest post from writer, poet and blogger Kelsey J. Mills on the finer points of character development. I highly recommend you absorb this post – it’s real value comes from the underlying connections between creating “real” characters and your own inner psychology. 

Truth be told, I’m not a fan of the terms “hero” and “villain”. I feel like they lock readers and writers into traditional narratives without room for maneuvering. I prefer the terms “protagonist” and “antagonist”. We’ve seen in recent years that stories about figures who would traditionally be locked in the villain role (see: Drive, Despicable Me, Megamind) are very successful. Ergo, when I refer to protagonist, I’m referring to the focal character of the story, and when I refer to antagonist I’m referring to the character that opposes that character.

It’s important to note, before delving further into these ideas, that none of this is a hard and fast rule. I don’t believe in them. It is possible to create great stories both within the bounds of rules and outside of the bounds.

It’s also important to note that the antagonist in a story isn’t always a person. But, since we’re in the realm of psychology, I’ll be focusing on antagonists that are human, or at least on the same cognitive level as human.

An important aspect of character creation to think about is that everyone is the hero of their own story. While the protagonist’s story is the one that is focused on, this is a fact of every character in your novel—especially the antagonist. This isn’t just some comic book cliché. This is how the everyday person thinks.

In psychology, this is called the personal fable fallacy. The personal fable, in more depth, is a cognitive distortion (cognitive=thinking) where one typically believes three things:

1) that they are the object of everyone else’s attention and concern

2) that they are unique and

3) that they are invulnerable.

These three things lead to thinking that others will always understand their motivation and behaviors, and that nothing bad will happen to them; because they’re the hero of the story (some people haven’t read much fiction…). It was initially believed that this cognitive fallacy began in adolescence and went away in early adulthood, but research suggests that this thinking persists into middle and late adulthood.

So the protagonist is the hero of your story and their own. The antagonist is the hero of a story that is their own. If both characters think this way, what is the distinction between the two? Well, you have to connect the protagonist’s personal fable to the readers. Their personal fable has to include elements of heroism by the standard of the audience. This is regardless of the time the story is set it. Ancient heroes were a bit more… bloody, shall we say, than their modern counterparts (unless they were written by Frank Millar). If you want to give your protagonist some of these traits, that’s fine, but make sure to include traits of the modern hero as well. The antagonist, on the other hand, is allowed to have all of the things mentioned above. The difference is that the antagonist should be the hero of their own story, and no one else’s. Yeah, at times you want your reader to identify with the antagonist. Go for it. It makes better stories. But the antagonist’s reasoning behind their personal fable is ultimately flawed, both in the perception of the protagonist, and the reader.

 Author Bio

Kelsey J. Mills is a writer, poet and blogger. Her published work has appeared in Off the Rocks anthology 15 and Anubis magazine. She’s the biggest snob you’ll ever meet, but she’s also the nicest. Kelsey’s first love was science fiction, but she gradually came to adore horror and poetry. When she’s not blogging about irksome things or writing pretentious poetry, Kelsey can be found in her room watching cartoons or enjoying a marathon session of DDR.

Kelsey is currently preparing to launch “The Zombvenger”, an online novel appearing on www.zombiepop.net, with zombie related goodies at her undead blog http://dawnoftheundead.wordpress.com/. She also reviews books for the Bearded Scribe . Kelsey can be reached at her twitter @KelseyJMills or at her Facebook author page (http://www.facebook.com/KelseyJMills).