Meredith Mansfield, Author

This topic came up today because I’ve been working on the first revision of DREAMER’S ROSE, which includes about ten new chapters at the beginning.  It feels very good to have the words flowing again after having been stuck on SEVEN STARS.  The new chapters also give me a chance to get a good look at my antagonist as a petulant teenager.  So, ultimately, even if I decide to go back to something closer to the first starting point, there’s no downside to writing this.

Especially because antagonists are just harder for me.  I have much more fun writing about the good guys, the protagonists.  Very often, in my first draft the bad guys are bad just because they are.  Even though I usually know what motivates them, it just doesn’t come through in the first draft.  So the antagonist is always something I pay particular attention to when I start the revisions.

In THE SHAMAN’S CURSE and THE IGNORED PROPHECY, the antagonists are motivated by revenge, one to the point of obsession, the other in a coldly calculating way.  The antagonist in BLOOD WILL TELL is actually trying to do the right thing, as he sees it, but in a horribly wrong way.  The villain in DREAMER’S ROSE (and this one is a villain) wants something but he’s not willing to pay the price to earn it, so he’s trying to steal it instead.  It gets more interesting when you realize that what he’s trying to steal is the power of a god–and he almost succeeds.

SEVEN STARS didn’t really have an antagonist.  There were some people who weren’t very nice who got in the way, but they weren’t truly antagonists.  So, there’s at least one insight into what may be wrong with that story and what I’ll need to do to fix it when I eventually go back to it.  No writing is ever wasted.  You always learn something.