Who is the Enemy?




Once you’ve identified the conflict and obstacles that your ancestor faced it shouldn’t be too hard to identify the enemy, the source of the obstacles, the antagonist.

While your antagonist may be human,  another person, even another ancestor, the enemy may come in many forms.  The enemy may also be a thing, a concept or your protagonist ancestor himself. The antagonist may originate from a number of sources and could be both friendly and unfriendly.

The antagonist in your family history story is going to be the person or thing that opposes your protagonist ancestor in some way and attempts to stop him from achieving his goal. Consider who your ancestor is trying to defeat in telling their story, the source of the obstacles and conflict.

The antagonist can be a person with good intentions keeping the protag ancestor from harmful choices; it may be someone trying to stand in the protags way with their own agenda.

Here are a few questions to consider when discovering the antagonist in your family history story.

  1. Who or what is the source of the obstacles?
  2. What type of antagonist are you dealing with? Person, thing, idea, self?
  3. What are the antagonist’s intentions?
  4. What is motivating the antagonist?

 

Finding the Enemy in a Family History

Finding the obstacles that your ancestor faced in life can come from a number of directions. While your story may have a more traditional antagonist in the form of a person or another ancestor, there may be other entities that are the source of your ancestor’s obstacles,  here are a few examples.

Institutions – banks, big business, government, etc.

Social Organizations – local community organizations, schools, neighbourhood, a church, a family, a boss or co-worker.

Nature – hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fires, the weather, illness, mountains, jungles.

Self- what we do to ourselves knowingly or unknowingly, vices, how we feel about ourselves, or how our lives can keep us from reaching our goals.

Medical – issues that your ancestor faces or someone close to them faces. i.e. debilitating diseases, handicaps, mental health.

Your family history story is built around your ancestor’s conflict and the obstacles they overcame.  There are many psychological, cultural, sociological, physiological and religious ideas that may offer challenges in your ancestor’s life from which you can structure their story and find an antagonist.

Consider your research and find the challenges your ancestor faced and what obstacles stood in their way.  Give your ancestor an antagonist by discovering who or what was behind those obstacles.

Consider using the same ancestor profile we used in our workbook, Authentic Ancestors, to complete a character profile on your antagonist . It’s important to know the antagonist as well as you know your protagonist ancestor.

 

 

Related Post

Goals, Motivations and StakesGoals, Motivations and Stakes

You’ve chosen your Protagonist Ancestor, and now it’s time to structure his or her story in a format that will keep your readers entertained and engaged from beginning to end.

Every main character in a story has a goal that is ultimately the heart of the story. A reader stays with a story to see if the main character reach their goal. Your ancestor’s goal is motivated by something in their life, usually in their history, an experience, or event that may of had a substantial impact on them and their actions. In addition, if they didn’t achieve their goal, they fear a loss. It could be an external loss such as in a material item, money or land, or even the loss of life, or it could be internal losses, such as respect or honour.

Before you begin to write your story, it’s important to recognize the goals, motivations and stakes of your ancestor. They are critical to not only understanding them but also in shaping their story.

I love these next three questions because by answering them you not only identify your ancestor’s goals, motivations and stakes but you understand how they relate to each other.

GOAL – WHAT DOES YOUR ANCESTOR WANT?  
MOTIVATION – WHY DOES YOUR ANCESTOR WANT IT?
STAKES – WHAT HAPPENS IF YOUR ANCESTOR FAILS TO GET WHAT HE WANTS? WHAT WILL HAPPEN? WHAT COULD HAPPEN IF YOUR ANCESTOR HAD FAILS TO MEET HIS GOAL?

Let’s look at each of these elements individually.

Goal  – There are any number of material and or emotional desires we seek; these are our goals. Your family history story needs a goal, which means your Protagonist Ancestor needs a goal. Where do I find the goal of my ancestor? Look at the actions in their lives. Look at the events on their timeline, did they emigrate, why? Did they own a great deal of land, did they fight in a war, did they become famous, or influential in politics, did they have a large family? Our ancestor’s actions are clues to what they valued in life, their goals, the wants or desires that they put most of their effort towards.

Does your ancestor want something so badly that they are prepared to destroy or be destroyed to attain this goal? To make sacrifices? To take risks? Did they join the army because they believe in the cause? Did leave the country because they didn’t support the cause?

Of course, not all goals are created equally, the bigger the goal, the bigger the story, the bigger the story, the more compelling the read. Try to find a goal that you feel will provide a big story that will engage your family. Stop thinking of your family history as a chronological timeline of events,  but rather a desire, a want, with obstacles to overcome on the path to it.

Motivations – Once you’ve determined the purpose of your story, the next step is to understand their motivation. Why did your ancestor have this particular goal? Each and every human being who walked this earth had wants, desires that were driven by a motivation. Through your research, you wish to understand what that motivation may be. For example, if your ancestor’s goal was to own land, what in their history, their past motivated that desire? Look at motivation as the back story to the want.

 Stakes – What happens if your ancestor does not fulfill his goal? The stakes are why we keep reading, if there is nothing at stake, no risk then there is little reason to keep turning the page. Of course, not all stories are life-or-death. Again big stakes produce significant stories. While the risks may not necessarily be life or death, our ancestors faced some very real stakes. For example – war, poverty, deportation, inscription, jail, poorhouses are only a few of the outcomes that may have occurred if they had not taken actions towards their goals.

Identify the goals, motivations and stakes of your ancestor and you have identified the heart of their story, along with the elements on which to shape your family history story plot.