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

Names to Narratives: Creating Character Arcs for AncestorsNames to Narratives: Creating Character Arcs for Ancestors

Welcome to our video on Creating Compelling Character Arcs! Whether you’re an aspiring writer or a seasoned storyteller, developing dynamic character arcs is key to engaging your audience. In this video, we’ll explore what character arcs are, why they’re essential for storytelling, and how you can craft arcs that showcase growth, transformation, and emotional depth. Let’s dive into the journey of creating characters that truly resonate!

Make Your Scenes Pop!Make Your Scenes Pop!

 

Do your stories pop?

Do they engage your reader and give them a vision in their mind through the words you’ve strung together on the page. As writers, our goal is to create clear and detailed images through the use of descriptive language. If you’re not using descriptive writing in your family history stories then you are missing an opportunity to show rather than tell. Descriptive writing adds texture, colour and dimension to our stories. It is how we make reading a sensory experience for our readers.

My favourite quote that helps to illustrate showing in scenes remains:

 “DON’T TELL ME THE MOON IS SHINING; SHOW ME THE GLINT OF LIGHT ON BROKEN GLASS.”

                                                                                                                              ANTON CHEKHOV

As we discussed in How to Write a Scene, detailed description, imagery and figurative language are components of a scene that we heavily rely on to make a scene vivid and in full colour for the reader. Today’s post pulls together a few tips to help you improve your use of description in writing your scenes.

Use all of your senses.

As we mentioned in How to Write a Scene using your senses is an essential ingredient of descriptive writing. Using the senses of touch, taste, hearing, seeing and smelling are all equally important in bringing your ancestor’s experience to life on the page. We often tend only to use sight, but employing a combination of senses gives your reader a much deeper experience.

Avoid Clichés

Clichés are words or expressions that have been overused. They may have been original at one time but through overuse they have become clichés. Be aware of them and find fresh and original ways to describe your story. Some examples of clichés include dead as a doornail, smart as a whip, sweet as sugar. You get the idea.

Use a Thesaurus

Try to avoid using the same words in a sentence, paragraph or, if it is an uncommon word, in the story, unless the word is used for effect. This applies to standard words and less common words. Use a thesaurus to find alternative words that convey the same meaning. (I used the word “word” eight times – did you notice?)

Use Personification, Similes, and Metaphors

Personifications, similes, and metaphors can add sensuous references vividly, explain things, express emotion and entertain your reader. They add richness to your writing and show an image in a vibrant way through example rather than tell directly. They should replace, enhance or define adjectives like, beautiful, sweet, picturesque and others. We’ve all learned about similes and metaphors in school. Perhaps, it’s time for a refresher course, and a little practice to help you see just how important it can be in writing your family history stories.

Let’s take a look at each with examples from the memoir Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.

Personification

Personification adds human personality traits to inanimate objects.

“Finally, we entered hill country, climbing higher and deeper into the Appalachian Mountains, stopping from time to time to let the Oldsmobile catch its breath.”

Simile

A simile ties two things together using the words ‘as’ or ‘like.’

“ It was like sewing meat. It was sewing meat.”  Mr. Walls gets beat up and asks for Jeannette to sew up a gash on his arm.

Metaphor

Metaphors are figurative comparisons that describe one thing by directly assigning it the traits of another, so one idea is understood in terms of the other.

Rex says Maureen “is a sick puppy, the runt of the litter, who should have been drowned at birth”

This statement expresses how Rex feels Maureen is weak and dependent, and the rest of the family has to provide for her.

 

Don’t Over Do it!

Beginning writers tend to lack confidence in writing description in those early days, but once they gain an understanding of description, they can then go too far and overdo it. As I mentioned in writing a scene, too much detail can completely overtake a story and it bears repeating again. Once we get the handle on description and detail we tend to find a reason to think more is better. It is not. As the artist of this work you must make decisions about which descriptions and details serve the story best, the feeling you want to portray on the page.  Description should enhance your characters and their world, not overwhelm it.