Earlier this month, Lynn Viehl had a lovely post about antagonists called, hilariously, " Ten Things I Hate About Your Protagonist ." In that post, she talks about the number of ways that antagonists can be two-dimensional or just plain boring. My favorite of hers? In the middle of the final crisis in the story, when she has the upper hand over everyone, the antagonist proudly delivers a full confession of all the wrong she's done. Hmmmm. Maybe she's Catholic. In the world of The Incredibles , this flaw would be called "monologuing." :) Seriously, though, this should never happen anymore. Not even in James Bond.* My own personal problem in writing antagonists is that I don't spend enough time on them. My villains aren't two-dimensional, exactly, but I don't have a good idea what's going on with them in the early drafts. Like, they just show up for plot purposes and I don't know enough about their internal lives to know why they w
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