Protagonist and antagonist

Extract 3 from Chapter 3 (Once upon a time .../ , page 63)

It is relatively easy to identify the protagonist as there is always somebody who catches our attention. The difficulty lies in deciding who the antagonist is; obviously this is only possible if we have correctly identified the underlying latent conflict.

Let us take the case of somebody who wants to stop smoking. Who is the protagonist? Why, he himself. And who is the antagonist? Some of us will say, “Tobacco”, while others will say, “the tobacco companies”. If his objective is to stop smoking the protagonist and antagonist are the same person, he and his guilt-desire cycle. A cigarette can’t be the opponent for the simple reason that it doesn’t speak or do anything, it is an inanimate object. It is the object onto which the protagonist projects his desire. The packet of tobacco could be the thread running through a story called “The Last Pack” because, as it gets emptier it gives us a very graphic picture of the process.

Imagine the dilemma of the woman who wants to get pregnant but has serious problems giving up smoking even though she knows that tobacco is bad for the future child. If she wants to accuse the tobacco companies of her addiction then we must find an antagonist in the tobacco company. The opponent is not the brand (like the cigarette the brand can’t talk except through advertisements). We have to find somebody who represents it. We need the antagonist to speak and take human form. If we can’t get access to a representative of the company we have to take an indirect route; advertisements, documents, letters or interviews in the media – in fact anything, but we will lose vividness.

But obviously, we can present two conflicts at once, internal and external. The previously mentioned future mother suffers an internal and personal anxiety and presents a social conflict. Our job is to adequately identify the contradictions and find a way that lets us combine both conflicts or highlight one of them. A conflict needs two sides, but one of them has to be a person

If we do a report on abuse of animals, the dog must be the co-protagonist given the need for somebody to speak for him and interpret how he feels. His owner can rationalize, the dog can’t. If we decided to give the dog a voice and speak for him we would be entering into fiction, a resource that helps us to imagine how the animal feels. But “imagine” is not a function of a journalist, who, anyway always has the door of “creative documentary” open to him.