Note: I may have figured out my problem already as I was writing this question, but I'm posting it anyway, in case someone is inspired by it or wants to discuss it. I have been working on the antagonist of my novel for a while now, and it's been going smoothly until just recently when I realized something that might need some fixing. The antagonist really sticks out from the other characters, both because of their personality and their appearance. Their design, as I plan on describing in the book, is a hulking figure clothed in layers of cloth that trail behind them like a cloak. They wear a mask that completely hides their face, and their full height would measure up to about 10'/304.8 centimeters. These details aren't very important, but it gives the reader the gist of it—this character doesn't look human. Where I'm having trouble with this character is that, despite appearing strange during the present events, they looked almost completely human in their past. Throughout their life, they would slowly start dressing like their present self, by wearing a mask to conceal their identity when they went about their work or wearing extravagant cloaks as a symbol of power. But there's nothing in between them being humanoid and then drastically changing in shape. I never really thought about if this was problem, but now I'm wondering if the readers will be confused by the change. They'll be given the history of the antagonist and then see them in the present again and think, "how did that happen?", which even I don't have an answer for. Should I put more thought into the transformation of this character from their past to present self, or am I overthinking what the reader may or may not consider?
I get the sense that you are creating an antagonist that had to build this sort of persona or identity as a result of their own experiences. As a person who doesn’t believe humans are born evil, when I read villains in books, I often wonder what experiences led this character to “turn evil." I think it would be an interesting take to somehow show this character’s journey, but not focusing on it since this is the antagonist we’re talking about. How are you thinking about showing this transformation?
Let me preface my response with the disclaimer that I am a senior citizen, who grew up and lived most of my life in a world in which there were only two genders, and one's gender was what it was when you were born. With that as background, what immediately struck me when I read your post above was the lack of gender identification. You are referring to "the" antagonist -- singular -- and using "their" and "them" as the pronouns. Then you say the character doesn't look human. My question, then, is why refer to the antagonist as "their" and "them" rather than "its" and "it"? In the next paragraph it develops that the antagonist "looked almost completely human." Was it human, or not? If it was human, what was its gender? Then you talk about the antagonist "drastically changing in shape." What does that mean? Or is that what you don't have an answer to? Putting on a mask and/or a cloak doesn't materially alter anyone's shape. When I was young and wore costumes for Halloween, I was still me beneath the mask and the costume. As I have grown older, though, I have certainly changed shape -- as in "round is a shape"; I now weigh about 80 pounds more than I did when I got out of the Army, which to me is a rather drastic change in shape despite the fact that it crept upon me over a period of many years. I would say the details you dismissed as "aren't very important" probably ARE important in resolving your dilemma. A height of 10 feet is rather abnormal. According to the Guinness world records site, the tallest man who ever lived was 8'-11.1" tall. He died in 1940. The current tallest man is "only" 8'-3" tall. Your 10-foot antagonist isn't just unusually tall -- it's phenomenally tall. So that leaves the question: was your antagonist always this tall, or did it grow to that height as part of the drastic shape change? What other aspects of its shape changed in the transformation?
Coming back to this thread after a bit, I can see that I didn't explain my problem very well, but it also wasn't much of a problem to begin with. The best way I can describe it now is that the appearance I gave my antagonist is very monsterous, but when I created my anatgonist's backstory, it looked humanoid. That was my way of showing its humble beginnings before it became the villain it's known as in the actual story, but I hadn't come up with a way to explain how it became so inhuman. I could've easily come up with an explanation myself, but I worried about it a bit too much and made this thread, which I no longer need anymore. To answer some of your questions, @SapereAude: The antagonist's species is faerie, so not human to begin with, but still resembling one. The antagonist's gender hadn't been decided when I made this, but I can now say that it is female. The next question is what I was struggling with, but I've now decided that she uses magic to make herself taller, and the "hulking figure" I described is her height combined with how many layers her outfit has. Not the best explanation I would say, but it's still in the making. Hopefully I was able to get my point across this time, sorry if it's still unclear.
