Motivation for Antagonist?

I'll keep this short and simple, and I know it probably sounds really cliche, but besides that, I need your honest opinions. The idea I'm working on involves a group of teens who mysteriously end up on an island after numerous freak accidents leave them stranded there. The freak accidents were not "accidents" but highly controlled scenarios to get the protagonists on the island. I can't for the life of me figure out a motive for the antagonist. Each person was carefully picked to be on that island for a reason, I just don't know why. I want the reasoning behind the antagonist's actions to be real and genuine, not the typical famous-rich-guy-who-spends-his-fortune-on-mysterious-plans-that-happen-to-make-a-great-plot. What do you guys think? Let me know what you think would be a surprising and/or effective motive for the "bad guys".

P.S. I'm quite terrible at responding to comments, but I sincerely do read every single one! So even if I don't reply, I do see it.

 

Revenge is always a good motive. See also: The Usual Suspects.

 

Revenge, money and power are the big three.

 

Agatha Christie's And The There Were None comes to mind too.

 

I don't understand why you as an author want them on the island.

Is it to kill each other? Is it to have them fall in love? Is it to watch them try to survive?

Are they strangers? Have all or some of them met? Are they to confront one another for past offenses?

The problem is I have absolutely no idea what sort of story you're writing nor any idea what you aim to do with the characters on the island.

What is your story? A murder mystery? A horror story? A romance-comedy? A drama?

I can imagine myriads of reasons why you'd strand a bunch of teenagers on an island, but depending on the type of story various reasons are going to be more plausible than others.

I've got The Tempest and Battle Royale and A Midsummer Night's Dream and Survivor all playing through my head here.

 

I have a couple of questions. Why are they on the island? How does the fact that it's an island figure into the plot? Also, I think you need to figure out why each of those people were picked to be on the island. That's key to the rest of the story. I think you may have a good idea here, but need to figure out why they are there.

 

Agreed,

And i'll just add some times it's fun just to mess with people. Maybe the "antagonist " randomly picked people on a social media outlet to mess with.

Edit: maybe the island is metaphorical for the Internet and various social media sites and interactions. The group were drawn into a site that gawks at them.

Edit: what if the "Antagonist" is actually the good guy and these individuals have done or will do something horrible in the future. And it is up to the protagonist to protect humanity from them.

Or again, just trolling them for LULZ.

Edit: Maybe...... there is no antagonist.

 

That's the thing I'm still trying to figure out. I have different ideas I'm working with, but nothing fixed yet. I thought of each person getting a "role" they have to play throughout their time on the island. Or another one was sort of a survival/mystery theme where these deadly creatures roam the island, some killing only at night, etc. Or one where their goal is to get inside a fortress in the center of the island, and once inside it will reveal why they're there. That's why I have been trying to figure out who would send them to an island, and why, before I nail down what they actually do on the island. As of now, I'm sure they'd all be strangers. I do want to incorporate romance, mystery, drama, killing, survival, all of that stuff, but the underlying foundational theme is still something I'm still working on.

 

Those are great questions! I haven't figured out why they're on the island yet, maybe to complete a task, or survive throughout different stages of something, not sure. Because of the unusual circumstance of how the characters join together, the setting works best on an island. So there is a reason behind that. And also haven't figured that out. In case you can't tell, this story is in the very early stages, haha. Obviously, each person would be picked by the antagonist for some reason, a reason that somehow influences who and why the antagonist chooses, which sort of leads back to my original question. I have so many ideas I'm ready to run with, but without really knowing the reason behind it all (the motivation for the antagonist) I can't narrow down on anything.

 

So, what you need to do first is establish who your victims are. Who are they, where do they live, what do they do (job, school, etc.). If you work out a background for each of them, you can better be able to figure out how they ran afoul of the antagonist, which in turn will help you figure out why he (she?) is doing this. Also, you'll be able to flesh out the characters and make them more "real" to the reader.

 

As others have said it's hard without knowing more. Maybe it could be assumed the antagonist is a bad guy for putting them in that position, but it later on turns out they are someone really in trouble who needs their help, or they know some sort of disaster is coming and they are manipulating the teenagers to prevent it?

 

given your responses, it sounds like it could be some sort of social experiment. If you've ever seen The Belko Experiment ?

It's an okay thriller movie with an interesting premise: A bunch of people all over the world are hired to work at a company in a foreign country, they are implanted with location chips as as security measure in case they are kidnapped. It turns out though that these aren't location chips but explosive chips. A voice comes over the intercom, locks up the building and gives them a choice: choose to kill 50 people in a set amount of time or don't and allow the voice to randomly kill 75 people. This causes chaos of course and people have competing ideas on what to do. Eventually only one character survives and upon surviving, he enters a room with a few sociologists who eagerly await his answers to their questionnaire. He eventually kills them and walks away but as the camera pans out, it turns out this is just one of dozens of the same experiment taking place all over the world.

If these are teens, possible teen celebrities or very involved in social media or just normal teens with special skills, perhaps they were invited to an island as a scholarship opportunity before being attacked by pirates or something and getting shipwrecked on a nearby island. What they don't know is that they were chosen for their abilities because the guy or girl in charge wanted to see what would happen as a study of human behavior. Perhaps it's a disgraced sociologist?

 

Villains tend to be heroes in their own minds. Ask, 'why would a hero want a group of teenagers on an island?' and 'how could a group of teenagers somehow 'save the world' in some way?'

 

So it's like a Maze Runner situation? I'd go with the "this is a test to determine if I can use these teens" kind of thing.