Hello! Very new here and I'm about halfway done with first-drafting my first ever novel, and before I start again, I've got a question on my main antagonist's motive for the decisions he makes. In short, my post-apocalyptic novel is about a 19 year old girl trying to keep her family together during a viral outbreak. The antagonist is/was the head of the colony's foraging unit. He knowingly set the foragers up for failure, which in turn forced my MC and her family out of the colony. Right now, the antagonist's main reason for killing off so many people was scarcity of food in the colony (Wisconsin winters make it hard to find food for thousands of people), but he's cold and callous about the situation. I want to bring the antagonist back toward the final act of the book where my MC finds a new colony that is looking to take a risk to move hundreds of people to a safe area over 100 miles. I want the antagonist to try and foil this plan as well. I just need a motive! He's sort of a psychopath, but I feel as though using this is just a cop-out. Any suggestions on how to figure out what the motive could be? Tbanks!
From the little bit here, I would say one of his main motives would be finding out she is still alive and wanting to silence her so his community isn't taken over and him killed for what he has done.
I'm not sure if you know your character well enough. Your villain seems to be of the mind set the good of the many out weighs a few. He has created a social hierarchy within his mind that sets the scavengers apart and makes them more disposable. You need to get more into the mind of your villain who's using humans as if they were weights on a scale. Does he also want power? Does he want people to thrive in his world view. Think of your villain as a protagonist to their own story and I'm sure that'll help
This is more or less what I was going to say x) You need to think more about your villain's life first, in his own version maybe he is the good guy. Maybe he doesn't want to share resources, maybe he knows something about the virus that the others do not, maybe the safe place the second colony is going to hides a secret he doesn't want revealed.
Excellent! Thank you both of you. Since it is my first novel, it's been a rough go for sure. It's also a first person perspective from my MC's pov, so I find it difficult to delve into the mind of this sociopath. I read Jonathan Newberry novels Joe Ledger novels and they are first person, but he also switches often to third person (often the antagonist). I wonder if I could pull that off! Thank you both so much!
Good luck! I'm sure you'll manage to find the answer for his motivation and make a fantastic villain =)
