hey there! thanks for answering all our questions on this blog + how possible would it for someone to crack ribs with a solid kick? there's a character i have in mind that's escaping captivity, but they're also young, so i'm not quite sure how easily they'd be able to hurt the (adult) antagonist in such a manner, especially lacking any fighting experience to begin with?
Well, you can break someoneâs ribs with a kick. Thatâs the entire purpose of the roundhouse, especially the version where you strike with the ball of the foot rather than the top of the foot. (And⌠arenât like me when I was seven or eight, when I was new to sparring and totally stubbed my toe in another kidâs side at a tournament after my brain/body got confused between the two. I didnât break my toe, but I couldâve.)
That story above is important, by the way. If youâve got a character who doesnât know how to fight then theyâre not even going to get that far. If you donât know how to kick then thatâs a great way to get your leg caught by someone who knows what theyâre doing. They catch the foot by the ankle, and then drag you wherever they want. Thatâs assuming the character can get their leg up and out without falling over. Even if they do manage that, say because theyâve watched a lot of martial arts flicks, they wonât know how to generate power and will be very slow. A, B, and C occur anyway. Your protagonist is going to end up back wherever they were being kept, this time in a much less comfortable position.
Even for an experienced martial artist, kicks require fairly constant bodily upkeep in order to be able to do them cold (much less perform them at all). Thatâs not a combat scenario, thatâs just in general. Youâve got a great chance of pulling all the leg muscles you need to get away, including ones you didnât realize you had and thatâs if you donât break your toes. Board breaks with the roundhouse kick are the most terrifying of them all because youâve got to remember to curl your toes just right in order to carry your foot through the board.
More importantly, this is an exact rendition of the âFeel Good Violenceâ trope: My Instincts Performed A Wheel Kick.
The protagonist is suddenly and randomly enough good at fighting to not only fight, but win when making their first attempt at a violent altercation. They use techniques which require a fairly high level of dedication and aptitude out of ânatural abilityâ and âinstinctâ.
Unless youâve got an ironclad reason for invoking the trope (past lives/ immortality/memory loss/the matrix) it will undercut your narrative credibility in ways the story cannot recover from.
When youâve cracked your foundation, youâre done.
âThe only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible,â - Mark Twain
Narrative integrity is based on the rules or limitations weâve set for ourselves, those limitations are the ironclad rules by which the narrative functions. They exist on two levels: in behavior and actions of characters within the world, and on a secondary level the settingâs behavior around them. Everything in your story must be working to uphold the fiction. When it doesnât the audienceâs âsuspension of disbeliefâ starts to crack. You are beholden to the rules and limitations set down by your setting. Without them, you have no story.
When youâre setting out to create a character, there are four questions you should ask yourself:
1) What can the character do?
2) What canât the character do?
3) What is the character willing to do but canât?
4) What can the character do, but is unwilling to?
Within these four circles you have your character, their ethics/morals, and their limitations. That is the box youâve created for yourself. It is important to own it and abide by it. When dealing with a protagonist, those limitations are not just the foundations of a character but the entire narrative.
Your character cannot fight your antagonist in a one on one and come away with any victory because you have established they donât know how to. That is a limitation you set for yourself. That the audience knows and understands, so they will expect this character to act in accordance with it. They may want to walk up to the antagonist and kick them in the ribs so hard those ribs break, but they canât. That desire could be a driving force behind them learning to fight later. As of now, though, their powerlessness in active violent conflict serves to reinforce the antagonistâs position. Reinforcing the antagonistâs position is for the narrative good.
They should be making choices based on the Venn diagramâs center: when what they can do meets what they are willing to do.
If what they canât do conflicts with what theyâre willing to do and they go with it anyway then the result is a failed escape attempt. A captiveâs survival is based on their value. If theyâre valuable enough for the antagonist to go through the trouble of capturing them in the first place, then theyâre probably not going to be killed. At least, not until their value runs through. They lose and wind up back in captivity under more scrutiny, more security, and with fewer exit options. This reminds us why they were captured in the first place, and reinforces our villainâs position.
A protagonist can fail and retain their legitimacy many more times than an antagonist can. While this is a perfectly legitimate narrative outcome, I donât think its the one youâre looking for.
This is the second issue with your question:
A narrativeâs antagonist is its backbone.
Your antagonist is one of the most important pieces of your story, if not the most. They are the lingering threat, the shadow hovering over the story, and the knife at your protagonistâs throat. They are seventy percent threat, and the last thirty relies on their ability to make good on it.
One of the biggest mistakes an author can make is assuming their antagonistâs position in their narrative and the threat they provide are impervious to harm.
Unlike your protagonist, your antagonist is always in a precarious position. They must constantly re-affirm themselves and the threat they represent through their actions. That threat is all consuming and when challenged, it must either be defeated or confirmed.
If defeated, then the threat is gone.
If confirmed, then the threat level is heightened because now we imagine what they might do next.
An antagonist can re-affirm themselves after a defeat, but theyâve got to double down on their effort and create a new threat rather than relying on their old one. You as the author must work harder to make up for what you lost, and even then youâll never have the initial fear ever again.
The first rule of the antagonist is: your capital is limited, so spend it wisely.
When you undercut an antagonist in favor of the protagonist before its necessary, you damage the antagonistâs credibility and, subsequently, their position in the story. When you lose your antagonist, you lose most of your narrative tension.
A character who doesnât know how to do something is applying a limitation to the character. You are applying a restriction to what they can and canât do. If youâre character doesnât know how to fight, then fighting will be off the table. More importantly, having your character succeed at a skill set they have no experience in doesnât make them âawesomeâ or âcoolâ, it means instead that the other characters who put time and effort into honing these skills suck.
When those characters are your antagonists⌠that hurts.
If youâve got a protagonist with no hacking experience who manages to overcome a supposedly great hacker on their first or second go round with no time spent learning how to hack, then who looks bad? The second hacker. Theyâre the ones who are supposed to be good at hacking. If the narrative hinges on them being a major antagonist, then the author just shot their narrative in the foot.
Combat skills are the same way. Theyâre a skill set, not an instinct. They donât come naturally, and take a great deal of time and effort to hone.
If your goal is to show your dangerous antagonist is a bumbling moron when an untrained teenager gets a lucky shot so miraculous they manage to lay them up for the rest of the story, then thatâs a job well done.
If your goal is for the antagonist to maintain their credibility within the narrative? Donât use them for a punching bag.
Violent confrontation is based just as much on threat of force as it is on the follow through. The threat is usually more frightening than what follows, and your protagonist is already challenging the fear by trying to escape. From a narrative perspective, if they get over their fear enough to challenge their antagonist directly then itâs game over. You spent your all capital either at the beginning or midway through the story, and youâre not getting it back.
Remember, your antagonist has to do just as much work to earn their street cred as your protagonist. Their position is a delicate balance of power management and threat of force. They rely on show over tell. They need to live up to whatever it is youâve been saying about them. They need to be as dangerous as theyâve been puffed up to be, unless their reputation itself is the real antagonist. Never forget, your antagonist (whoever they are/whatever it is) is the backbone of your story. They are often the driving force of action, the reason why the protagonist is struggling, and the focal point. In some ways, they are more important than your protagonist because without them the protagonistâs got a whole lot of nothing.
When you undercut your antagonist, you also hurt your protagonistâs development. You cheat them of their chance for growth, and deny them their ability to show off whatever it is that theyâre actually good at i.e. using their bravery, intelligence, and cleverness to sneak out.
If your protagonist beats down their Goliath at the beginning of (or even the middle) of the story then thereâs no reason for them to go to the mountain master and learn to throw rocks.
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