15th Post

I have been thinking about the factors which make a quality story, and I think that the biggest single factor is not the protagonist but the antagonist. When you get right down to it the good guys are all very similar, they may have different strengths and flaws, but they all try to do what is right most of the time, so if you took, say, Luke Skywalker and Will Turner, and switched them, the stories probably wouldn't change much. Sure, Skywalker isn't a weapon smith, and Turner has no experience with the force, but the Skywalker would go to rescue the girl on the pirate ship and Turner would sign up to pilot an X-wing, because they are the good guys and are bound to try to do the right thing.

However, if one took Vader and switched him with Barbosa, well could you imagine "Sparrow, the force is powerful in you, join me and we can rule the Caribbean" or "the Emperor's decrees are more of guidelines than actual rules."

The thing with villains is they have so many more opportunities to show depth of character, the good guys merely choose good, and really no one needs to know why. But no villain is truly complete without knowing why they do bad things, or if they do something noble, why they did that. They have so much more the opportunity for backstory, indeed they necessitate a backstory, and the better a story is the more we know about its villain, the more we get to sympathize with his pain. The best stories are the ones that have villains who you almost want to have win, and even though you cheer for the victories of the hero, you feel a little bit of regret that the villain had to sustain a loss for its sake.