Monday, 19 November 2012 Creative Writing Tips: The First Step I like to start with looking briefly at the antagonist. The first step to creating a story is knowing what the story is about, and when it comes down to brass bolts, it depends entirely on what the antagonist is trying to achieve. It can be many things, ranging from simple narcissism, all the way to insanity and personal beliefs. Religion can easily play a role, as can family legacy or a thirst for revenge - either against one individual, or a race as a whole. You don't need to completely design your antagonist yet, though - just think about what you want to happen. One example could be a natural disaster: perhaps a comet is heading towards earth. In this case, the comet would hit earth with or without the antagonist's help, but perhaps he uses some kind of magic to keep the comet from breaking up when it enters the atmosphere, or cause it to grow or move faster, creating a bigger mess - I'm not a geologist or a meteorologist, so I don't know whether I've gotten something wrong here. But he would also likely purposely cause some kind of panic and cause apocalypse-crazed cults to pop up and create even more havoc. In these cases, the villain would likely just want to see the world burn. But whatever your antagonist's plan may be - from destroying the world to stealing the throne - there also needs