: Re: How can I make believable motivations for antagonists? I am writing a book. However, I can't quite wrap my head around making my character do bad things, while still making their actions and/or

@Bryan361

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I actually have the same problem you do. I'm writing a story with more than one antagonist. For the first antagonist I created a motivation for him to act as a "bad guy". The context is about two company owners competing to get a client's account.

Protagonist makes an offer to the antagonist as if the protagonist is going to win the contract, even though the antagonist is pretty sure of that mainly because he has a very strong contact acting as an informant inside the client's company. The offer is about both working together even though the biggest share is going to be the protagonist's.
Antagonist refuses the offer. "Absurd offer" from his perspective.
The insider was actually bought by the protagonist, arranging the contract to be his.

Having the insider providing privileged information is not ethical to start with , so the protagonist also acted unethically to get the deal.

It's hard to tell precisely what you want for your story since I don't the overall context, but hopefully that can give you an insight. :)

(I am still strugling, however, to give a better motivation to the other antagonist)

Cheers!

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