: Re: The protagonist can't defeat the antagonist without the antagonist being stupid What should I do if my story's plot is built around the antagonist being extremely strong, and by the end it's

David versus Goliath. Heracles versus Antaeus. Batman versus Bane. Or one nice scene from Braveheart, the big hurled boulder versus a small stone thrown accurately between the eyes. There are so many examples in fiction where the strongest person is beaten by a smart opponent.

In fact, if the protagonist is clearly strongest then generally there isn't enough depth to the story to be interesting to a modern audience. The classic "hero's journey" requires the hero to fail repeatedly so that he (or she) can learn from their failures and find how to defeat their enemy. This is the difference between "barbarian" myths such as Greek legend where the strongest man almost always wins (or, exceptionally, the strongest man has to be incredibly stupid for the weaker man to win), and modern story-telling where the cleverest person wins. In "barbarian" societies, authority comes through personal strength, and their stories reflect that. In modern societies, authority comes from intelligence (or it should), and our stories are examples to children that the cleverest person wins.

If you actually read Aesop's fables in a proper translation, mostly the hare wins. Or the wolf wins. If the stories have a moral (and most don't), the moral is to be the wolf. That's a stark contrast to a modern equivalent like "The three little pigs", where the lesson is that any pig can kick a wolf's ass if he's intelligent and prepared.

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: Re: The protagonist can't defeat the antagonist without the antagonist being stupid What should I do if my story's plot is built around the antagonist being extremely strong, and by the end it's

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: How does one write a misanthropic character likeable? Let's say the character has over the years grown to dislike humans because he had many negative experiences with them, and is disappointed

: Is there any resource available listing words for facial expressions? Describing the faces that people are making during a conversation can be difficult. He nodded, she pursed her lips -- those

: Need suggestion on promoting the book I published my debut poetry book on Amazon. It seems like reaching wider audience means spending lots of money. I don't want to do that. So far I received

: How to keep track of characters' location, within a longer narrative? I'm currently working on a piece which has characters coming and going. Basically, sometimes a side character is near the

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