I suddenly realised: my story has no antagonist.
Many Types of Antagonist
While I realise there are many types of antagonist, there still needs to be one. An antagonist can take many forms. It can be the bad guy, the storm, the inner voice holding you back.
My tale, has no bad guy. There are plenty of people who antagonise or prevent the characters from reaching their goals, but there's no target, no conflict to over come.
Back to the drawing board!
Plan Plan Plan
I'm going to try to think about what's happening in the story before it starts. Who are the antagonistic forces and what are they doing to be part of Lexi and Tim's story? How are they going to prevent Lexi and Tim from reaching the end of the story?
This might mean introduction of a brand new character who hasn't been in the story before. Even when previous characters have been chatty, or roguish, or distracted, they have always wanted the best for my main characters, rather than to hamper their journey completely. With the introduction of this new character, his entire goal will be to get in the way of the characters at every turn.
The pinch points will be linked to him and what he's doing but in subtle ways. I'm thinking we may need to have a twist.
Why can't we just pull the story from our heads and splat it straight down on the paper? This would work massively better than the current method of teasing it out.
Oh, I'll include a link to the blog I've been reading because it's really useful.
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