I broke my plot by flipping the antagonist and protagonist roles halfway through

Was stuck on chapter 12 for 3 months until I swapped their motivations. Now the villain's backstory makes the hero look like the real monster and the whole story fell into place in like 2 days. Has anyone else tried flipping character roles mid draft or am I just insane?

2 comments

2 Comments

riverm481d ago

Yeah, "the hero looks like the real monster" really hit me. I had a buddy who was writing a crime novel and he realized halfway through that the detective was just as manipulative as the killer he was hunting, so he rewrote the whole thing from the killer's point of view. Said it was like a weight lifted off his shoulders, the story just started writing itself.

mark_smith591d ago

Holy crap that's wild. So are you saying the hero's backstory now actually justifies the villain turning out the way they did? Like the villain has a legit reason to be pissed off and the hero maybe wasn't as clean as you first wrote them? I did something similar last year where I realized my protagonist was way too perfect so I gave him a secret that made him just as bad as the antagonist but from a different angle. Totally changed the whole vibe of the story and made it way more interesting to write. What was the specific trigger that made you realize the swap would work?