Antagonist, Where Are You?

Books need protagonists, but they also need antagonists to be truly engaging.

What or whom is the main character fighting?

Does the antagonist have to be a person, or just the protagonist’s inner demon? Can one antagonist fall away and another one rise up? Or is that technique too much like the fight scenes in movies today where the protagonist fights a stream of combatants and finally wins, an island in an ocean of fallen foes?

I think the antagonist has to be one consistent person or idea, but I suspect that amateur novelists are too ready to make the antagonist an idea rather than a person.

How does the writer find that truly complicated antagonist and write that person to life?

My biggest failing as a writer is that I haven’t yet learned how to write in the antagonist. My protagonist stands there with arms outstretched waiting for someone to push him down and no one ever really shows up to do so.

Amy