Syd, no such term exists that I am aware of, although I have heard of the other three.

Remember though that protagonist does not actually refer to a "hero" or "good guy," it simply means 'the most important character in the story.' I doubt I'm telling you anything you don't already know, but if the most important character in a story is the most evil, horrible person on the face of the planet, he is still considered the protagonist, and any good guy opposing him would still be his antagonist (the character who is working against the protagonist.)

So depending on how many characters are in the story, I think it would be proper to use deuteragonist or tritagonist to refer to an important secondary antagonist--at least I've used them that way in papers before and never been corrected. (Just make sure you specify that in addition to being a deuteragonist, they are also working against the protagonist.)

Now, if you've got a huge cast (like say Star Wars) and there are protagonists and antagonists running around all over the place, I would go with using terms like "secondary [or additional] antagonist" for someone like, say, Emperor Palpatine. Its not quite as nice as just having a single word for it, but that's how I've done it in the past and, like I said, never got docked for it. That's my immediate take on the problem anyway.

I'll dig out my college books and do some research when I get home tonight and see what I can find though.

Captain_Pollution wrote:

Hey, this seems the msot appropriate place to ask this. It came up in IRC a while ago, and I've been wondering... So, you italicize the titles of long works, and quote the titles of short ones. So for a short story you'd put it in quotation marks, for a novel you'd italicize it. That's my understanding of that, as taught to me by my grade seven English teacher, and agreed upon by every one since then. But then I was talking about... One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, I believe, and a thought struck me: What about novellas? Do you quote or italicize their titles? I'd think quote, treating it like a really long short story, but I'm very curious, and no one I've asked's known.

From what I understand, it depends: if the novella is stand-alone, you italicize it. If its part of a collection, you quote it.

Therefore, properly written, you have the book Four Past Midnight by Stephen King, which includes the novella "The Langoliers." If for whatever reason that story was ever published alone though, and you were referring to that edition, it would become The Langoliers. That's my understanding anyway.