Writerly Ways

[cornerofmadness]

My friend, ES, had sent me along this article on villains and I thought it was very interesting. I’ve never heard of the term contagonist (then again I’ve never even heard of the writing program that coined it.). It is one way to flesh out a villain and if there is one problem I know I have, it’s my villains.

If you don’t go read the article, part of it is about the villain that believes s/he is acting for the greater common good and uses Dolores Umbridge as an example. No doubt, Dolores did think she was doing all she could to protect the wizarding world but took it a few steps too far (I would counter this article with the fact that the problem comes when you get either someone who enjoys power or is a bit sadistic or both and I think she falls into that category). You could extend that argument to say, Darth Vader, who undoubtedly thought his actions insured a peaceful, law-abiding empire (mostly because you were afraid of the discipline for failure and disobedience).

I think, in part, my trouble with villains lies in my favorite genre: mysteries. In a mystery, the villain doesn’t have to do much other than the crime and trying to hide it. Obviously you have to set up red herrings and motives for the villain but often we don’t even know who the villain is until the end. Ideally, we don’t solve who the bad guy is too early on nor are we sitting there at the end going what the hell? How was anyone going to figure it out.

If I wrote only mysteries, I would probably have less issues with my villains but I’m also a fan of fantasy/urban fantasy. In those, a villain we don’t even know is a villain until the end really doesn’t work. The villain needs to do something. This is where I feel I have the most trouble. My villains often feel weak or pointless. I never seem able to figure out the best ways to make the villain interesting (let’s face it, Vader was a damn interesting character as was Voldemort and the minor villains of the Harry Potter series).

It’s not that I don’t usually know the villain’s motives. I do. For instance, let’s look at my open story lines.
Voluntary Nightmare - The mad king and his equally schizophrenic son are trying to start another genocide and are making sure the Living Goddesses don’t get in the way this time. Other than a few opening scenes, they’ve been absent for nearly 30 thousand words.
Beneath the Torn Sky - This does fall more into the mystery genre than the steampunk. I know the villain and I know she’s in love with Placid. She totally believes that everything she does is to protect him. Too bad she’s stark raving mad. (hmm I see a pattern emerging). Actually as far as this story goes, I’m happy with the villain and unhappy with the red herrings.

Blood Red Roulette - Eleni is out for revenge trying to kill off Arrigo’s friends and lovers. Sweet, I have motive down. Problem? She keeps disappearing out of the story. In fact in the original short story I’m adapting this from, she escaped to fight another day. I can’t do that now and all of Camp Nano was trying to figure out where the heck to insert her better and get her to do something.

Soldiers of the Sun Overall, the villains in this aren’t doing so bad but they did start to fall out of the story (working them back in now). Not too unsurprising that since it was a nano. I know what the villains are doing, summoning a devil to help them keep their extreme wealth thru the 1929 market crash and the Great Depression. My problem here is I made a cabal of wealthy investors but only three have any real screen time and/or personality. I’m not so sure is a problem. We have not yet seen the devil, Asaroth. I’m not sure we need to (they couldn’t possibly defeat him). They need to find the cabal.

Kept Tears Technically this is done but my first readers would probably be quick to admit, yes Kyle/Morcant was a very weak villain. Almost all the first round of edits were about that. Even now after I worked it out, the ones I’m getting back are it’s still not quite enough. I’m fixing it. I guess my point is, I’d like to do better from the get go so I don’t have to do such major revisions (mostly because I hate when I have to really tear apart a book. I have at least two I can name off the top of my head, lying there for a decade because of that).

So how do you all handle writing the villains of your pieces?

Yearly Word Count –

2678 / 125000
(2.14%)

Soldiers of the Sun (technically it’s probably about 700 words more than this since I was working on an out of sequence scene that hasn’t been added to the main document which is what I count for here).

54821 / 80000
(68.53%)

Beneath the Torn Sky -

62173 / 80000
(77.72%)

Voluntary Nightmare (technically it’s probably about 400 words more than this since I was working on an out of sequence scene that hasn’t been added to the main document which is what I count for here).

43562 / 80000
(54.45%)

Comments

[sholio]

I admit to enjoying a little mustache-twirling villainy now and then. I don't need my villains to be particularly well-developed as long as they have some motivation -- money, power, revenge, fanaticism, etc -- as opposed to being evil simply for evil's sake. (This is actually the big problem I'm having with one of my novellas; the villain really doesn't seem to have any motive other than being evil, so when I rewrite it, I need to figure out why he hates the heroine so much that he ends up doing all of the things that drive the plot forward.)

Having said that, though, I also love a well-developed antagonist, and I particularly love situations where two (or more) sets of fundamentally good and well-intentioned characters are pitted against each other, so that there really aren't good guys and bad guys at all. A writer who can take a sympathetic character and make him/her the antagonist of the main characters, for good and sympathetic reasons, has my admiration. I've tried to do that in some of my fantasy writing, particularly in dealing with national conflicts, where the characters' nations are at war for any of the various reasons that nations go to war, but the characters themselves are antagonists more through circumstance than because one is "bad". (In a situation like this, I find that I often end up introducing a minor villain or two who are more flat-out "villainous" that the character who is supposedly the major villain of the piece -- for example, the story might be about two clashing armies commanded by equally sympathetic figures, but the heroine is dealing with a romantic rival who keeps trying to poison her. Or something of that nature.)

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

yes sometimes an over the top villain is fun. In a fantasy series I co-wrote with a friend the villain is a psychopath of the highest order.

Motivation is a problem on my end too

Actually, this is a good idea and a good point, two sides of a conflict, both feeling as if they're right, it would be very interesting.

[silvrethorn.livejournal.com]

This post made me go back and think about my villains, or at least the ones in my four Japan-based books. In the first, the most direct villain is a professional assassin with a few screws loose who turns a simple assignment (kill two guys) into a personal vendetta. The second book has the usual mystery-novel kind of villain, a lurk-in-the-shadows puppet master who manipulates others into doing his dirty work, and who is bad and must be punished. The third book doesn't actually have a villain, it's just a puzzle story (and sex romp). The fourth one, the one I just did for NaNo, has a kind of sympathetic villain--he does bad things, but he strayed onto his evil path through bad circumstances and bad decisions, and turns out to be much less of a monster than he appears at first. Going back farther, that fantasy novel I did a few years ago for NaNo doesn't have a traditional villain, either--the alchemist is literally at war with himself, since he split his soul to create the antagonist, and they have perfectly valid reasons for hating each other. My villains are all over the place, basically. They are what the plot needs them to be. The only thing I ask of them, really, is that they be human and not caricatures. Cardboard villains abound in mystery stories, and that's something I do not want to be guilty of.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

At least it sounds like you have villains. I have characters that tend to just lie there limply and that's what's bothering me.

[silvrethorn.livejournal.com]

My villains are definitely busy people. I don't know why yours are so useless. Maybe the protagonists are just more fun to write? Or easier somehow?

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

I definitely find the protagonists easier to write. I also find little homey scenes easy to write (you know, the kind that do shit-all to advance the plot)