Writerly Ways

[cornerofmadness]

I'm getting stuck for topics so I'm back to one that's still bugging me because I don't think I do it anywhere near as well as I could. Villains. I just read this interesting article on it that my friend, E.S. pointed me to. Believable villains

I'm not so sure that believability is my issue. It's more their effectiveness. I'm not sure that mine are that effective. I'm going over Soldiers of Sun now and I'm not sure that they are good villains at all but this is where the problem comes in. A bunch of wealthy investor types are not really a match for trained soldiers. Nor at they the type to get their hands dirty. They're letting the demon they summoned to do the dirty work and they hire thugs to assist to that end. I'm not sure how to make them more interesting as a villain.

In Kept Tears, the villain, Morcant, has his motives, simple ones. Revenge and humiliation. He isn't a mustache-twirling villain, but neither is he particularly complex or sympathetic. I think Alberich might fit that better and I want to do more with him in the planned sequel (and the twins, god, if you have a subplot for the twins tell me because every reviewer wanted more of them).

I'm not sure why I struggle so much with the villains. I've seen so many of them. I do like the ones with shades of grey better than most, though a true sociopath like Hannibal Lecter is also interesting.

How do you handle your villains? What do you seek in a villain?

In other writing news I want to write something about Celebrate I'm planning to set it in Wales and make it yule (well Alban Arthur) which is harder to research than you might expect. Sigh.

yearly word count -

Splinters of Silver - haven't touched it because I have to get the edits out on Project Fierce and Love's Landscape

Soldiers of the Sun - up to ch 15, just enough to fill me with loathing for the story, par for the course at this stage of the game.

Comments

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

Good villains are so hard to do. If they're too competent, your character can't win, if they're not competent enough, there's no dramatic tension. You have to give them complex motivations, or they're two-dimensional, but if you make them too sympathetic, your readers will prefer your villains over the protagonist.

I have some villains who have deep beliefs that they are protecting something important, and it's not their ends but their means that make them the bad guys, really. In my head, I have pretty much decided that every character in the book has conflicting goals and beliefs and no one is totally right, but I hope the reader is invested enough in the main character's survival to root for them to protect themselves and their interests from the "villains."

I also have a villain who is emotionally conflicted about the goals he is tasked with. Writing him is hard because he's an unreliable narrator of sorts. Doing one thing, and saying one thing to himself about it, while feeling another.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

That first paragraph nails it right on the head. Excellent answer all around. thanks.

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

I like a villain with a reason for being a villain, I guess. That's probably a ham-handed way of saying it, though.

So, how are you going to work writing into this story?

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

Reasons help

I'm not sure what you mean

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

The prompt is writing (or media involving books, magazines, etc.) of some sort has to be involved in the story. How are you going to work that in?

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

wrong open call. Scroll past that one. Celebrate, not hot off the press

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Ah, okay. I see what you mean now. I don't know enough about Welsh holidays to help, I'm afraid, and what I do know, I've learned through the SCA or through The Dark Is Rising.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

you'd think it would be googlable but not so much

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Sigh.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

yeah with the druid pages you would think I could at least find out more about the winter solstice

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

The Welsh aren't nearly as popular as the other Celts.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

no and the Druids seem to still be keeping their secrets

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Can you blame them.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

In a way yes. Why bother having websites that are supposed to be instructional and then not have anything on them that's the least bit useful. Ditto with all the books I'm reading on the same.

[silvrethorn.livejournal.com]

A villain is someone who wants something contrary to what the hero wants. It's not that they're horrible people, they just fuck up the hero's otherwise pleasant existence--try to steal his girlfriend, backstab her at work to get a promotion, scheme to overthrow a democratic government because it won't allow the villain to build a profitable nuclear waste dump on his unused back forty beside the city's drinking-water reservoir. Stuff like that. I think 90% of fictional villainy happens because someone doesn't get his or her own way. It's that simple.

That's one of the things I loved about the anime Moribito. Nobody in it was evil. The "villains" who attacked Balsa the Spear-Wielder were acting out of good intent, but unfortunately bad information. Even the monster at the end was an agent of a natural process, not a blindly destructive agent of evil. In this case, if you had to name a bad guy, the "villain" was ignorance.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

you make several good points here. I hadn't thought about it but you're right about Moribito

Maybe my villains aren't so bad after all. Maybe I'm expecting more than needs to be

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

I have a rough time with villains. I don't make them bad enough, and when I do ramp it up and make them really evil, they've not believable as people. One of my problems is that I want everyone in my fictional universe to get along, which makes for a nice place but a boring story.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

I have some of the same problems or I don't make them tough enough for the good guys.

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

Well, all writers have areas they have to work on!

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

yes that is true