Quote For The Week

                                                      

 

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
                                                      ― Toni Morrison

Things You Didn't Know About Your Books Part 2

                                                                         

                                 Where Almost Every Villain Comes From

 

We've dealt with the making of your main protagonist, so let's move on to the character who puts you on the edge of your seat...the villain. Similar to how our protagonists evolve sometimes (especially if you are a novice writer) your villain can unintentionally be formed in two ways - both of them being ones you should avoid.

 

First, your villain might accidentally be composed of your actual nemesis, it could be someone who has dealt harshly with you in your past or it can be a villain who shares attributes with your "inner struggles". For example, you may struggle with identity, fear, self-confidence, etc. so you concoct a villain that exercises those negative voices on your protagonist.

 

The second pitfall when crafting a villain mostly occurs with writers who love to compose thrillers - or love reading them. If you love adventure, mystery, thriller, drama, etc. then your villain might just be composed as the most evil person on earth with dark secrets, a hidden path, and so on and so forth. You create your villain to the most mysterious, evil, juiciest person that you can. 

 

Well, the problem with Type 1 is that when your villain represents either your conflicting inner voices or a personal nemesis in real life, the plot is affected. You might accidentally get so caught up expressing the person who has wronged you and how terrible they are or how stressful it is to fight against darkness, that you don't pay attention to the real plot of your manuscript. Also, when you are writing about a nemesis in your personal life, you become biased, possibly leaving no room for reconciliation or a change in the villain's personality. When you write, your book's content must be devoid of personal feelings about or towards the characters as much as possible so that your personal preference doesn't override the plot or the authenticity of the story. 

 

What might prevent you from letting your own nemesis work his/her way into your writing is to force yourself to look over the attributes of your villain and compare them to any people who you might have had a conflict with - because sometimes we aren't aware of our bias perspective. You might also want to confront a mentor or even your personal journal so you can get out all the bad juices about your adversaries before you begin crafting your villain.

The second pitfall is one of the hardest to overcome once you get into it - or if you simply love a good villain, thriller, and gothic appeal. When constructing your villain it is easy to put all the worst-best things the antagonist could have - all the way down to the super-sonic hearing, a closet full of skeletons, a secret half-sister, and a tendancy to murder. Can you see the issue? If you're writing fantasy, the super-sonic hearing might be acceptable, but let's push that aside. Not only are you using all the possible traits a villain could have, making he/she out to be the worst, relentless person on earth with a million secret connections, but it also makes it difficult to follow plots. By doing this, the villain also appears unrealistic and far too dark. By making your antagonist to be the "juiciest of all time" you might loose focus on other things like inner conflicts, motives, true self, etc.

 

So how can you remedy the tenancy to make your villain a little too...villainous? Sit down and write a chart. Make up categories like "motives", "past", and "evil tenancies", this will make sure that you cover every aspect of your villain so that they will be balanced. And make a rule not to favor one category over the other, as that defeats the entire purpose of the chart. You also might want to consider having someone look at the chart to hold you accountable and give you an unbiased opinion of how realistic your villain appears. 

 

Hopefully this was helpful! Look back at your past work and read about the villains you have created in your past writing - were they the result of a personal nemesis or maybe just your overzealous imagination? You might be surprised. 

 

 ~Lydia Sherren