I’m finishing up revisions on my Blaze-targetted manuscript and recently had a conversation with my CP Marley about the plot. Meltdown was my second manuscript, and though in many ways it’s the book where I found my voice, it’s pretty obvious to me that I was still learning a *lot* about storytelling. I first submitted this book in January of 2003 and when I finally got a chance to work on it again, my entire skillset as a writer had changed. In the interim, I’d written half of another Blaze, a novella, a single title romance, and a full-length, heavily plotted action adventure. I had the following issues that seemed to add up to a pretty insurmountable list:
1. A “big misunderstanding” plot
2. A heroine with a whiny and juvenile internal conflict
3. A sagging middle that was little more than a series of temper tantrums on the heroine’s part.
4. A textbook central casting slut villainess
How was I supposed to fix this? this wasn’t a revision, it was a complete overhaul. It was turning this sow’s ear with a rather nice trim (must be what the editor saw in it) into a something resembling a silk purse. I needed to downplay the “misunderstanding”, to beef up the IC, to totally rewrite the middle, cutting the temper tantrums and replacing it with meaningful dialogue, interactions and sex, and to fix that villainess.
Now, having come straight off of Lost Girls, in which the villains were heroes, the heroes were villains, the dead villains were heroes (well, according to my CP) I was used to writing complicated bad guys. I prided myself on it! I scoffed at central casting bad guys I saw in published books. And then I — gulp! — read my manuscript.
Oh, crap.
How did I do this? How did I think it was acceptable, back in 2002? Half of me wanted to just write the editor and tell her to forget about it. But I dug in, and I fixed, as far as I’m concerned, three out of the four of those problems.
As for the villainess, she’s the devil incarnate. If anything, I think I upped her vile level, her evil quotient. In my first draft, she’s a jealous slut ex girlfriend, shallow and fame hungry, who dumps the hero at the most vulnerable time in his life. In my final draft, she is all these things, plus, she holds a grudge that the hero managed to put his life back together without him, and seeks to sabotage him and his new girlfriend.
I really couldn’t see any other way around it. For the plot to hold together, she NEEDED to be an unredeemable bitch. I figured, of the 4 problems I saw, the villainess was the one I could live with most. Marley spent a long time comforting me, telling me that readers love to hate characters like this, that if I wrote her to be incredibly hateful and mean that it would bond them to the hero and heroine even more deeply. But I still had my doubts. Was my evil incarnate villainess just an easy way out? In my mind, these guys just need to be understood. I was sure they were perfectly justified and righteous, we just don’t understand them.
Boy was I naive. In the months since, I’ve learned that there actually ARE people out there who seem to live to make your life miserable. You have never done anything to hurt them, you are just trying to live your own life, which would in no way hurt, affect, or even involve them, and they still take every opportunity they can to hurt degrade, and yes, even sabotage you (just like my villainess) for some imagined insult.
And so, in doing my final pre-postal read, I found that I didn’t have such a problem with my villainess as I thought. Is Courtney over the top? Hell yeah. But it’s okay. I feel it’s much more realistic now than I did when I wrote it. Sad, huh?
(Oddly enough, another writer blogged about villains today, although she dealing with an entirely different issue. Something in the air? However, she got me thinking about the whole Dorian Gray thing. I want to know where these RL villains keep their “ugly” portraits.
So what do we all think about villains? Can they be straight unredeemable Wicked Witch of the West villains, if it’s right for the story?
January 31st, 2005 at 10:29 am
Villains. Hmm. Well, I don’t mind really, really bad villians who are unredeemable, because they exist in real life. There ARE people who are beyond help. There ARE people who can’t be rehabilitated. There ARE people who are just plain evil.
However. Even the worst villians rarely have neon signs pointing them out. They look normal, they act normal. They have likes and dislikes and soft spots. Rarely are they Saddam Husseins who have no redeemable qualities.
When I’m reading a novel, I want to be able to sympathize with the bad guy so he appears human and not some sort of Freddy Kruger. That doesn’t mean that I have to see his human side in how he behaves in the present. He/she can be as evil and non-feeling as needed for the plot.
But I at least want to know that there is a REASON for their evil nature. That they were abused as a child or were diagnosed as sociopaths early in their childhood when they started burning their pets alive at the age of 5. I want to see WHY the villian comes across as a singularly evil person…if I don’t get to see the “nicer” side of them during the course of the book.
Does that make sense?
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January 31st, 2005 at 2:21 pm
Wow! Very thought provoking post, Diana. I remember Vogler saying in TWJ that Villians are the heros (or in this case heroine) of their own story–something that really made me go hmm when I read it–so I think your Villianess can be whatever you need her to be.
Unlike Larissa I don’t need a reason, I need to be intrigued (Ie Norman Bates or Hannibal Lecter or the villians in the Alex Cross novels). But human nature and what drives us to act has alwasy fascinated me. So yeah I definitely think they can just “be bad” for lack of a better word. After all, even the Wicked Witch had a sister =)
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January 31st, 2005 at 3:16 pm
Cece pointed me over here, Diana. I also have a eevil villianess, in ms#2. And she was categorically a beeyotch. gg. But I gave her one scene where the reader did see her vulnerability. That she did love the H, and was willing, at first to do anything to have him, then later, anything to give him his happiness. So while I think you can make your bad guy/girl completely over-the-top, you have to give that little ‘in’ that touches the reader, that makes them have a twinge of sympathy. I didn’t follow your link–was it to Alison’s blog on The Wire. I knew exactly what she meant about characterization, that’s what I like to see, a bit of complexity.
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January 31st, 2005 at 8:01 pm
I haven’t written a villian yet, but I have one for the upcoming ms..so I’m just soaking it all up! Great discussion you guys.
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January 31st, 2005 at 9:50 pm
I know what you mean, Larissa. I usually feel the same way. I’ve written evil before (I had a child molester villain in one book) but — is this too awful to say, that I can get in that head more easily? He had a sickness, a mental deficiency. I can see where his evil is coming from — it’s coming from a mind out of whack. What do you do with someone who is sane, but is completely motivated by her own shallow, self-involved and vindictive worldview? You can’t say, okay, this is Hannibal Lector, he’s a human monster. You have to say this chick, well, she’s just a bitch.
Cece, I love that quote by Vogler, and I *lived* by it when I was writing my action adventure. I have no doubt that Courtney (my villainess) is the heroine in her own story — but it’s kind of like, say, Wickham in Pride and Prejudice. He *has* a story, it just doesn’t hold water. He’s wrong.
Jaye, this is where it gets interesting to me, like what Cece was saying about the Wicked Witch’s sister. I like that you did get into her head and gave her some reason, if if it wasn’t one your H&h were going to swallow. In my case, she and the hero had been a hot — if shallow — item, and she viewed his illness and subsequent personality change as a personal affront. She dumped him when he was sick. I don’t think she was in love with him, but she was very much in love with the image she’d constructed of their lives together – lives which he didn’t show any interest in resuming. I guess the point where i stop understanding her is when, a year later, she goes out of her way to make his life and the life of his new lover (heroine) miserable. I think it’s ebleivable, becuase I know there are people who would do that, but I cannot get into that head. It’s like — GET OVER IT! (By the way, the other blogger was Lydia Joyce, who was talking about the beautiful=good, ugly=bad paradigm)
Hey, Sasha! Thanks for dropping by. I love villains. they are my favorite parts of most books. You’ll have a blast. My fave villain I’ve written to date is Annis (I named her after an old college roommate — in thanks for helping me out with soem language issues). I adore jana, but she was more of a “nemesis” thana villain. Ooh, next blog topic: what’s the difference?
Do any of you guys remember an old Disney special from about 15 years ago hosted by “the Magic Mirror” talking about how it’s villains that add color to a story? I’ll see if I can dig that up.
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January 31st, 2005 at 9:56 pm
> Ooh, next blog topic: what’s the difference?
I’ll be waiting LOL. I think the movie Mean Girls (I’m sick but I loved it. I’ve been on a teen girly movie kick lately) is a great example of just mean for reasons some of us might not get (vs evil and/or sick).
And no I don’t remember the Magic Mirror =(
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February 1st, 2005 at 8:24 am
It depends on the story. I’ve done villains who were just plain evil–though even evil people need a motivation. Then I’ve done bad guys who turn out to be kinda pathetic because they truly believe they have no choice and if their life had been different they might never have gone down that terrible road and you could end up feeling sorry for them.
Suzanne
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