Stick Figure Villains
Dec. 20th, 2008 03:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pjthompsonReading over later chapters of Venus In Transit to get back into the story I realize that once again I'm suffering from Stick Figure Villain syndrome. My first drafts often have this problem, and I have to work extra hard to give some dimension to my baddies. Either that, or I go too far in the other way: I give them so much backstory and motivation that I fall in love with them and want to make them the hero of their own story.
Some Famous Writer (who I can't remember at the moment) once said, "Every villain is the hero of their own story." Or maybe it was a Famous Actor. (Anyone know who this is?) Regardless, it's true. The villain, in order to be truly dimensional, has to feel perfectly justified in their actions.
I think my most successful villains to date were three novels ago in Shivery Bones. I fell so in love with Annia Sabina from that novel that I've got to write a novel from her POV. I already wrote a key scene as a novella from her eyes and loved every second of it. One of the great things about her was that she walked on stage fully formed, declared herself bad and completely unrepentant. How can you not love that? Even Duke Chavez, the ultimate bad guy of that novel, turned sympathetic in key scenes, but I had to work extra hard to get him there. He was the stickiest of stick villains at first.
It required me asking the question, "What made him so bad?" and diving in there to rut around. It's too easy to say, "He's crazy." He was crazy, but how did he get there? It's too easy to say, "He was born that way." Some bad people are—bad seeds from the start. But most bad people are made, I think, either through social factors or family factors, or both. How was Duke made bad? Once you put yourself into the six-year-old incarnation of your bad guy, allow yourself to see, experience, feel what he did when he was too young to defend himself, how can you ever despise him again? If you're doing it right, I don't think you can. You can despise what they've become, despise the things they do, but I think you should still retain some sympathy for that little kid who was so badly bent. Then, I believe, you're on the cusp of creating a true villain, one with shadings and hidden nooks in which they are the hero of their own story.
I imagine I'll whip the current stick villains into a better place in subsequent drafts. The villain from novel before last still needs some work, is still doing too much mustache-twirling and foot stamping. I've gone a little ways into the shady nooks of that character, but not far enough. It's a murky pool to dive into, full of unpleasant weeds that cling to my legs, and at the bottom it's possible I'll find a shiny rock that—if it had been formed under different kinds of pressure—might have turned into a diamond.
Some Famous Writer (who I can't remember at the moment) once said, "Every villain is the hero of their own story." Or maybe it was a Famous Actor. (Anyone know who this is?) Regardless, it's true. The villain, in order to be truly dimensional, has to feel perfectly justified in their actions.
I think my most successful villains to date were three novels ago in Shivery Bones. I fell so in love with Annia Sabina from that novel that I've got to write a novel from her POV. I already wrote a key scene as a novella from her eyes and loved every second of it. One of the great things about her was that she walked on stage fully formed, declared herself bad and completely unrepentant. How can you not love that? Even Duke Chavez, the ultimate bad guy of that novel, turned sympathetic in key scenes, but I had to work extra hard to get him there. He was the stickiest of stick villains at first.
It required me asking the question, "What made him so bad?" and diving in there to rut around. It's too easy to say, "He's crazy." He was crazy, but how did he get there? It's too easy to say, "He was born that way." Some bad people are—bad seeds from the start. But most bad people are made, I think, either through social factors or family factors, or both. How was Duke made bad? Once you put yourself into the six-year-old incarnation of your bad guy, allow yourself to see, experience, feel what he did when he was too young to defend himself, how can you ever despise him again? If you're doing it right, I don't think you can. You can despise what they've become, despise the things they do, but I think you should still retain some sympathy for that little kid who was so badly bent. Then, I believe, you're on the cusp of creating a true villain, one with shadings and hidden nooks in which they are the hero of their own story.
I imagine I'll whip the current stick villains into a better place in subsequent drafts. The villain from novel before last still needs some work, is still doing too much mustache-twirling and foot stamping. I've gone a little ways into the shady nooks of that character, but not far enough. It's a murky pool to dive into, full of unpleasant weeds that cling to my legs, and at the bottom it's possible I'll find a shiny rock that—if it had been formed under different kinds of pressure—might have turned into a diamond.
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Date: 2008-12-21 05:34 am (UTC)What I also find particularly interesting is when readers chastise writers when good guys do immoral things, as if in allowing an otherwise good person to commit a bad act, the writer is condoning said act. I've got characters who are basically good but do/say things that I most certainly would never do or approve of, but that's because I try to make it so they're not all me-clones.
In my reading, my favourite characters are the ones where you have trouble figuring out if they're a good guy or a bad guy, and not in the cheesy, overdone way of having the adventurer hero who is rough around the edges or stuff like that. I love ambiguity, where flawed people do flawed things but aren't necessarily evil.
My favourite evil characters in things I've read/seen are the ones who don't take themselves seriously about it. Mocking their own evil...that's awesome when pulled off well...
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Date: 2008-12-22 06:38 pm (UTC)Exactly. You've got to do the work there, just as you do with any of the characters you write.
What I also find particularly interesting is when readers chastise writers when good guys do immoral things
Yeah, it irks me, too. Paragons of virtue are also stick figures. Sometimes good people do bad things, and vice versa. Most of us carry devils and angels both inside us, reptilian instincts as well as higher thought.
Mocking their own evil...that's awesome when pulled off well...
When pulled off well is the crucial bit because I've seen this done with a considerable helping of cheese, too.
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