Good to be BAD: Why We Love the Villain

Every story needs a troublemaker. Have you ever wondered why the most enduring stories have the worst villains? Ever put down a book because you just didn’t care about the story? Maybe the stakes weren’t high enough. Maybe the bad guy just wasn’t…bad enough.

Several years ago someone gave me this advice: to write a strong plot, start with the antagonist. It sounds backwards, right? But from a storytelling perspective, it makes perfect sense to start with the villain. Here’s why:

The villain is often a twisted version of the hero. Strong villains have a motive that opposes your main character’s goals. If your hero wants to eat ice cream, your villain is blowing up ice cream delivery trucks because of some deep-seated sundae phobia. Both hero and villain have similar interests, but on opposite sides of the issue. They are two sides of the same coin.

The best villains have a tragic backstory. When we learn about these defining events in the villain’s past, we begin to understand why they act that way. Maybe the poor guy hates ice cream sundaes because his psychopathic mother forced him to eat giant sundaes every day until he got sick, while he was locked in the basement staring at decomposing rats. We sympathize. It’s a complicated and yet compelling feeling, to care about the villains even as they do horrific things.

Villains reflect the evil we see in ourselves and others. Let’s face it, there’s a villain in every one of us. Fictional villains just take it to a whole new level of badness, often with cool stage makeup and special effects. Fictional villains offer a safe way to voluntarily process the deep, philosophical horrors that play out in our own communities. Like that dark and terrible day when Blue Bell recalled all the ice cream because of the dread villain Listeria. There is evil in the world, Aurora.

Villains provide creative freedom. As writers, we spend hours developing the character qualities of our protagonists. For those of us who write series fiction, we need to stay within the confines of our main characters because they are the anchors that hold the whole thing together. But introduce a new villain to the mix, or give your existing villain a new toy, and all bets are off. Ice cream trucks explode. Banana splits ooze with poison syrup. Anything can happen.

And finally, the main reason we love a good villain:

Villains are unapologetically selfish. Hell-bent on getting their own way, villains are determined, driven, and will stop at nothing. Killing? No biggie. Blowing things up? Sure. Allowing gallons and gallons of delicious Blue Bell ice cream to go to waste? Whatever it takes. We might not agree with their methods, but if we’re honest with ourselves, we admire a villain’s commitment. Go hard or go home.

Next time you sit down to write, turn the monster loose. Make your villain more evil and powerful, so your hero can get stronger. Up the stakes. Give us drama, make us cringe, incite tears. Back your hero into a corner, give the villain the upper hand, and then see what happens. Can your hero overcome the strongest of villains? 

Now that’s a good story.

An Ode to Snape

Severus or Snivellus?

Despite Youtube being the life-long enemy of my productivity, sometimes Youtube does me a solid and reminds me of something I love. I stumbled upon this video doing the Youtube rounds a few months back. Harry Potter fan or not, do yourself the big favour of watching it for the next 14 minutes! 14 minutes seems like an awful lot of time to commit to anything on Youtube but it's worth it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhOQ4VW6xV8

Well, now you know... and probably knew already... the multitude of reasons why I consider Professor Severus Snape to be the best of J.K.Rowling's many brain-children. His characterisation dazzles me because he could have easily just become this cardboard-cutout of an antagonistic dark figure set up to punish Harry, but instead J.K.Rowling spun him into a gloriously intriguing character instead.

Writers are told to avoid cliches and we really should do our best to do so. Deny the Damsel in Distress. Cancel the Chosen One. Ban the Brooding Bad Boy. Wean yourself off Wizened Mentors. Cookie-cutter cliches are not our friends. However, if all cliches are bad, how then did J.K.Rowling manage to become so deservedly successful when her books contain all of the above figures in some form or another? She uses cliche-inspired characters by the dozen, but gets away with it! More than gets away with it! Masters it and woos us into loving these characters! What's her secret??? I don't know - she hasn't told me. However, this is what I think...


First, she does more than just tweak her characters. She turns them on their heads.

If you were wondering who the Damsel in Distress of Hogwarts is, I see Ron and his cascading ginger locks cast in the role. He's always getting into trouble and can't always get himself out of it at first. To his credit, he saves a fair few people too. However, he bumbles his way through many a crisis.

Then in swoops Hermione to the rescue. Again. Neither Ron nor Hermione being perfect, J.K.Rowling still makes Hermione more of the protector than Ron.

On top of that, she's not afraid to make a hero horrid and a horrid person heroic.

There are no perfect personas made charmingly 'human' by one minor flaw in her novels. Giving a character one or two small foibles, like mild shyness or clumsiness, will not fool your reader into thinking your character is fully flesh and blood. Take Rowling's version of the Chosen One, Harry. Like all Chosen Ones, Harry struggles with his path and his destiny. However, Harry really, really, really struggles with it. At first, he's just this every-man character who gets to go to magic school and take us along with him for the ride. Then, from the third book onward, Harry the Teenager starts making a ton of mistakes. He can be clueless. He gets jealous. He falls out with friends. He is from time to time selfish. Shock! Horror! The Chosen One is human and probably has acne too! Harry the Chosen One makes a fair few mistakes too and is also just plain wrong in some cases. I'm sure I'm not alone in having found Harry irritating at times, but I still always wanted him to prevail!

Alongside her willingness to have horrid heroes and heroic horrid people too, J.K.Rowling doesn't rush to make you fall in love with her brain-children straight away. She has patience.

If you asked me now, I might be tempted to say that I had ALWAYS known that Snape was on the right side and that from Book One I had known that he'd be the anti-hero to save the day. I'd be lying. I spent the first two books in fear of Snape and comparing him to the worst teachers at my school. He didn't just have the illusion of being bad. He truly had many bad characteristics which he kept until the end of the series. He sneered at students. He bullied Harry and more. He petrified all. He led a bitter life. Yes, in the background, he was loyal to Albus Dumbledore and was a protector, but he still wasn't likable or appealing in any way to the people around him.

*** SPOILER ALERT! *** AND SERIOUSLY YOU HAVEN'T READ THEM YET?!?!?!!

Entire books passed by before we found out his even darker past and betrayals and other characters questioned his loyalty. Most of the books had passed by before we discovered that he was Lily Potter's closest friend and that James Potter had been less shiny than expected. J.K.Rowling gave us glimpses of Snape the hero here and there between all the scenes of horrid, but she made us wait and wait and measured out bits of Snape over time until we finally had a full understanding of how heroic a character he could be. While most cliches jump out at you and scream "Look at me!" in a less than subtle manner from the minute you see them, Snape had been the Brooding Bad Boy of a Severus-Lily-James love triangle and we hadn't even known it for multiple books.

One of my favourite Snape lines has to be when Snape, who no one trusts, and Dumbledore, who everyone trusts, discuss what Dumbledore has planned for Harry. A shocked Snape says, "I have spied for you and lied for you, put myself in mortal danger for you. Everything was supposed to be to keep Lily Potter's son safe. Now you tell me you have been raising him like a pig for slaughter." In that one page, Snape proves himself the protector and Dumbledore the betrayer (but I can't speak ill of him! I won't!) and the reader is left stunned! Beautifully done! What a story arc! That takes both planning and patience that I am in awe of.

We don't need to throw all the cliches out, but have fun playing with them! Toy with overly traditional gender roles! Turn cliches on their head and splice them together and remake them! Make your heroes and villains meet at some murkier middle point! Commit some time to fleshing them out bit by bit! You don't find out everything about a person in one conversation!

Now time for a re-read! And I'll leave you with my favourite wizened mentor for company!

Stuck for Speech?

Stuck for Speech?

Tackling the Difficulty of Writing Realistic Character Dialogue

So...an eon ago or so, I went to one of my first ever writers' groups and, despite being petrified of sharing, I got up and read my extract aloud while everyone in the circle was doodling comments all over my paper. My hands shook and I almost lost my place a fair few times whilst being distracted by wondering why the fella in the blazer was frowning so sternly down at my poor, quaking paper?? Was it really THAT bad?? Happily and surprisingly, I got some alright feedback for my first time - with one person liking my descriptions of surroundings and a few people sticking up for my ability to make a character likable and nearly everyone wanting to know what happened next... BIG sigh of relief and I sat down ready to melt back into invisibility. Then the guy in the blazer wearing the catastrophic frown spoke up and asked me, "Are your characters friends or not? They don't seem to be speaking to each other at all. Why don't they speak?"

First ever criticism received and a dagger to my heart!! But, after a few rereads, I realised that the astute fella in the corner wasn't out to destroy my precious fledgling novel but instead was absolutely right! I had apparently avoided character interaction and active dialogue as much as possible without even noticing it and the more  I thought about it, the more I realised that I sucked at writing life-like dialogue between characters. Everyone has stronger suits and weaker areas - realistic dialogue is my writing nemesis. In life, I'm a pretty gregarious person once I know you, but I swing between silently hoping for someone to fill the awkward silence and spewing babble at people to overcompensate when I first meet new people. I noticed that my characters were doing the very same thing in my getting-to-know-you novel. They were speaking very little because of my fear of dialogue and being overly described instead OR speaking in longer speeches and overcompensating with long, drawn out sentences. And neither of these felt very realistic or like human speech.

I'm going to share some hints to tackle this and to de-robot your dialogue. I'm no expert - more experienced in being very flawed in this area - but here are some ideas to try along with me!

(1) Read some plays!

A bit obvious I know, but whether you write short stories or novels, you need to read some plays even if they're not "your thing." Plays are the ultimate challenge in writing good dialogue! There's no escaping dialogue because there are no distractions of paragraphs of description and paragraphs of thought processes of characters - pure dialogue! I could never do it! The idea horrifies me! But you have to admire the people that can and they are the best people to learn from, as a good playwright has honed the ability to reproduce dialogue in such a way that it powers a whole story. Two of my favourites have to be Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" and Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," because these playwrights manage to convey SO much and SO MANY different characters' voices in such clipped sentences.

(2) Watch some tele!

This is THE perfect excuse to get into your PJs and watch some Grey's Anatomy! Guilt-free tele because it's research!! Screenwriters too know their dialogue better than most and you might as well learn from the best. Think back to shows where you've been hooked on certain characters and why you gravitated to those characters and watch them again! Some personal favourites of mine to be inspired by would be Mr. Omar from "The Wire" and Captain Mal Reynolds from "Firefly." The first character saying so much with so few words and the second character being a bringer of banter and that (for me) is REALLY hard to write. Go revisit some of your beloved TV friends.

(3) Be a nosy-parker!

My granny would not be proud of me for this one, but I 100% support being a bit nosy and eavesdropping in a caf or on the subway or wherever. Listen to some real people talk and you'll find out that most people don't talk the way they (or you) write. In most scenarios, they don't brainstorm and then think about what they're going to say and then review and edit their words. Take a sampling of the people around you for inspiration. I wouldn't go so far as to record them or anything, but just let them wash over you and notice some of the next few ideas:

(4) Stick to shorter sentences!

There are a ton of blogs and books on writing that support this idea of "Short and sweet." In some of my nosy sessions in a cozy cafe, I noticed that it's true. People say an awful lot with very little. We have a ton of shorthand in conversations and we don't typically explain everything in paragraphs or info-dump in speeches. Saying a lot is NOT the same as writing long sentences. Keep your sentences for dialogue shorter than the sentences you would use for description and setting the scene. Monologues and speeches are rarer than Shakespeare would have you believe, so let your characters interrupt each other and interject and speak in a different way to the author's descriptive voice.

(5) Don't create perfect speech!

When writing in general, I'm a grammar pedant. I can't help it. It's compulsive. But when writing dialogue, I've learned to let that go and break the rules a litte! Just make sure that you're doing it on purpose ;)

In our spoken shorthand, we use short speech. In short speech, we butcher grammar left, right and center. You DON'T always need full sentences. You DON'T always need the BE verb for that gerund. You DON'T always need the right spelling. I teach ESL to Korean students and I spend hours telling students to focus on syntax and build sentences and there's always that savvy student who comes back at me with, "But... Miss! Why do we have to? You don't!" And they're spot on. Native speakers of a language can happily butcher their own language as they already know they can do it right.

(6) Trim your talk!

Get out your red pen now. Apply it to bits of dialogue that don't:
(a) advance your plot
(b) reveal character
(c) set atmosphere
Now, don't get me wrong - banter is great! But make sure it's adding either to character or atmosphere!

(7) Everybody talks different or differently!

Wouldn't it be a bit odd if everyone you knew spoke the same way that you do? I'd go so far as to say it'd be a little bit creepy. You don't want to accidentally give your characters the same voice or same speaking style. Even though I've just finished telling you to keep things short, boom...let some people speak more than others and in longer sentences and a hundred other differences. A good example of variety would be Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice." Go and have a look at the dialogue differences between the pompous Mr. Collins and the more down-to-earth Elizabeth. Contrast the frivolous Mrs Bennett and the more concise and sharp Mr Bennett. There are a ton of differences in dialogue and that's all within one small community of people.

(8) Get a world of feedback!

Helping with this idea of variety is the usefulness of getting a variety of different people to read your work! As many different types of people as possible! Maybe they're different in background or character or other ways, but it's good to get some fresh perspectives on whether or not the dialogue feels natural to them. I tend to show my stuff to a hardcore few. But I'm determined to get a greater variety of voices to look at my hopefully varied array of characters!

(9) Freestyle with a friend!

If said friends are willing or easily bribed with wine, give them a situation from your story and a role and do a little improv together to see how this might happen in a spontaneous situation. While not delivering perfect results, it may help you shake yourself away from overly-scripting your dialogue and you can borrow bits of it to make your dialogue seem more spontaneous. And if it fails, at least there'll be wine.

(10) THE MOST IMPORTANT FOR LAST! Read your work out loud!

When you finish a conversation on the page, READ IT BACK TO YOURSELF OUT LOUD! What seemed perfectly natural whilst writing might seem rather odd when speaking. So speak it. Record yourself. Listen back. Mock yourself when you've used vocabulary not natural for that situation. Push yourself when you realise that your characters all share one voice. And edit yourself when you realise that your dialogue has the same type of sentences as the rest of your writing. Because there really should be a difference.

Good luck and let me know if you have any tips for me on this! Still struggling with it!