is it important to develop the villian?
should the villian be a one-dimentional silly easily defeated foe, or have some substance?
i cannot decide. this novel is meant to be comic-booky but the characters are getting a bit more developed. as the days pass.
also i am writing in third-person Omniscient, but in each chapter i showcase the inner workings of a different character, and all others are kind of viewed through thier actions and dailog.
like a black and white world where only one person is in colour per chapter.
is the too confusing?
day 9: 2049 words. 17,839 total.
have any of you found that you have a strong desire to write things other than your story?
posted by natalie @ 1:57 AM
3 Comments:
Funny you should ask. My main character, Bronte, said the following regarding villain development:
I had a trying time with Mann. Heroes are easy to write because they tend to be alike. They all have a strong desire to please, for example. Heroes live and die for approval, which is witnessed in their compulsion to couple with as many sexpot scientists as they can manage within the space of three or four hundred pages. They are handsome and intelligent, of course. They tend to be tall and either dark or blonde. They have pleasing accents and are equipped with a an endless supply of pithy remarks.
Villains are difficult. It’s easy to understand why the hero strives for the public good. He’s rewarded for it in any number of ways. But why does the villain do evil? I have a hard time believing that villains do evil because it’s in their nature. I can’t help but believe there must be some other reason. And there’s the crux of the problem. Each villain is unique. Tolstoy said that all happy families are the same but all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way. I think that it’s safe to say that our well-adjusted heroes tend to come from happy families, which is why they’re generally all the same. But our villains must come from quite different homes. Neglectful or even abusive homes.
funny. my unoriginal solution was a bad family.
According to Tolstoy, a bad family can't be unoriginal. Only a good family is unoriginal. And I would add that a villain who is a villain without any apparent cause would be unoriginal. Very Dr. Evil. A sympathetic, dynamic villain with a past that somewhat explains his villainy is more original, in my humble opinion.
Further, that you are taking the time to get to know all of your characters, not just the good and noble ones, is a credit to you as a writer.
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