A common piece of advice given to authors regarding their villains is as follows: write a villain who believes he or she is the protagonist of the story. What does this mean? That a villain isn’t simply “the plot device that keeps the main character from achieving his goals instantly.” Instead, a believable villain has his or her own goals, desires, and frustrations beyond the fact that the hero constantly foils his/her diabolical plans. In other words, you could tell a story from the villain’s point of view and it would actually be interesting. This week’s Savvy Saturday gives three examples of this. Are you ready? Let’s dive in!
To get you started, here’s an awesome video from a very creative YouTube channel that tells the woes of Disney villains – in their own words.
Next, check out this brief piece of flash fiction (less than 150 words). The point-of-view character would be the antagonist if this story were written. However, you can also tell that she has issues that she’s dealing with – she isn’t just being mean for the sake of being mean. Take a look:
“It’s for your own good, you know.” Marina folded the twenty and slid it into her jeans pocket, ignoring Billy’s wide eyes and the red blotches forming on his seven-year-old cheeks. He stared at his clenched fist, as if he expected the bill to reappear in it at any second. “Mom never gave me money when I was your age,” Marina said, her tone purposefully light. “She said it spoils kids rotten.”
“But Aunt Jenny said it’s mine!”
“Aunt Jenny doesn’t care whether you become a spoiled brat.” That was true. All Jennifer cared about was her next check from the foster agency. “You want to be a big boy, the way Momma would want you to?”
Billy’s lip trembled, but he nodded.
“Then forget about the money and do your homework.” Marina watched Billy walk away, shoulders drooping. She kept her smile well hidden until he was gone.
Finally, my novel, The Quest of the Unaligned, features several characters who work against the main character Alaric, but have their own goals and struggles as well. First is Lord Ruahkini. The old nobleman honestly believes that he’s helping Alaric. He is simply so self-centered, proud, and convinced of his noble superiority that he just happens to nearly destroy the kingdom. Second, King Kethel and Queen Tathilya also want to do what’s best for Cadaeren and for Alaric…as long as it doesn’t interfere with what they want for themselves. They want to enjoy the privileges of being unaligned without the responsibilities that come with it – and when anyone tries to get them to change, they are (understandably) annoyed. These three characters are not quite as complex and interesting, however, as the mysterious Gaithim. This is the only individual in the book purposefully trying to destroy Alaric. However, his goal isn’t to kill the prince simply to gain power or to show how evil he is. Instead, he is attempting to prove his self-worth to everyone who has looked down on him all his life. More personally, he is taking revenge on his brother, who has treated him like scum and kept him locked away from society like a monster. He has valid and multifaceted reasons for everything that he does, so that if a novel was told from his point of view, it would both 1) make sense and 2) not be completely boring.
What is the goal of the villain in the most recent story you have read or written? If you wrote the book from his/her point of view, would it be interesting and complex? If so, why? If not, how could you change it to make it interesting and complex?
Everyone likes a good “and they lived happily ever after” story. The princess rescues the puppy, he saves her life from the big bad wolf in return, and they become best friends. The spies find the secret documents and prevent a war. The little boy studies instead of playing baseball and aces the test. In short, whatever the goal of the main characters was, they succeeded in it objectively, and this success is shown by the author to be a morally good thing.
However, the “success good” ending to a story is only one of four that an author can use to great effect.* The others, logically, are “success bad,” “failure good,” and “failure bad.” (Except, of course, for those occasional stories that don’t end, but just stop. This is supposedly very literary. It may be. I’m not a particularly “literary” kind of author – just one who tells stories that people like to read.) For those of us who like to read or write classic stories with a beginning, a middle, and an end, it’s worth paying attention to all the different types of endings that can be chosen.
The problem with “success good” endings is that audiences expect them. A different kind of ending tends to make audiences think more. Other endings are also often seen as more realistic and serious, if you’re trying to tell a story about the Hard Things in Life. “Failure good” stories, for instance, result in a main character not getting what he wants, but this being the best thing for him in the end.
For instance, consider a Jewish protagonist who tries for an entire story to keep his parents from finding out about his secret marriage to a Gentile. He is certain that if they find out they will never speak to him again. Through the story it becomes more and more difficult to maintain the fiction that he’s single, until finally, just as he has once and for all relieved his parents’ suspicions, his wife walks in and, with a large surprised smile, says, “Oh, you must be David’s parents. I’m so glad he finally decided to be honest with you about our marriage.” David winces, bracing for the storm to come, but his parents are triumphant that they were right – and elated that he has finally chosen to settle down. (“Now tell me, darling, when can we expect our first grandson?”) While there may still be some feathers that will need to be unruffled, the readers will be assured by the end of the book that 1) David would have saved himself a lot of trouble if he had just told his parents about his wife, but that 2) he has learned from the experience and is now a better person, and 3) he and his parents (and his wife) will have a better relationship in the future than they did when David still feared that his parents would reject him.
The other two kinds of story endings are downers – but still powerful. Some, told well, can be cathartic, while others are terrifying, chilling, or intriguing. “Failure bad” stories are the simpler plot/moral structure of the two. In this type of story, the main character is trying to achieve a goal that, if achieved, would bring him/her happiness. Unfortunately, the main character doesn’t succeed. Thus, happiness is lost. The end. Sadness. Romeo and Juliet is a classic example. (“Why didn’t you wait another FIVE MINUTES before you killed yourself? You could have been HAPPY FOREVER!”) This approach is also used in horror stories, when the main characters fail to keep the Ancient Evil from rising and taking vengeance on mankind, or when the main character can’t reform his bad habits or falls prey to his Achilles heel and ends up the worse for it. Often, these stories show the “true character” of mankind – that everyone has a fatal flaw, or that you cannot escape fate, or something similar.
The last main type of story ending, “success bad,” is often more ambiguous or mixed in terms of feelings. In this plot, the main character strives for and attains his goal – but it was the wrong goal. These are “empty victory” plots, where the main character realizes too late that he should have failed, and that he is his own undoing. These plots work very well with the stories of unstable or evil characters. Since their personalities are warped, so are their goals. They are convinced that killing the president, or taking revenge on their coworker who slighted them, or winning the tournament at all costs, are worth whatever sacrifices they have to make to get there. In a perfect example, Sweeney Todd (in the musical of that name) goes on a murderous bloodbath of a mission to kill the man who he thinks killed his wife. He succeeds, but in order to do so, ends up kills a meddling old woman who turns out to be – you guessed it – his wife. Horrified and driven mad, Sweeney doesn’t even notice when his own throat is slit.
These plots give audiences the satisfaction of seeing the character they sympathize with achieve their goals, but also gives a satisfying ending to those who don’t approve of the character’s actions. Murder is shown to be wrong. Revenge doesn’t satisfy. Money doesn’t bring happiness. And so forth.
It is also worth noting that these story endings can be put to good use to further a plot as well as finish it.
Every long story (such as a novel) has mini-plots that serve to drive the main character onward, either encouraging him to change his strategies or to maintain them in the face of danger. Success-good episodes encourage a character to continue doing what he’s been doing. This doesn’t lead to character growth, so typically, success-good comes either in stories with a relatively flat main character (e.g. Superman comics) or at the very end of a story after a character has already changed.
Failure-good encourages a character to reassess his/her goals and priorities. Take Sally, an athlete who is convinced she will only amount to something if she wins her track and field competition. She neglects her friends and studies in order to train, but then tears a muscle in her leg the day before the competition. As she is forced to take time off of athletics and spend time with people, Sally comes to realize that relationships with her friends – and with a certain young man in particular – may be more important than racing. In the end of the story, perhaps Sally will have to choose whether to accept an offer from a university far away for track and field, or a larger academic scholarship to a nearby university where her friends are going. While at the beginning of the story she would have chosen the sports offer immediately, now she has grown and changed enough that it is a victory for her to have received the other scholarship offer, and the fact that she chooses it will be good for her and her future.
Success-bad is an even easier way to have characters reassess their lives halfway, or three quarters of the way, through a story. In this case, characters might either actually need to change their strategy and this is a wake-up call, or they have the right strategy but it is cast into doubt. The middle-manager who succeeds at being promoted but garners the ill-will of her rival and the people she is supposed to supervise, for instance, will either need to reconsider striving toward promotion as what will make her happy, or trust that she is right and that continuing her strategy will ultimately resolve satisfactorily for her. The trick with this strategy is that the main character is actually good at what they do – they just may be doing the wrong thing in a given circumstance.
Finally, “failure-bad” plot points are an arresting way to pull the rug out from under a character. When a character blunders through a situation that he should have known better than to enter, or if he makes a stupid decision (e.g. entering a knife-throwing competition against a wizard) that turns his life upside down (e.g. being forced to abandon his job to go on a quest), it shows him that something in his life needs to change. Perhaps, like Alaric in The Quest of the Unaligned, he needs to pursue a different goal with different means. (In his case, “become the Prince of Cadaeren and stop dark magic – and trust people!” instead of “return to Tonzimmel and the individualistic life of a security chief as quickly as possible.”) In other cases, failure-bad plot points simply happen because the hero was not prepared, was tricked, or fell victim to bad luck. In these cases, the hero’s goal and methods may be appropriate, but he needs to try harder, think smarter, or otherwise step up his game before he can overcome his foe. For instance, an arrogant duelist who thinks that a young untried woman could never defeat him might not pay full attention to the fight – resulting in an embarrassing defeat and a subsequent vow of never underestimating an opponent.
As you read (or write), then, pay attention to both whether or not a person achieves his goals as a book progresses, but also to how the author crafts a narrative to give the character moral feedback on his/her actions. When does success NOT lead to happiness? When is failure actually a good thing?
Have you read any good book lately that don’t have a success-good ending? Post in the comments below!
*I learned this four-endings paradigm from the writing system Dramatica. It may be used by others, and it may be exclusive to that system. Either way, it’s a helpful way to conceptualize a story!
There’s something about fire that fascinates us as a species.
It’s unlike anything else on Earth – a visible force that can be controlled and tamed for good, yet when unleashed, destructive beyond imagining. It’s the foundation of civilization, a source of light in the darkness, so precious that ancient stories say that it came from the gods, and yet also a symbol of wildness that threatens to engulf mankind. It can be seen and its heat felt, yet no one can hold it or explain its shape. It is red, yellow, blue, white – a myriad of colors that can be expanded even further depending on what is being burned.
Fire has been part of ritual and ceremony for millennia. The ancient Jewish leader Moses saw God in a bush that was on fire yet was not consumed. When the Hebrew people constructed their tabernacle for God, they were commanded to keep candles lit in the holy place at all times. Sacrifices were burned, consumed in flames whose smoke rose to heaven. Other cultures also viewed fire as holy. Ancient Hindu ceremonies name Fire as the mediator between men and the gods, and some ancient Indo-European cultures worshiped fire itself as divine.
In modern America, while few people actually worship fire, we still make heavy symbolic use of it. If you think back to this past Friday evening – the 4th of July – I’m sure one instance will come immediately to mind.
You guessed it. Fireworks. From little crackers that pop and flash, to gigantic balls of colored flame that turn different colors in the sky, to golden showers of sparks that gently rain down from the heavens to vanish before they reach Earth, fireworks are the most obvious way in which Americans celebrate their independence.
But there are other types of modern rituals and art forms that make use of fire. For instance:
Light painting with fire. In this art form, individuals use long-exposure photography to create “lines of light” by moving sparklers or other small, controlled fire sources.
Taking this concept a step further, fire-twirling involves taking long exposure photography of sparking flame-sources that get twirled at the end of a rope. For instance:
Given these real-life examples, the ritualistic use of fire practically begs to be incorporated into whatever fantasy world you’re writing. For instance, the deaths of famous warriors or kings might be marked with a series of controlled explosions to ensure that the gods take note of the individual’s passing. Alternatively, fires might be lit and kept burning before the night of a great battle, so that darkness cannot touch the camp and bring evil luck. Perhaps individuals worry that the evil fire-spirits will inhabit their hearths, and the only way to keep them from being attracted to one’s fire is to light every new fire from the established fire of the temple, which has been lit in a certain way and blessed to keep other spirits away.
Fire-dancers could also be given a prominent place in a society’s hierarchy. Perhaps fire-dancing with lit torches, or fire-spinning as pictured above, is a show of valor, or of control, or of faithful perseverance. Perhaps only one or two children every year are selected to be raised as fire-dancers, and their skill with their flaming instruments is linked to their people’s victories or defeats in battle. Or perhaps the fire-dance is performed by every young warrior upon his/her first victory, in thanks to the powers of light that helped him/her overcome the foe. There are a thousand more options, each depending on the specific world and culture that an author has created. (Perhaps different cultures in a single world have slightly different fire-rituals, and each is amazed and shocked at what the others do!)
In sum, next time you think about fire’s role in a fantasy world, think beyond traditional “fireball” weapons that mages throw at each other. Instead, imagine a world more like our own, where controlled fire is a mystical and powerful force to be incorporated into the stories and ceremonies of the people – and see where your “spark” of creativity takes you.
Writers find it relatively easy to create characters who think as they do. It’s much harder to write believable characters who are devotees of a different moral paradigm. This is not to say that it’s hard to write villains: characters who are “just plain evil” can be slapped into a story with a few wide brush-strokes and left to cackle maniacally and murder anyone who stands in their way. (Preferably with a ray gun.)
What’s hard to write is someone who is moral, but whose concept of morality is slightly different (or very different) from the author’s. If it’s done badly, people who read your story and believe differently from you will be offended that you misrepresented their point of view. (Phrases like “straw man attack” and “stereotyping” tend to get thrown around at this point.) If it’s done well, however, creating moral conflict between two characters can shed light on real issues in society today. Writing moral conflicts – and then showing how those conflicts turn out – gives the author the power to invite people into his or her view of reality, and possibly even change people’s ideas about how the world is or should be. It’s a heady concept, but to make it work in reality, you have to understand how other people really think. You have to not just step into their shoes, but step into their heads.
As a sociology major in college, I took a class on contemporary social issues where we discussed this whole idea of differing moralities. The topics we studied were diverse and numerous, ranging from education to religion to politics and beyond. But whatever we studied, the professor kept coming back to one point: some differences go all the way down. At their core, some people come at the world with such different basic assumptions that there is no way that they will ever agree with each other – because even if they use the same terminology, they value fundamentally different things. Freedom versus moral behavior. Equality of outcome versus equality of opportunity. The good of the collective versus the good of the individual. None of these are bad on their own, and good people have fought and argued tirelessly on both sides of each. But they aren’t ever going to agree. Not without a change of heart as well as a change of mind.
So how as a writer do you accurately portray people on two sides of a sticky moral issue? Here are some tips.
First of all, don’t get lazy in your characterization. Characters who follow a different moral narrative than your protagonist shouldn’t be ugly, mean to small children, stupid, insufferable, or anything else that will “automatically” make your readers dislike them. (At least not unless the narrative truly requires it.) Let’s say that I’m going to be writing a story that features two individuals, one of whom believes in “equality of outcome” and the other of whom believes in “equality of opportunity.” Here’s a lazy way of showing which one is “right.”
As John walked home from the bus station, he smiled a greeting at the wrinkled woman in the tattered shawl who sat at the street corner of Elm and Maple. As usual, she smiled back – her teeth yellowed but her eyes bright – and as usual, John reached into his wallet. It wasn’t her fault that her boyfriend had left her with five kids to feed, or that the scumbag one-percenters who ran the town refused to pay their employees a decent wage. With as hard as she had worked to make ends meet before she’d gotten sick and had to quit her three minimum-wage jobs, she deserved a wholesome meal at least once a day, and by God, he was going to make sure she got it. He pulled out a ten dollar bill.
Suddenly, tires screeched and a horn blared just feet from his ear. Jumping to one side with a muffled oath, John just caught a glimpse of the driver of the red Mercedes as it flashed past. A round, fleshy face, a blindingly gold watch, and a contemptuous sneer. The car honked again at the mud-spattered farmer’s truck in its way, sped around it with another squeal of its tires, and was gone. John shook his head. “Someone should teach that punk a lesson,” he muttered.
“And who’s that gonna be?” the woman at his feet asked bitterly. “You?” She looked John up and down, at his cheap Walmart shirt and his patched blue-jeans, and shook her head. “He’d get you fired, son. You and anyone else in this town that dares tell him that he’s no better than the rest of us.”
“I know. It just isn’t right.”
“You’re tellin’ me.” The woman raised her eyebrows. “Thanks for the ten. It’s nice knowing there are some people around who still care about humanity.”
For the other side of the debate, go read some Ayn Rand. Either way, this kind of story makes an argument that will only appeal to people who already believe in the point you’re trying to make. If you’re trying to write a moralistic piece, then that might be what you want to do. If, however, you’re trying to write a piece of fiction that accurately and thoughtfully portrays real people, you’ll have to make your arguments much more subtly. Show people who believe in different things both behaving in a way that readers will find attractive (at least in some situations). Show them both having flaws that don’t relate to the characteristic that’s the moral issue of your story. Show them both making mistakes and learning from them. Show them listening to each other.
Once you’ve established that your characters are real people, your audience will care about them a lot more. Then, when your overarching narrative shows that the protagonist’s viewpoint is what will solve the problem of the story that you set up, the ending feels more believable and less preachy. It takes more work, but in the end, it will have a much greater impact on readers – and that’s worth it.
In our story above, let’s keep John as our “friend of the people.” He’s a worker at Walmart who believes that everyone deserves the right to have a certain standard of living. He cares deeply about the poor, and thinks that no one needs to earn a million dollars a year. People who are rich and greedy (which is pretty much everyone who’s rich, because if they weren’t greedy they probably wouldn’t be rich) should be required to help out those who haven’t gotten as lucky. He gives away ten percent of his income every year to help people who are down and out, and he volunteers on the weekends at the Homeless Mission. Everyone who knows John thinks that he has a real heart for the poor, and that he’s a real kind guy – if a little intense.
In the new version, however, our protagonist will actually be John’s coworker, Angelee. Raised by a single mother, Angelee is working at Walmart to put herself through college. She’s earning a degree in finance, because she’s good with numbers and she wants to make sure that she’s never broke the way her family was when she was growing up. To that end, she has seized on every opportunity she’s encountered and has always striven for excellence in the work she does. She fully expects that within a year she’ll be getting a job offer from a finance company, that she’ll study for and become a financial planner, and that she’ll use her knowledge and skills to start the first financial planning practice in her city – which she hopes will provide a much-needed service and also make her comfortably wealthy in the process.
Here’s a conversation that might happen between the two of them, very early in their relationship.
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“You give money to that bag lady every day?” Angelee asked, aghast.
John crossed his arms. “She’s not a bag lady! Her name is Roseann and she has five kids to support. So yeah. It’s the least I can do to help.”
“She isn’t a bag lady. So…she has a job besides asking for handouts?”
“She can’t work. She’s been sick.”
“For how long?”
John shrugged. “I don’t know. A year? Two?”
Angelee snorted. “Yeah. My mom had friends who were that kind of sick. Sick of work, sick of life, sick of waking up early and saying yes sir and no sir and doing things they didn’t feel like doing. If you and people like you stopped putting money in her basket, I’d bet she’d get well enough to work right about the time her stomach started rumbling.”
“You don’t even know her! How can you say things like that?”
Angelee raised her eyebrows. “I lived next to people just like her for eighteen years. Right until the day I moved out of the dump my mother had us living in and started at State College.”
“And you don’t feel bad for people who aren’t as fortunate as you are?” John shook his head, incredulity written in his eyes.
“Don’t take that tone with me. I wasn’t ‘fortunate’ – I worked dang hard to get here. Those people all had choices sometime in their lives, just like I did. They could have chosen to study more in school, or to get a job and stick with it even when they didn’t like it, or to not shack up with their boyfriend and get pregnant. I chose to take two jobs, including this miserable one, and go to college so that I could escape from all of that. So no, I don’t feel bad for those bag ladies on the street corners who get to sit and gossip all day while people like you and me work our butts off. And no, I’m not going to give them my money that I earned unless I see a much better reason for it than, ‘they don’t have as much as I do.’”
“I didn’t know that people could have hearts as cold as yours. Do you care about anyone besides yourself?”
“That’s rude. And yes, I do, though I certainly don’t need to justify myself to you.”
John gave her a knowing look. “Sure you don’t.” Turning on his heel, he walked away.
“Idiot,” Angelee said to his back. “Someday someone’s going to pop that beautiful bubble of dreams you’ve built for yourself, and you’re going to have to live in the real world.”
“Same could be said about you,” John responded over his shoulder. “And I want to be there when it happens, Scrooge.”
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So who’s right? Both characters are sure that they are. Who would end up “winning” in a novel? That depends on how the author crafts the story. Perhaps Angelee gets to actually know Roseann, sees the injustice that is built into the capitalist system in her city, and she and John become crusaders for the underdog. Or perhaps John finds out that Roseann isn’t really sick and has been spending his money on alcohol and drugs, he realizes that he hates his hand-to-mouth lifestyle (a result of giving away all his surplus income), and he decides that he’s going to go back to school and gain marketable skills.
Or, more likely, perhaps they both give in a little bit but continue to maintain their basic worldview. Maybe Angelee decides that Roseann is an exception, and decides that she’s going to start giving some of her income to people who really need help. And maybe at the same time, John recognizes that investing time now in pursuing an education and a high-paying job will ultimately lead to the ability to help more people in the long run than if he continues to volunteer at menial tasks and give a percentage of his minimum wage away. The story could go any of these ways, now that we have developed characters who feel deeply and strongly about their beliefs, and behave realistically (but not stereotypically) based on them.
So how are you going to incorporate differences that go all the way down into your writing? Or if you aren’t a writer, look for these issues the next time you read a book. Pay attention to how the author develops his/her argument for whatever moral issue or theme the book is addressing. Do the differences go all the way down? How does the author resolve whatever moral conflicts are presented? Is it believable, or do people change too dramatically? Does the author well represent the different points of view of the conflict he or she is writing about?
It’s relatively easy to write Perfect Heroes and Dastardly Villains. It’s much harder to write villains who are a bit more ambiguous, and yet clearly in the wrong. I’ve written before on why it’s important to write complex characters, even in children’s stories. But how does this play out in the “real world” of storytelling? Since it’s summer, and the perfect time to kick back and relax with a good story, this post will give you five enjoyable “research opportunities” to explore more in depth what it looks like to write a good villain. Specifically, they will all be antagonists from plays/musicals.
I know, it seems at first like a bit of a stretch. How does watching a play help you write a better novel? Three words: action and dialogue. One problem that novelists often have is telling instead of showing. “He was the sort of person you could never trust” is telling. Watching a villain tell a bold-faced lie or stab someone in the back (perhaps literally) is showing. Theater excels at the latter. Even in soliloquys or musical solos, a theatrical character is still talking in character. By watching plays, then, novelists can learn a great deal about how to show rather than tell about sympathetic (or at least ambiguous) villains.
With that introduction, let’s begin!
5. Richard II (Shakespeare)
Starting with the least evil villain on this list is the main character in Shakespeare’s eponymous play, Richard II. I first saw this play last week, as part of a DVD boxed set (“The Hollow Crown” – very much worth it!), and found myself quite unsure who I was supposed to be rooting for, and against, for about the first half of the story. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the story’s plot, Richard II is the rightful king of Britain. However, the play follows one of his young lords who returns illegally from banishment and overthrows Richard, becoming Henry IV. Henry is presented as the play’s protagonist, but it is only as the play progresses that we see just why Richard is such a bad king, though not really an evil man. First, fueling an audience’s contempt for him, Richard refuses to listen to good advice, and instead threatens his dying kinsman who gives it:
Second, immediately following this clip (and showing that it is accurate), Richard steals Henry’s inheritance to fund his costly wars, since the young man is banished and “cannot” come back to reclaim it. Henry does, however, and the rest of the country follows him to overthrow the king.
As the play continues, the audience gets more and more fed up with Richard. He is very much put upon, or thinks he is, the entire time. He is spoiled, convinced of his divine right to rule, has a mercurial temperament, and (most aggravating), he truly believes that he is deep and profound. It ends up being simply melodramatic and pathetic.
To give you an idea, take a look at this clip. He has previously agreed to give up the throne to Henry, to save his life, and now must do so:
In my opinion, this clip ends too soon. Immediately afterward, Lord Northumberland tells Richard to read out loud the charges against him, so that public record will show that he was deposed for reason. Here’s his eye-roll-inducing response:
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NORTHUMBERLAND
My lord,–
KING RICHARD II
No lord of thine, thou haught insulting man,
Nor no man’s lord; I have no name, no title,
No, not that name was given me at the font,
But ’tis usurp’d: alack the heavy day,
That I have worn so many winters out,
And know not now what name to call myself!
O that I were a mockery king of snow,
Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke,
To melt myself away in water-drops!
Good king, great king, and yet not greatly good,
An if my word be sterling yet in England,
Let it command a mirror hither straight,
That it may show me what a face I have,
Since it is bankrupt of his majesty.
HENRY BOLINGBROKE
Go some of you and fetch a looking-glass.
Exit an attendant
NORTHUMBERLAND
Read o’er this paper while the glass doth come.
KING RICHARD II
Fiend, thou torment’st me ere I come to hell!
HENRY BOLINGBROKE
Urge it no more, my Lord Northumberland.
NORTHUMBERLAND
The commons will not then be satisfied.
KING RICHARD II
They shall be satisfied: I’ll read enough,
When I do see the very book indeed
Where all my sins are writ, and that’s myself.
Re-enter Attendant, with a glass
Give me the glass, and therein will I read.
No deeper wrinkles yet? hath sorrow struck
So many blows upon this face of mine,
And made no deeper wounds? O flattering glass,
Like to my followers in prosperity,
Thou dost beguile me! Was this face the face
That every day under his household roof
Did keep ten thousand men? was this the face
That, like the sun, did make beholders wink?
Was this the face that faced so many follies,
And was at last out-faced by Bolingbroke?
A brittle glory shineth in this face:
As brittle as the glory is the face;
Dashes the glass against the ground
For there it is, crack’d in a hundred shivers.
Mark, silent king, the moral of this sport,
How soon my sorrow hath destroy’d my face.
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All together now: “FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!”
Shakespeare is the master of characterization. Even though his language is a bit archaic today, we can still see how Richard runs on (and on and on) in narcissistic self-pity. This is NOT a good king, and even though we feel bad for him, we see the need for him to be deposed.
4. The Wizard of Oz (Wicked)
Like Richard II, the Wizard of Oz in the musical Wicked is initially thought of as the good and beneficent ruler of the country. He’s the “rightful” overseer of Oz due to the powers that everyone thinks he has – and it’s only as the story progresses that we find that he’s actually a fraud. As Elphaba travels from putting her trust in the Wizard to fighting to bring him down, the audience too loses respect for this man. But even so, we see where he’s coming from. The wizard truly does care for his people, just as Richard II did. He just has a fuzzy/misguided conception of what’s right and wrong.
This ambiguous characterization is especially shown in the songs “Sentimental Man” and “Wonderful,” which are compiled here (not a great quality, but here nonetheless):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBBqpABXYXs
Whereas Richard II is aggravating, the Wizard of Oz is charming. He isn’t good, and in fact, he does things that are quite bad. He’s a temptation that Elphaba must face and defeat. But even so, we really don’t want to see harm come to him.
3. The Phantom (Phantom of the Opera)
The Phantom of the Opera is the Wizard of Oz taken a step further. He runs the Opera Populaire from the background, with a steel fist and an icy soul, ready to kill any who oppose him. He’s insane, brilliant, and incredibly dangerous. The Phantom is vindictive and irrationally possessive, he lies and manipulates those around him, and he openly prefers the darkness to the light – metaphorically as well as literally.
However, though he is clearly evil, the Phantom is also fascinating and pitiable. First, he is intelligent, passionate, and talented. We observe these traits in his single-minded pursuit of Christine, his setting up elaborate plots to gain revenge on those who he believes have wronged him, and his musical performances. (Showing, not telling!) Further, we see that though he has an incredible voice and talent for musical composition, he can never pursue his dreams openly because his face is horribly disfigured – causing everyone around him to react in horror whenever they see him. (Again, showing, driving the plot forward.) Third, the Phantom truly loves (or thinks he loves) Christine, which he shows through training her to sing and through seeking revenge on both her and her new fiancée when she abandons him.
The Phantom, like Richard II, is in pain for much of the second half of the play. But instead of whining about it, he outwits and kills his opponents until the end. While we don’t agree with what he does, the Phantom is a fascinating character – who we’re just glad that we’re never going to run into on a dark night down in the theater.
2. Javert (Les Miserables)
The musical Les Miserables is an amazing piece of writing. Given different circumstances and scenarios, Javert, a policeman whose sense of duty and justice drives him to hunt down fugitive Jean Valjean no matter what, could have been the hero of a play. Instead, his actions and their repercussions show him to be the play’s antagonist – though one with whom audiences can almost sympathize. While Richard II, the Wizard of Oz, and the Phantom of the Opera are villains because they have done things that are wrong or illegal, Javert is a villain until he breaks the law. It is in keeping the law, not breaking it, that he demonstrates that he is the antagonist of the play.
We see this in him wanting to arrest Fantine rather than let her go to the hospital, despite the fact that her daughter will die if she’s arrested (“I have heard such protestations every day for twenty years – let’s have no more explanations. Save your breath, and save your tears. Honest work. Just reward. That’s the way to please the Lord!”) We see this in him “joining” the noble revolutionaries as a governmental spy to nip the rebellion in the bud. We see this in him refusing to trade his life for Valjean’s: “Shoot me now, for all I care. If you let me go, beware; you’ll still answer to Javert!”
It’s when Jean Valjean, a supposed criminal, still refuses to kill Javert, letting him go and turning his conceptions of the world upside down, that Javert for the first time breaks the law. The audience sees Javert give in to mercy, then destroy himself because he cannot reconcile his new realization that mercy triumphs over justice with the life he has lived until this point.
As the play is written, no audience member sympathizes with Javert. And yet, he is the most moral of all the five villains of this list. Thus showing that good, when twisted just ever so slightly, can be just as villainous as murder.
1. Richard III (Shakespeare)
Speaking of murder, we finally get to the most villainous of villains who still counts as an ambiguous character – Shakespeare’s Richard III. Not only is King Richard a full-out villain, he rejoices in it. But he is the play’s main character, and gets the audience on his side by judicious breaking of the fourth wall, that is, inviting the audience to come and join him. In his opening monologue, he flatly states that he is deformed and therefore “cannot” be merry as is everyone else…
“And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other.”
Is this “telling” rather than “showing”? Why yes, it is – and here, it works beautifully well. The audience is stunned, beguiled, and enchanted. We know secret knowledge that none of the other characters of the play are privy to. As we then watch Richard lie and manipulate everyone around him, we are fascinated and feel complicit in his crimes.
However, this complicity wears off. By the beginning of Act 2, Richard’s crimes have grown more brutal and he begins to go insane. The audience watches him order children to be murdered, refuse to carry out his promises, try to woo his niece, and become increasingly paranoid. Through this, the audience is able to separate itself from him, and since it knows him and his thoughts, truly wish him dead. Richard alone of all five of the villains presented here leads the audience in such a 180 degree turn of opinion. It is an amazing piece of writing craftsmanship that the audience feels no sympathy for the main character, even when he is abandoned by his allies and killed in battle.
“Conscience is but a word that cowards use,” Richard says as he prepares to face his foes,
“Devised at first to keep the strong in awe:
Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law.
March on, join bravely, let us to’t pell-mell
If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.”
Which of these plays and villains are your favorite? What other complex villains have you enjoyed reading about or watching in a play?
You can imagine the magician who lives in the tower built into that pillar, can’t you? With his power over water, he is most at home surrounded by the sea. There, alone in his tower, his frail physical body neither garners sympathy nor contempt, and greedy kings and meddling earth-sprites can’t hinder his studies and research. His one worry stems from the inaccessible larger mountainous island nearby. Hundreds of years ago, a wizard even mightier than he lived and died there – leaving behind only a castle blasted to rubble, and a powerful containment spell that wraps around the entire island. Year by year, however, the spell is weakening. Whatever caused that wizard’s death and shattered the castle is still trapped on that island, and when it is freed, no one knows just what it will do…
“Earth and heavens, hear my call; fire and water, meet tonight!
Blast to ashes all who fear, Come and let dark swallow light!”
Face shrouded in shadow, hands extended toward the storm raging overhead, the cowled figure screams the invocation from the top of the tower built by long-dead kings. This spell predates them by a thousand years, and the fate that met them will soon meet the cowardly worms who betrayed him. Even as his voice combines with the thunder raging around him, he feels a thicker darkness gathering around the tower.
Muted shouts from below and the stamp of armored feet signal the arrival of the palace guard. Soon, the enchanter hears them pounding up the steps. Let them come. Their fear will consume them. He bares pointed teeth in anticipation, clenching his hands at the climax of his spell. He opens his hands. Thunder peals, shaking the tower from its foundations. As it gathers in strength, a vortex blacker than space itself begins to form in the sky. Now is the hour of my revenge. Now shall all who fear the darkness face it forever. Now! The vortex opens, pulling roofs off of houses with its strength. Screams suddenly fill the night, barely audible over the howling over the gale and the enchanter’s hissing laughter. Nothing can stop him now…
This, gentle readers, is the Rainbow Sea. The water of this ocean is so clear, the colors of the setting sun travel to its floor miles below, painting the merfolk’s houses and streets bright with pink and orange. Each night, the colors are absorbed into these living mother-of-pearl structures, and until the sun rises again, the streets and rooftops glow with its stored rainbow hue. Only one corner of the sea remains in shadow all night and all day: the Inky Crevice, where the only color that can be seen is the beady yellow of eyes that hate the sun…
How do these stories end? You tell me! Leave a comment below, and have a wonderful week of creativity!
I’m very excited to share with you a Q&A session I did with the wonderfully talented publisher of the INh (In Honolulu) magazine, Karleanne Matthews. A graduate student as well as a journalism professional, Karleanne is a delight to know and also an insightful interviewer.
It’s summertime! Time to kick back with a cold drink and read a book – or maybe even write one yourself! Today’s Savvy Saturday post will give you a chance to flex those creative writing muscles and brainstorm ideas for your perfect story. I’ll get you started with some prompts – feel free to take them and run with them, and if you come up with something awesome, let me know!
Ideas for characters:
A gruff sea-captain who always wanted to go on for higher education, but was instead apprenticed as a cabin boy by his father at age 10. He’s never forgiven his father. He hopes that someday he’ll have enough money saved up so that he can retire to a nice place in the country and learn Latin and Greek and study the classics, but he secretly knows that it’s just a dream. He is both fascinated by and jealous of the educated passengers he sometimes takes on board, and will occasionally swallow his pride enough to trade a lesson in seafaring for a lesson in physics or history. But not often.
A timid, mentally slow, plain younger daughter of a grocery store manager. She was teased horribly in school, which made her retreat further into herself. She likes to sit in a corner and knit; she makes scarves, hats, and mittens with intricate patterns that she donates to charity. While she knits, she listens and observes the world around her. She empathizes with anyone she sees suffering, though she isn’t brave enough to do anything about it. She feels paralyzed and powerless, and she pours her fears and sadness into her knitting. That is the one part of her life she feels she has control over and is good at, and through that she can help other people who need warm things for the winter.
A centaur (half man, half horse) who was kidnapped by humans when he was young and raised in a menagerie. He has always been bold, energetic, and reckless – he was kidnapped because he strayed away from his parents and the herd and got lost – and has tried for the past decade to free himself and return home. He doesn’t trust any humans (except, perhaps, the young indentured stable-boy who is just as trapped as he is), but has tried to learn all their tricks. He can pick locks, mimic accents and voices, and has even learned the rudiments of swordcraft by watching the guards practice outside the menagerie and practicing with a stick. He’s always looking for an opportunity to escape. He doesn’t remember home very well, just shadowy images and the memory of the heady rush of running with a herd, but he’s confident that he’ll make it back some day. As soon as his captors slip up, even slightly.
Ideas for settings:
Under the sea on a planet covered in water, where merfolk, not humans, have thousands of years of civilization. Empires have risen and fallen, and now the people live under the strict but fair rule of the greatest warrior of the age. A strict class system is in place, with the largest and strongest individuals serving as warriors against the ever-present threat of sharks, bandits, and invasion. Many are farmers, raising schools of fish for food. (The people of this world are carnivorous, like the other creatures of the sea.) A few are craftsmen who carve instruments out of rock or forge them out of metal in the deep-sea volcanic vents. And the most respected individuals are the priests, who care for the sacred pearl that symbolizes the king’s right to rule.
This civilization is jeopardized, however, when a terrible secret is uncovered by the one person who has the power to save the kingdom, or destroy it…Who is this? What is the secret? What happens? That’s for you to decide!
A small kinship-based tribe (the Kuatl) living in the jungle. Danger is part of everyday life for the Kuatl, as sharp-toothed fish wait below the surface of the murky rivers, venomous snakes hang among the vines of the trees, and acid-spitting monsters lurk behind piles of rocks, all waiting for their next meal. Not that the Kuatl have no defenses of their own. With simple magic to keep the less powerful creatures at bay, and cunning and courage to match the attacks of the more powerful creatures of the jungle, they have survived for many generations.
When the chief sees in a dream of power that the Kuatl face disaster, however, all the cunning and courage of the tribe may not prove enough to keep them alive. The chieftain must risk everything to lead them to an unknown land through the dark heart of the jungle, a deadly place rumored to be inhabited by unnatural monsters…and worse.
In Hathan, everyone can fly. The First Levitation, which occurs between ages five and eight, is as much of a mark of passage as taking one’s first step or losing one’s first tooth. By the time children are ten or twelve, they zip through the air like the hawks and eagles with which they share the sky. Many people, however, (especially the elderly) don’t have the energy to fly for more than short distances, and even those who can rarely carry much with them. The exceptions are the Lightning Brigade. These heroes are part military, part Boy Scout, and part rock star. They need less oxygen than most so they can fly higher above the traffic, they are strong and vigorous, and they always help little old ladies carry their groceries home.
One little boy has dreamed his entire life of being part of the brigade. There’s just one problem… (Does he have asthma? Is he afraid of heights? Is he the only one in his community who doesn’t have flying powers? Is he legally prohibited from joining the brigade because his father is a criminal? You decide!)
Ideas for plots:
A twin sister and brother form the world’s best acrobatics team. They have trained together from childhood and can nearly always finish each other’s sentences. Neither can imagine anything separating them – until a new girl appears who is every bit as good as the sister. The brother is fascinated by and attracted to her, resulting in a significant rift in the twins’ relationship. When it turns out that the new girl is actually in trouble and needs their help, the sister must overcome her jealousy and join her brother to rescue the girl from the criminals who want her – and discover why the new girl actually came to join their acrobatics team.
A master spy is framed and condemned by his own king as a traitor. He joins a band of gypsies to escape the hangman’s noose, posing as a musician. He must perform his way across the country, escaping detection by both the king’s guards and the nosy (but good-hearted) other members of the gypsy company, as he attempts to uncover who framed him, why, and how to foil whatever plot is afoot.
Two best friends, both members of a fantasy book club, start reading a new book from the library and get magically transported to the world of the story. They find themselves in the summer residence of the king of the land, who is intrigued by them and is quite willing to send them back – if only he can find out how to do so. As the two friends learn more about the king and his realm, however, they discover that he is actually the villain of the book! Despite this, it seems as though he is still likely their best chance of getting home. One friend decides to stay with the king (“history is written by the victors, and he doesn’t seem like a bad guy”), while the other decides to leave before the king realizes they know who he is. The one who leaves falls in with a band of rebels, the book’s protagonists, who plan to overthrow the king. Both friends know how the book “is supposed” to go, but both want to use this knowledge to try to help their ally. Eventually, the two friends find themselves on opposite sides of a battle that will decide the fate of the kingdom. It seems as though whichever side wins, only one of them will go home alive…if a way can be found to go home at all.
I hope you enjoyed these little snippets of ideas, and I hope they inspire you! How would you incorporate one (or multiple!) of these ideas into a story? Which one is your favorite? What brilliant ideas do YOU have for new characters, settings, and plots? Comment below!
I’ve been pretty busy the last few weeks, editing my work-in-progress, traveling from coast to coast, and getting into the summer academic swing of things, so I decided to let Alaric, Laeshana, and Naruahn guest-post for me today. They’re answering two questions that readers have submitted recently to their tumblr page. (Do you have questions? Feel free to submit them!)
Question 1: Are there ever cases where a noble is born with magic that doesn’t match his parents? Like if Nahruahn had been Naeshan instead?
Naruahn: Ew! That’s a horrible thought! Then I wouldn’t be able to pop anywhere or fly and I’d burn things when I tried to cook – well, more than I do already –
Laeshana: *ahem* Great question! From what I’ve read of your world’s science, it appears that magical abilities are passed down a line in an individual’s genetics. If both parents are a shamai, for instance, then their child will always be a shamai. If one parent is a shamai and one is a ruahk, on the other hand, then a child has a 50% likelihood of being one or the other.
Naruahn: Then how come all three of my brothers are shamais and I’m the only ruahk? That isn’t fair!
Laeshana: That’s statistics for you.
Naruahn: I don’t like statistics.
Alaric: You and me both.
Laeshana: *AHEM* As I was saying, however, the genes for magical inheritance appear to be recessive rather than dominant, so having one parent who is magically gifted is no guarantee that his or her child will also be gifted. Often, actually, they aren’t. But that’s the only case in which you could have a child being born a different alignment than his or her parents: if a mother was an aesh, for instance, and a father’s mother had been an aretz but he didn’t have magic, his children could potentially be aeshes, aretzes, or not gifted at all, depending on which genes he passed along to each one.
Naruahn: What if his mother was a shamai, and he had kids that were shamais, but his wife was an aesh? That would be horrible! They’d end up killing each other!
Laeshana: *glare*
Alaric: *ahem* Moving on!
Question 2: Laeshana, you mentioned aeshes, aretzes, and “others with special talents” being called to Ruahkini’s “I found the prince, I’m awesome” meeting. So, if there are ruahks and shamais (probably not many unaligned) in Tonzimmel, do the words refer to specializations there (certified _____)? Do the mages tend to go into certain fields, even if there isn’t one with their name on it? The question’s also open to Alaric, if he knows.
Laeshana: That was a fun night, all right. You’re right – Ruahkini called all of the aligned of Tonzimmel together to boast about how he found Alaric, no matter what our official job titles were. There aren’t that many of us in the city, so the meeting wasn’t too large. Most are aeshes and aretzes, with a few ruahks scattered here and there and one or two shamais. Just a hint – if you’re ever in Tonzimmel, stay away from anyone claiming to be a shamai. They’re a strange group, even by Tonzimmelian standards.
Alaric: But there are few enough of them there, you probably wouldn’t run into one. In fact, Tonzimmelians use the word “shamai” just to mean someone who has strong persuasive abilities. It’s a bit pejorative, actually. Same with the word “ruahk” – usually it just means someone who’s an airhead. Not that surprising, though, given that both the words were introduced into the language by aeshes.
Laeshana: True. Anyway, as you’ve probably already seen from the chronicles of our adventures in The Quest of the Unaligned, “aesh” in Tonzimmel means “certified engineer,” and “aretz” means “certified healer.” Some aeshes and aretzes do choose to go into other fields, which causes no end to confusion when we’re talking with each other. You can’t give up being an aesh, in the Cadaerian sense, even if you’re a teacher or a politician or a glass-blower. But if you haven’t passed the certification exams in Tonzimmel, you can’t claim to be one there.
To actually answer your question, though, most aeshes and most aretzes do go into their “named fields” in Tonzimmel. It pays better than most of the other jobs we’d be qualified for, just given the supply and demand for our skills. Ruahks, however, typically tend not to get permanent jobs in Tonzimmel. They come to town, entertain people for a while with magic tricks and tall tales, then leave in a week or so when they get bored. And shamais? Who knows what Tonzimmelian shamais do. Sit and mope about how much better things were when they were children, probably.
Alaric: Actually, there’s an old story that goes around the TFSF about a shamai in league with the underworld. According to the story, he persuades rich passers-by to give him their purses, and they don’t realize until he’s long gone that they’ve been robbed. Huh. I hadn’t thought about that in a long time. I wonder if there’s any truth to it.
Laeshana: Probably. I hope not. That’s a scary thought, actually – a shamai as king of the Tonzimmelian underworld. Who knows how much damage one person with that power could cause?
__
That’s a good question, actually. How much damage WOULD a shamai cause if such an unscrupulous individual managed to get to Tonzimmel and gain a position of authority in the world of organized crime? Hmm. It sounds like a story might be in the making…
I am very impressed by people who write historical fiction. As much work as it is to write fantasy or sci-fi, you aren’t bound by the confines of reality when you write in these areas. If you want to write a story about a broadsword-wielding female knight who’s a heroine of the realm, you can go ahead and make up a world where that’s a perfectly normal (or at least socially accepted) thing to do – and if it isn’t socially acceptable, you can create ways in which your character can circumvent the rules and end up being a hero anyway. (The Alanna series by Tamora Pierce is an excellent example.)
Writing a fantasy story set in the modern real world is slightly more difficult, but still allows for a degree of creative license. While you have to be accurate in your descriptions of real settings, you still have free reign over the rest of your story. You want your characters to have grown up in fairyland and be able to read people’s minds? Go right on ahead. You want your protagonist to be able to travel from China to the United States and back in twenty-four hours? Give them a magical rod of teleportation.
I recently read an excellently written urban fantasy book by Katherine Kurtz that makes good use of both research and imagination. It’s titled The Adept, and follows the adventures of a nobleman in modern-day (1990s) Scotland who is also a sorcerer-detective. He tracks down users of the Dark Arts with his Powers of Light and brings them to Justice – with the help of the fey and the Loch Ness monster upon occasion. Kurtz’s research on her setting is detailed: place names and detailed routes abound, with descriptions that help the reader see Scotland as clearly as if he/she was watching a film. But the author’s system of magic allows for the creation of a unique plot that could never happen in real life. Seeing backward in time, magically discovering where a missing person (or object) is currently located, using a magical artifact to summon up fairies – all of these are crucial elements of The Adept that Kurtz created out of her own mind to advance the story that she wanted to tell.
Writing historical fiction, in contrast, leaves no margin for error. When done well, it teaches the heart as well as the mind, bringing a unique perspective on real events that help readers better understand humanity’s past. When done poorly, it is an embarrassment to the author at best – and at worst, can cause serious harm to readers and society by influencing their perceptions and beliefs in ways that are not reflective of reality. The dangers of writing poor historical fiction are compounded when an author attempts to write about a Historically Important Event – for instance, concentration camps in World War II.
It was for these above reason that I was initially reluctant to read Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein. A sequel (kind of) to her critically acclaimed (besides gripping and heart-wrenching) Code Name Verity, the book is the first-person account of a fictional American female pilot who is captured and interred at Ravensbruck. In many ways, this book is a female young-adult version of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. However, while Solzhenitsyn was a political prisoner himself in a Soviet work camp, Wein had to do her research from scratch.
Though I was trepidatious at first, I soon discovered that the author had, indeed, done her homework. And the result is very, very impressive. Like Code Name Verity, the book is written as a series of diary entries, letters, and similar narrative pieces, including original poetry written by the fictional protagonist, which allow her to both describe and reflect upon her experiences. As a novel, Rose Under Fire is an example of how historical fiction can bring insight and understanding to historical events, as it crafts a tale full of foreshadowing, metaphors, and clean endings that are rarely (if ever) found in real life. The story all ties together, with the optimistic beginning leading smoothly and inexorably to a gritty, raw middle, and on to a pensive ending that wraps up all the story’s loose ends while offering hope and the promise of a future.
Not only is Wein an excellent story-crafter, she tells a story that is real even though it is fictional. In her afterward, she asserts that the myriad of details regarding Ravensbruck are based on historical fact – from precisely how German concentration camp officers would address prisoners by their assigned number, to the thickness of the sleeping mattresses. The amount of research that went into this book is evident, and incredible. It is the kind of book that includes not only acknowledgements at the back, but also a bibliography, a list of survivor accounts (including The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom), and internet sources for individuals who want to learn more. This is what it takes to write a good historical fiction novel, and I am duly impressed.
Rose Under Fire is not a pleasant work of fiction, but it is a powerful one. There is strong language in it, as well as the dark and gruesome subject matter itself, and so would be a book I would recommend with caution. While I don’t see myself ever writing in this genre, and rarely read it, Rose Under Fire was well worth the time it took to read its 340 pages.
