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?
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!
Today I got to watch people pretend to punch and kick each other for three hours. It was delightful. I took lots of notes.
I hadn’t planned on doing research for my writing today when I went to campus; I had planned on cleaning my office, working on a paper, and categorizing citations on my computer. But when I saw that a Hollywood stuntwoman and alumna of the university (Jessie Graff, credits include Live Free or Die Hard and X-Men: First Class) was going to be giving a “master class” this afternoon in the theater department – “Free and open to the public!” – I figured that the citations could wait. Even though I’m not writing anything right now either involving martial arts or the stunt profession, learning about both of them in the context of a workshop class was a fantastic opportunity.
In my experience with martial arts and rapier, the instruction is aimed at giving individuals a deep knowledge of the sport. History, proper mindset, technique, solid footwork and grounding, all is important before you start getting to the parts that “look good” to an audience. A three-hour theater workshop in stunt fighting, however, is completely different. There, it’s all about what your actions look like. In other words, perfect for a novelist. The class also moved quickly: the instructor took the class through basic punches, rolls, and kicks, as well as how to “properly” respond to them.
“To learn how to properly react to being hit in the side of the face,” Graff said, “place your hand on your chin, push your head to one side, and let it go limp.” Note how your head swivels, but it doesn’t lean to one side. Further, it doesn’t just turn and stay there as if you’re purposefully looking over your shoulder. Instead, it “bounces” slightly, rebounding/jiggling in reaction to the sharp movement. (Try it and you’ll see what I mean.) Graff said that she likes to think of the reaction in a “1-2-3” pattern – side, forward, side, all happening very quickly. If you’ve been “hit” especially hard, blow air into your mouth, inflating your cheeks and exhaling quickly.
Camera angles are also a much larger part of stunt fighting than I had ever thought about before. Good stunt doubles and actors will see where the camera is pointed, draw a line from the camera to the actor’s face, and know from that both what height to hit at and when the actor should respond to the hit. For instance, the instructor said that she once had to throw her punches at triceps height for an actor she was supposed to be hitting in the face, because the camera was shooting up from the level of their feet. A bit strange, she said, to be aiming punches at his arm and having his head respond to her “blows.”
Being ten feet away from a skilled stuntwoman, watching her demonstrate attacks and blocks over and over again, was a fantastic experience for me as a writer. While I don’t need to be able to do the things that fighters can, I do need to be able to write them in a way that others can picture them. In a way, then, writing is like being a stunt person. You don’t need to be able to actually throw a punch, you just need to be able to fake it well enough that the people who are enjoying the entertainment you produce think it’s real.
With that in mind, here are some mechanics I learned today about how various types of attacks and blocks work. These aren’t going to give you enough detail to become the next superhero, but they should help you write about one.
How to stand like a fighter:
– Always shift, and stay on the balls of your feet. Don’t let your heels touch the ground.
– Your feet should be shoulder width apart, with your off-foot (left, if you’re right handed) forward and your primary foot at between a ninety degree and forty-five degree angle.
– Keep your elbows in and your hands up in closed fists, with your thumbs on the outside of your fists.
– Keep a straight line going from your arms up the back of your hands: if you want to practice, you can rubber-band a chopstick to the back of your hand and your wrist. If you let this get sloppy, you can break your hand if you hit wrong.
– Stay low: imagine that you have a bar placed over the top of your head, and if you stand up, you’ll smack into it.
How to block a punch
– The block comes from your hip, shoulder, and arm. If someone punches toward you, twist your hip and shoulder so that you’re almost showing your back to the attacker. This should result in your back heel lifting off the floor.
– At the same time, lift your elbow up against your ear, so that your hand is behind your shoulder. This is almost a “combing your hair” type of motion.
– Keep your arm tight against your head; this presents a flat surface (that isn’t your head) to the attacker.
– During all of this, keep looking at the person you’re fighting so you don’t miss anything that happens.
How to throw a punch
– The motion of your hip initiates the movement, whether you’re throwing a jab, cross, or hook.
– Keep your muscles taut all the time.
– If you’re jabbing, turn your body to the right as you punch with your left. It’s opposite for a cross.
– Keep your arms straight, but slightly bent: don’t hyper-extend your arms or you’ll hurt yourself.
– For a hook punch: turn your hips, extend your arm, then come in from the side. All of this should be on one horizontal plane: no punching upward or downward.
How to duck a hook punch:
– Keep your eyes on your opponent
– Bend your entire upper body forward in a u-shaped motion toward the direction of the punch, by twisting your hips. (So if the person is swinging with his right, you duck from your right to your left and come up again.)
– This presents the small of your back as the target, rather than your head.
– Keep your fists by your face to block.
How to roll into a fighting stance:
– Imagine a line that goes from your right pinky down your arm, then across your back in a diagonal line to your left hip and down your left ankle. This is how you land in a roll to be able to come up fighting.
– Once your back is on the ground, tuck your left foot behind your right knee, in the shape of a four. This allows you to push up on your right leg and be in fighting position.
– Once you know what you’re doing, you can do things like grab a sword on the ground as you go into a roll, then come up out of it holding the sword and ready to fight.
Two other ways of using rolls:
Dive roll. In this roll, Person 1 flips Person 2 over Person 1’s shoulder. Person 2 goes into a roll and comes up fighting. To do this: Person 1 is standing in front of Person 2, facing the same direction. Person 1 holds the wrist of Person 2 with his left hand across his body, and reaches behind him to grab Person 2’s shoulder with his right hand. Using his hips, Person 1 throws Person 2 forward and into a roll.
Back roll. In this roll, Person 1 is facing Person 2. Person 1 grabs Person 2’s shirt and falls backward on purpose, with his left leg straight and his right leg bent to his chest. As Person 1 falls, he places his right foot on Person 2’s lower abdomen and pushes, sending Person 2 flying over Person 1’s head and onto the ground. Person 2 lands in a roll.
In addition to learning this information, I had a blast watching the theater students get into the acting portion of the workshop. From the right angle, you could almost believe that these students were actually knocking each other silly. And then one or the other of them would laugh and the spell would be broken. All in all, it was a remarkable afternoon: both enjoyable for its own sake, and hopefully profitable for later writing. A perfect way to celebrate being done with the semester.
I saw her at our end-of-the-semester party last night: she didn’t fit in.
Most of us were grad school students. There was a one-year-old baby, two twelve-year-old boys who poked and laughed and punched each other all night, and a spouse or two. And then there was her.
Short, quiet, dark of hair and skin, curled up on the bench with a library book, she looked like she knew that she was the odd one out. She was fourteen, and was the sister of one of the twelve-year-old boys. He had brought a friend. She had brought a book.
As she sat there turning pages, just beyond the fringe of the gathering, she reminded me of someone. Me. When I was younger, I always brought a book along to awkward social gatherings, or any event that could potentially be boring. I even brought books to “fun” things, just in case. (I can’t even count the number of homeschool “park days” where my exasperated-yet-amused mother had to tell me to put down my book and go play with my friends.) I’m experienced enough now that I can typically tell the difference between “DON’T DISTURB ME, I’M AT A GOOD PART” reading, and “I’m reading because otherwise I’ll be uncomfortable and awkward” reading.
I watched her for a few seconds – her reading was definitely in the latter category. She’d read a bit, then look up when she heard people laugh, or wander over to the drinking fountain, or sigh and shift positions. My heart went out to her.
I walked over.
“Is that an interesting book you’re reading?” I asked with my best attempt at a friendly smile. She nodded silently, looking slightly alarmed at being spoken to. I felt slightly alarmed at the alarm on her face – I’m not used to being the “scary adult” that I remember being intimidated by as a child. But I introduced myself nonetheless, and tried to look friendly as she stumbled over her words as she introduced herself in return. “I like to read too,” I said, giving her another smile. “And to write. Good stories are awesome, aren’t they? What’s that one about?”
She, however, had latched on to the first part of what I had said. “You write?” she asked. “Like, fiction?”
“Yeah. I’m a novelist.”
Her eyes grew huge in her dark face. “Really? Have you been published?”
I nodded. “One of my books has.”
Her look of wonder was like a child upon seeing Santa Claus leaving presents under the tree. It was a bit disconcerting. “Oh my gosh! What’s your book about?” she asked.
I gave her my spiel: The Quest of the Unaligned is a fantasy novel about a young man who grows up in a technologically advanced society, but is tricked into going on a quest through a magical kingdom. Of course, he doesn’t believe in magic, which makes things difficult, especially when he discovers that he’s the prince of the land.
As I talked, this girl literally began jumping up and down, her library book forgotten on the table beside her. “Really? Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! That’s amazing!”
I thought the same thing. I’ve never had someone react that way to my telling them that I’m a published novelist. Ever. It was unreal.
“Do you like to write?” I asked her, though it was pretty clear what the answer was from her giddiness. Of course she did, she told me – and more than that, she liked to write fantasy and science fiction.
“Were you ever…” she asked, then looked up at me hesitantly, “a bookworm?” She said it like she was afraid it might be a derogatory phrase.
“Oh, my whole life!” I assured her. “I still am.”
It was amazing how her face lit up, and after that, the words came fast and enthusiastic. At my prompting, she told me a little about her work-in-progress, and then asked me to tell her about getting my book published, and then we were summoned to the dinner line for burgers and bratwursts. When it was our turn, the grad student in charge of Fire and Meat asked us what we wanted. I turned to my new friend, who just looked at me helplessly. I turned back. “I’d love a burger,” I told the grill-master.
The girl perked up. “That’s what I’m going to have too!” she said, as if she’d been planning on it all along.
I nearly died from the adorableness.
As we neared the end of the line, my new friend shyly asked if she could sit next to me. (Of course she could.) She tagged along behind me, and I introduced her to my other grad-school friends. We had quite a nice dinner, and she didn’t open her library book once.
“Thank you so much,” she told me later, clutching her book in one hand and jumping up and down again. “This was amazing! I’m going to get your book from the library and read it! I can’t believe it. I never thought I’d meet a real author tonight!”
I gave her my email address and told her to let me know if she has questions about writing or publishing, and that I’d be happy to help. She looked like I’d given her a new puppy. At least I think she did – I had tears in my eyes by that point. She waved at me as she left with her father and brother, still bouncing and wide-eyed.
It was weird. I’m a first-year PhD student, not a celebrity. People haven’t heard of my book, and most just give me strange/tolerant looks when I say I’m a novelist. But every so often, it seems, being a fantasy novelist gives you the power to encourage someone in a unique way. To tell a teenager that being a bookworm is cool, that reading fantasy is awesome, that writing fantasy is even more awesome, and that you don’t have to be an English major to do it. To show that it’s possible to be a normal person and get a book published.
Perhaps even to be an inspiration, the way that other writers and my professors have been inspirations to me.
In today’s Savvy Saturday, I want to give a shout-out to my many wonderful writing friends and their unique and fabulous writing voices. While having a good story to tell lays the foundation for a novel, having a good voice is what keeps people reading. Some authorial voices are fast-paced, excited, dashing from one adventure to another, while other authors meander through the landscapes of their stories, giving you time to smell the literary roses. Both are worth reading, but they tell different types of stories.
I’ll show you what I mean.
Last year, some of my English-major friends and I participated in a writing game. We each took the same opening to a fantasy story, written in the first person past tense, and rewrote it in our personal voice. Take a look at these opening segments, and you’ll see the differences in authorial voice between them. How would you rewrite this story opening? What kind of adventure would this opening lead to for you?
My version:
I awoke to the warbling of birds and the rustling of wind through the trees. Still half-asleep, I took a slow, deep breath. The heady scent of a pine forest filled my lungs.
Pine? That couldn’t be right. My head still foggy and confused, I fumbled around for my glasses and found them near at hand. I put them on and gasped.
I wasn’t in the hammock where I’d gone to sleep.
More than that, I wasn’t in Nalai anymore.
This pine forest, with its soft grass, its birdsong, and its lack of hills, wasn’t anything like the jungles and mountains of the island where I distinctly remembered falling asleep last night. My memories of the night before were crystal clear: I had bid my friends goodnight and we’d all drifted off to sleep in our hammocks, each suspended between two of Nalai’s abundant palm trees. The ocean had lapped softly on the Nalaiyan beach nearby, the warm night-breeze had carried with it the smell of tropical flowers, and the air itself had tasted rich and exotic.
Nothing like the crisp wind that was now blowing in my face. What was going on? I shivered and pulled my light blue coat around me, my thoughts flying fast as the pine needles swirling at the bases of the nearby trees. Then I frowned. Why was I wearing my coat? Or, for that matter, my travel clothes? I patted the pockets of my heavy-duty pants, and found my folding knife and the stronger-than-it-looks thin rope that I always carry with me when I go adventuring. My frown deepened. It certainly didn’t look as though I had been plucked from my hammock in Nalai.
I gritted my teeth, let out a deep breath, and clasped my knife firmly in hand. Whatever had happened, I was going to get to the bottom of it…
_____
My first friend has a down-to-earth authorial voice. She sounds friendly, uses a colloquial style, and her writing is quick-paced and active. Take a look:
Friend 1
I awoke to the warbling of birds and the rustling of wind through the trees around me. I breathed in deeply, the fresh scent of a pine forest filling my lungs. My eyes snapped open. I bolted upright and scrambled to my feet.
Where am I?
This pine forest didn’t look anything like the jungles and mountains of Nalai. There was no sign or sound of any animal or human presence nearby. I was alone in the grass-carpeted glen.
What had gotten me here, leagues away from Nalai, and back in my travel clothes, without waking me up?
I closed my eyes and pressed my fingers against them. I concentrated on the swirls of neon blue and yellow in an effort to keep my mind from going completely wonkers. Okay. Okayokayokay. Umm. Not good.
Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to know that I wasn’t going to get out of this mess by panicking. I exhaled and opened my eyes. My gaze fell on a path leading out of the clearing…
____
My second friend’s style is a bit more relaxed, introspective, and flowing. Note, for instance, the use of semi-colons and two kinds of mental dialogue (normal authorial voice and direct speaking to oneself). This friend typically writes literary fiction, which spends a lot more of its time on description and characterization than on plot happenings. It’s beautiful work, but gives a very different flavor to the piece than the almost panicked section above.
Friend 2:
I awoke to the warbling of birds and the rustling of the wind through the trees.
Where was I?
My head hurt a little. Had I gotten drunk again?
No. No, that made no sense. I’d never been drunk; I’d never made it past a warm buzz in the whole course of my life. Drunk people got stupid, and I didn’t like being stupid. Besides, I despised the feeling of nausea too much to risk it; by sheer force of will, I hadn’t vomited since about age twelve.
Alright. Congratulate yourself later. Focus.
I breathed in deeply. This place smelled like… pine.
My eyes snapped open, and I sat up. Where was I?
The last thing I could remember was bidding goodnight to each of the other members of our gathering, and drifting off to sleep in my hammock, suspended between two of Nalai’s strong-but-supple palm trees. The ocean had been lapping softly on the Nalaiyan beach nearby; the warm night-breeze had carried with it the smell of tropical flowers. The air itself had tasted rich and exotic…
But this? Pine. Soft grass, familiar birdsong, no hills… It didn’t look anything like the jungles and mountains of Nalai. I listened hard, but, besides the birdsong, there was no sound of any animal or human nearby…
_____
Last, my third friend has a wonderfully droll (though somewhat dark) writing style. I often find myself chuckling at the wit and cleverness in her work, even as I’m carried along by its easy flow. See for yourself!
Friend 3:
I awakened in gradual stages to the clamor of birdsong and the rustling of wind through the trees. The air was fresh and tangy and smelled of pine. I nestled deeper into my bed of moss and twigs, hoping it wasn’t terribly early in the morning.
Wait.
Birds? Pine? Moss and twigs? Where on earth was I?
My eyes snapped open and I sat up, disoriented. This… couldn’t be real. I last remembered bidding my friends a good night and drifting to sleep in my hammock, alarmingly suspended between two of Nalai’s abundant palm trees. The ocean had been lapping softly on the beach nearby, the warm night-breeze had carried the smell of tropical flowers, and the air itself had tasted rich and exotic.
I found my glasses lying beside me, put them on, and stared. This pine forest, with its soft grass, familiar birdsong, and utter lack of hills, didn’t look like anything I’d seen in Nalai. To make matters more bizarre, I’d gone to sleep in my pajamas, and now I was dressed in my travel clothes. They weren’t anything fancy: just a shirt and trousers and a light summer coat with—yes, of course—empty pockets.
I had no idea what I was doing here. I couldn’t remember anything beyond falling asleep in a hammock. Had I been drugged? Poisoned? Cast into one of those particularly nasty spells, where you think you’re living through all sorts of unpleasantness while your enemies point and laugh? If yes, someone was going to spend his retirement reminiscing about how he’d once had a liver and spleen.
Until he’d eaten them.
_____
I love reading my friends’ writing – both these friends, and others who have beautiful voices of their own. I must admit, I nag them probably more than they would like to share their unfinished work with me. But I’m sure you can see why. Each of us has our own unique style, our own way of telling a story, that lets us start with the same material and take it in completely different directions. And that’s why there’s always room for another author to tell “the same” story – because no one has a voice like yours.
If you come up with an opening based on this writing exercise that you’d like to share, paste it in the comments below! Or feel free to use it and start your own adventure, with your unique authorial voice to lead readers on a journey they’ll never forget…
The top movie in theaters this week was the film Divergent, based on the book of the same name by Veronica Roth. I can understand why this movie (and book trilogy) has made the headlines. Well-written, with deep, realistic characters, a thoughtful portrayal of loss, grief, sacrifice, and courage, and gripping action (told in the first person present tense to keep readers on the edge of their seats and inside the main characters’ heads), the Divergent series is an impressive series for anyone to have written, much less a college-aged novelist.
However.
Like many fantasy, science fiction, or dystopian worlds created by people who haven’t studied sociology, the world of Divergent has a few severe flaws. To define terms, a severe flaw (in my dictionary) is one that portrays an importantly different and inconsistent reality than that which the author is purposefully trying to establish. Minor flaws are things like timeline believability problems – books where, for instance, a protagonist is supposed to go from being a clueless farm-boy to a daring knight in just a month. Those are the kinds of problems where readers can shrug their shoulders and say, “Yeah, whatever. It’s unbelievable, but not problematically so.” In contrast, severe flaws are unavoidable. They are problems so ingrained in the world that the author has built that they confront the reader throughout the book and undermine the author’s message. Unfortunately, this is a problem that the world of Divergent faces.
I’ll give the “first book only” version first, for those of you who want to remain relatively spoiler-free. (The end of the second book and the third book are supposed to “fix” the problems of book one, but in my opinion, raise more questions than they answer.) In Roth’s first book, Divergent, she reveals a society that has been built around five “factions.” These factions are created to be tightly knit social groups, almost castes, in which the members of the faction all revere a single moral virtue or ideal that shapes their actions and their beliefs. Different factions have different jobs in society, different lifestyles, and different value systems. All well and good thus far. One can look at the ancient Hindu caste system and see that separating otherwise-identical people into utterly separate groups can work.
But then one key component is added that makes the whole system break down. Every person is allowed to choose his or her own faction when he or she comes of age, and this choosing is aided by a test that determines where an individual would best fit. Once an individual has chosen a faction, that faction becomes his or her new family – “faction before blood” is a key line from the book – and individuals must leave their old faction’s worldview and ties behind.
We then find out that this system has supposedly been working for over a hundred years. This is the severe flaw. The system cannot work the way it is supposed to, if Roth is trying to describe human beings as they truly are. (And if she is trying to describe humans who live in this city as being in some way very different from humans in our world, then it undermines the entire message of her third book, Allegiant.)
There are three major reasons that the faction system is severely flawed: 1) the virtue-driven nature of the factions conflicts with the nature of man, 2) the allowance of choice of factions undermines the integrity of the faction system, and 3) the creation of factions should lead to violence rather than lead away from violence.
First, basing factions on non-conflicting virtues presents a problem for any individual who is given a basic moral education. As the character Four expresses, why should you be forced to choose between being strong, selfless, intelligent, honest, and kind? Why can’t you pursue all of them? Given that the characters of Divergent do seem to have a typical human moral compass, the faction system cannot work as written. ALLEGIANT SPOILER (mouse-over): Given that Four actually isn’t Divergent, and is in fact “genetically flawed” as are most other people in the world of Divergent, this makes this argument even stronger.
The nature of in-groups is to emphasize what makes people in your group good and special, while downplaying, minimizing, or shrugging off the strengths of other groups. This is relatively easy to do when the strengths of other groups cannot mutually coexist with your own. (For instance, a plumber can be glad that he isn’t an electrician or a university professor, because you can’t be all of them, and it isn’t expected that you be all of them.) It is practically impossible to do if the strengths of other groups can mutually coexist with yours, and – in fact – if universal morals in your world say that other groups’ strengths are, in fact, things to be emulated. No one in the world of Divergent says that honesty or bravery or kindness or even intelligence are inherently bad. In fact, the characters display a moral code that acknowledges the goodness and the strengths of the different factions. This is a sociological problem. If an individual is ever praised for being honest when he or she is in Abnegation, or ever praised for being brave when he or she is in Erudite, it will undermine the system that is so highly revered.
In short, a virtue-based faction system is not conducive to a stable society, and asking readers to believe that it has worked for hundreds of years is a severe flaw.
The only way it could work, in fact, is if there is no movement between factions. This brings us to our second point. Allowing individuals to choose their own faction is to say that every individual can choose one of five equally good worldviews to follow. However, this conflicts horribly with the entire idea of being raised in a faction that truly believes that its way is right.
Sociologically, individuals are raised by their parents to believe that a certain view of the world is correct and good. We are moral animals, as sociologist Christian Smith states. Every culture has a set of beliefs as to what is right and what is wrong, which form the rules that children internalize. In the world of Divergent, parents have one of two choices: tell their children that they must follow the rules of their faction and obey their faction’s worldview only as one choice among many that is no more good than any of the others until they come of age, or tell their children that their faction is right, that the others are wrong, and then have this view of the world challenged every year in the choosing ceremony. (This ceremony tells children that a test shows them what faction they truly belong in, and that faction may not be the one that their parents are from.)
If a child doesn’t want to obey his or her parents, then, a natural retort would be, “Well, maybe I don’t belong in this faction! Why should I follow your rules if I’m really ____ faction?” Parents in Divergent have no real grounding to answer this question – because their children would be right. If their child is actually meant to be in another faction, why should they be forced to follow the worldview and practices of their parents’ faction until they reach a certain age?
Now, if factions only governed one’s job, and if the society held a common moral grounding or set of common practices, the differences between factions wouldn’t be as large an issue. (This is where one might compare Divergent to Harry Potter and the houses of Hogwarts: all children at Hogwarts know that they’re all students at the same school, that they all take the same classes, follow the same rules, and answer to the same headmaster. They all know that they take the same tests and after they graduate, they will all be members of one wizarding society. This prevents the differences in beliefs and strengths of the houses from getting out of hand – though Rowling does show rivalries and conflicts between the houses that occur, as is believable.) In Divergent, however, there is no going beyond the factions. There is no deeper moral code or religious grounding that applies to everyone. No one is above or beyond the factions; there is no emperor with divine power who everyone obeys, or even a set of common rituals and beliefs that bind people in the society together. Instead, Divergent shows five different cultures, each of which believes that its way is the right way, and yet which allows its members to freely choose a different path if they are so led. It is internally inconsistent, and should not work.
Finally, and culminating from the above points, the existence of a faction system should increase, not decrease, violence in a society. Emphasizing differences between people, rather than similarities, always creates tension and keeps things from running smoothly. Every country, business, organization, and family knows that you have to emphasize what holds you together if you want to maintain peace among people who are different. Creating factions based on personality types and differing virtues is the ideal way to cause a war, not to prevent one. “Separate but equal” has always been a bad idea that leads to prejudice and violence. Integration and appreciation of differences through appreciation of deeper similarities, not segregation based on differences, is the way to keep the peace.
One would think that in the aftermath of war, the leaders of a city would recognize this.
On the other hand, it isn’t surprising that a college aged novelist wouldn’t. Again, Divergent is well-written, emotionally powerful, and speaks truths about psychology, morality, and the nature of man. But if Roth continues to write in new fantasy worlds, I hope she will take some time to learn more about the nature of societies as well as the nature of individuals. It will improve the quality of her work, and add to, rather than distract from, the points she wants to make in the stories she tells.
What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments below!
