Anti-villains are a type of character we haven’t discussed before. I’d almost venture to say that—while most of you have heard the term “anti-hero”—you might be a tad stumped on the term “anti-villain.”

*does mental gymnastics* *does them too close to curtains* *sets curtains ablaze*

Personally, I love learning about and teaching how to write amazing villains. Why? First of all, the hero (heroic party) is only as good as the opposition. Triumph in the face of ridiculously overwhelming odds?

Yes, please!

Yet, all that really has more to do with plot—stakes, goal, ticking clocks—as opposed to character. Why would we choose an anti-villain over a regular villain? Do we even need a villain? Are pants required?

***Sadly, yes, pants usually required.

Anti-Villain

To keep this simple, when we think of villains (in a default sense), it’s easy to conjure a “Black Hat” mustache-twirling caricature. You might be thinking, But Kristen, my villain has so much depth and suffering and, and…”

Hold on! I give extra credit for y’all at the end.

Last post, we talked about how to boil your entire book/series/story idea/TV pitch into ONE sentence.

Why is that important? When we boil our story down, we should be able to clearly see everyone’s GOALS, because goals are what make the critical difference here. Anti-villains can be very easily mistaken for anti-heroes (depending on how jaded one happens to be) and vice versa.

Anti-villains still have what the audience would consider an “evil” goal, but their motivations and WHY they want that goal is where the nuance comes in.

Case in Point:

My dear friend and talented thriller author Allison Brennan and I have had a long-standing debate. Allison insists Dr. Hannibal Lecter is a villain, whereas I claim Lecter is, in fact, an anti-hero (cuz he only offs people who kinda deserve it).

Don’t you judge me! Y’all all know you were cheering at the end when he called Clarice to tell here he “was having an old friend for dinner.”

I’ve just keep this long-standing debate going, largely, to tweak with my Lawful Good friend’s sense of right and wrong (I tend to have a Chaotic Neutral streak).

Yet, the truth is I am wrong.

Yes, that IS ACTUALLY NOW IN WRITING.

Hannibal is technically an “anti-villain.”

Why an Anti-Villain?

Why the anti-villain and not just a plain old regular villain? There is nothing wrong with a regular villain. Once we are finished here, however, I don’t know if y’all will ever see a “regular” villain again.

In fact, many of our favorite villains are favorites precisely because they refuse to neatly fit into their category.

As audiences grow increasingly sophisticated, the old tropes of noble good and pure evil are largely unworkable outside of genres like, say high-fantasy or speculative fiction. In speculative fiction, our protagonist might encounter a being from another dimension that is pure evil and okay. That’s fine.

Characters who are evil for the sake of being evil are terrible for genre fiction, but make excellent fodder for comedy and children’s cartoons.

Whenever we add in those additional layers that render our villain more nuanced and less “central-casting,” we could be tiptoeing around anti-villain territory.

Anti-Villains: Bad Deeds, “Good” Reasons

Two key questions differentiate the “anti-hero” from the “anti-villain”:

“What do they WANT?”

“What are they willing to DO to get what they want?”

A quick and convenient example might be Marvel’s villain, Thanos. For those who’ve slept through the last fifteen or so Marvel movies, Thanos is a supervillain self-appointed savior who’s goal is to “save” the planets of the universe…by murdering an “acceptable” percentage of the population.

*insert screeching record*

His contention is that resources are scarce (TRUE) and those who require resources too many (ok, TRUE). Add in his personal experiences with a planet devastated, and perfect anti-villain material.

Sure he WANTS to “save” the universe (TRUE in his mind), and the only way to do this is through randomly un-making billions of sentient beings (eh…NOT TRUE).

While plenty of folks might agree with his assertion that resources are scarce and we need to use wisdom in how we proceed, MOST people are not going to be cool with wholesale genocide.

Ultimately, HOW he is going about his goal is what makes him a villain.

Anti-Hero or Anti-Villain?

Why I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE anti-heroes and anti-villains is they are so mercurial. They’re slippery and not easily defined, and that makes them fascinating.

In The Silence of the Lambs, Special Agent Clarice Starling is the protagonist (hero), yet one could argue her greatest ALLY was Hannibal. She wouldn’t have had the first clue where to begin even looking for Buffalo Bill without Hannibal’s help.

Here, one could reasonably argue he is an anti-hero. Hannibal is partnering with “good guys” to take down an “even worse bad guy.”

But is he?

Or is he playing 3-D chess and sees the long-game? That all the chaos will ultimately give him the opening to freedom.

Probably that.

Doing GOOD then, ultimately, only serves to FREE him to conceivably resume doing bad things (which he does).

Yet, like I mentioned earlier, most people DID cheer when he was following the head of the asylum at the end. Why would we cheer?

It’s one of those micro-moments where Hannibal is an anti-hero. He’s willing to jeopardize his freedom to a) make sure Clarice is okay and to b) exact punishment on a terrible human being who’s been victimizing/terrorizing/exploiting the most vulnerable in society.

Hannibal is definitely a villain, just he operates by a CODE that many people can respect.

In the second movie, Hannibal would have happily left the Italian detective alone had he followed the rules (rules are VERY important to Hannibal). Instead of upholding his oath as an officer of the law to protect and defend the public, however, the detective goes all mercenary because he wants the bounty that the monster millionaire Mason Vergen put on Hannibal’s head.

Not okay with Hannibal at ALL.

Ant-Villain & Law Abiding Citizen

Thanos, Darth Vader, and Hannibal Lecter are definitely among the most memorable and compelling villains on the page AND on the screen. I believe this is due in large part to their depth. They are very layered and have nuance…like actual people (anti-villains).

But what if we don’t want interstellar dictators or even serial killers? What if we just want a…regular person.

So glad y’all asked.

Probably one of my all-time FAVORITE movies is Law Abiding Citizen. When we talk about the different TYPES of anti-villains, the most dangerous is the “Villain in Name Only.” This villain isn’t, per se, evil and he has entirely different reasons for the fight with the protagonist.

His POV is extremely sympathetic and can toss our MC (and the audience) into deep moral crises.

In Law Abiding Citizen, Clyde Shelton is happily enjoying Christmas at home with his family…until he and his loved ones are the victims of a home invasion. The two perpetrators incapacitate Shelton then force him to watch as they brutalize his wife and young daughter before murdering them. Then, they set the house ablaze leaving him for dead.

Nick Rice, the prosecuting attorney, is the “good guy.”

He promises justice for Shelton’s dead loved ones, but then….

After evidence is mishandled, Rice’s case threatens to completely implode. Much to his own chagrin, he can only secure the death penalty for one of the offenders. In order to do this, however, he must agree to a slap-on-the-wrist plea deal for the other perpetrator (one that will set him free in a couple of years).

Ten years later.

Shelton summarily goes on the war path against a corrupt justice system filled with backroom deals, plea bargains, and other bull$%ittery….

…and can we blame him?

Those home invaders had NO IDEA who they actually messed with, and Rice genuinely wanted to do GOOD. Yet, even he would be hard pressed to say what he got for Shelton’s family was “justice.”

All the way to the END of the MOVIE, I was somewhat rooting for Shelton (technically the villain). And I was not alone!

It’s also hard for the protagonist, Rice, to feel like Shelton is truly “the bad guy.” Not only is he disgusted he had to even offer that horrid plea deal to begin with. He of all people KNOWS the system is jacked up and flawed and imperfect, but—sadly—it’s the best one we have.

Neither man is wholly wrong…and THAT is why this story and those like it, are so darn amazing and memorable.

The Anti-Villain Says More About YOU

…than anything else.

One of the reasons anti-heroes and anti-villains are so easy to confuse is because, first of all, they are complex. How many all bad or all good people do YOU know? So there is that. Yet, they are still villains…or are they?

THAT is the critical question.

Non-fiction, to me, is learning through information. Fiction is still learning, just learning through imagination. This is uniquely true when it comes to appreciating the full spectrum of human emotions and experiences. Anti-villains are fantastic for this.

It is one thing to read some cold distant analysis like from the DSM-V. This diagnostic manual can tell us ALL about psychopathy, sociopathy, megalomania, narcissism, etc.

But fiction lets us LIVE it…from ALL sides.

I took the Clifton Strengths test and one of my core strengths is BELIEF. My sense of right and wrong, just and unjust make me who I am.

So, in Law Abiding Citizen, when Shelton (a former DARPA engineer) decides to burn down all the people responsible for such a disgusting miscarriage of justice?

It is almost impossible for me not to be on his side…at least a little.

When Hannibal took out Dr. Frederick Chilton? Not one fig given. When he kills Mason Vergen? Again, horrible human being and—because Vergen is rich and powerful—Hannibal the only one who CAN take him out.

And I think I should stop there….

Why Do We Love/Hate Characters?

My somewhat dubious moral compass is obvious when we look at characters I love and hate. A therapist would have LOADS of fun hearing my opinions of A Game of Thrones.

Anyway…

Law & Order: S.V.U. I LOVED Elliot Stabler and HATED Olivia Benson, and it is all because of one episode.

A child-killer is toying with the N.Y.P.D. and sealing little kids away with a finite amount of air. Then, the killer leads the police on a merry chase while children slowly suffocate.

During the pursuit, Stabler and Benson KNOW they have the guy, and he’s playing games. It’s nothing they can really prove, more instinct. What is worse is they only have about an hour before yet another child smothers to death.

Elliot does the right thing (in my mind). He waterboards the @$$^&le in his own toilet until he coughs up the location of the final child…along with about a gallon of water and his right kidney.

…and Olivia turns him into Internal Affairs.

Because she is Lawful Good.

To her, the ends do not justify the means. Elliot, conversely, is willing to risk losing his job by betting on his instincts. It is worth his career or even freedom so long as that child lives.

I can relate to that much more (which is why we are happy I became a WRITER ).

And that is awesome and kind of scary, too. It is unsettling to acknowledge one’s “darker” inclinations, but I feel we are deluding ourselves if we think we are devoid of any. Everyone has a dark side, and (to a degree) there is nothing wrong with that. I feel it is tremendously healthy to know and accept one’s flaws and limitations.

Anti-villains are a great mirror to gaze into for some perspective.

This is why fiction is AMAZING! …and scary

We can live vicariously through other characters and experience the world in a far richer way. Stories allow us a way to face our fears, meet our dark side, consider the world from a different perspective.

Ultimately, whether a character is considered an anti-villain or anti-hero, largely depends on the time period, the culture, and the individual viewer. How we categorize those amorphous characters says way more about us than the author ever intended.

And if you ever meet me and Allison Brennan? Our “debate” makes total sense. We are different people with different experiences and backgrounds and ALL of that colors our world.

***She’s clearly the goody-goody *rolls eyes*

So what do your favorite characters say about YOU?

What are your thoughts on anti-villains?

What do your favorite characters say about you? Have you ever heard of the “anti-villain”? Do you see where we could easily get into a debate whether or not we have an anti-hero or an anti-villain? Any examples of anti-villains you’d like to add from the page or screen?

I LOVE COMMENTS!

To prove it and show my love, for the month of SEPTEMBER, everyone who leaves a comment, I will put your name in a hat.

I actually have landed agents for people who’ve won this contest. Agents like me because I make their lives easier.

***It’s been a short holiday week and I will post the winners next blog. Apologies.

If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice.

What do you win?

The unvarnished truth from yours truly (and maybe even time with an agent).

I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less). People with superlative writing, I (with your permission) have been known to pass you onto an agent.

Anyway, I look forward to reading your comments and your writing!

The post Anti-Villains & Why We Love GOOD Baddies appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Over 40 countries have a day to celebrate ‘mother’ and ‘mother figures’ with some variation of Mother’s Day. While millions of people will send flowers and gifts and take their moms, grandmothers, aunts, etc. out for a fancy day, other folks might struggle…a lot. People can feel a wide variety of emotions when it comes to a holiday devoted to celebrating a missing or deeply painful relationship.

While we often hear the term ‘daddy issues,’ what about ‘mommy issues’?

Granted, there was Freud. He had a lot to say about moms, and sex and apparently everything wrong with us stems from wanting to hook up with mom.

Freud needed better hobbies.

Not saying he was totally off-base. Mothers frequently are at the core of many psychological issues. But, to be fair to moms in general, we aren’t solely to blame for all things jacked up.

Just a Heads Up: Today’s post addresses child abuse (physical, emotional, and sexual), violence, abandonment, and similar traumas so please read with care.

When it comes to the nurture part of ‘nature and nurture,’ it seems only reasonable to explore half the parental equation. Sometimes 100% of the parental equation. Single-mothers head 80% of single-parent households. When one considers nearly a third live in poverty, this makes fertile ground for dysfunction.

Since millions of children have a ‘mother’ as sole, or at least the primary, caregiver, it stands to reason that moms have a significant impact on how we develop through childhood and into adulthood.

Mothers can be amazing and wonderful, but they can also be the source of unrivaled brutality. The mother wound is deep and traumatic and can have a major impact on psychological well-being.

The Mother Wound

In this post, we will explore the psychological impact mothers have across the spectrum. For the record, I am not a licensed psychiatrist, I just play one on the internet . This is why I’ll make sure to link to as many REAL experts as I can.

Anyway…

In previous posts, we’ve discussed how wounds don’t always need to be big to be BIG. Though today we’ll cover some more extreme versions of mother abuse, that—thankfully—is comparably rare.

All mothers are human.

The emotional injuries they inflict could be completely unintentional. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of single-moms are living in poverty. Financial stress and having to work multiple jobs means kids often spend a lot of time in daycare or with other relatives.

Kids can feel abandoned or unloved. Trusted caregivers might abuse them. Thus, adults might harbor resentment toward a mother who was simply trying to provide, who had no way of knowing those she’d entrusted with her child/children would betray a sacred trust.

Maybe your character is dealing with sibling issues. Mothers can unwittingly fuel sibling rivalry.

Frequently, mothers have their own struggles—mental health issues, depression, anxiety, substance addiction, abandonment issues, etc. If left untreated, she can unintentionally pass her traumas down to the next generation.

Since May is Mental Health Awareness Month, I’d like for us to maintain an open mind and compassion as we go along. Mental illness is real and impacts everyone around the person suffering.

Suffice to say, many mothers aren’t evil or sitting up all night thinking of ways to damage their kids. They’re simply working with limited tools.

***To learn more about the mother wound specifically, I’ll refer those interested to Bethany Webster. Her books and blogs are rich with information that can help readers personally and/or with psychologically rich character backgrounds for fiction.

Genre and Mommy Issues

Whenever we craft characters, ideally we need to flesh them out to the point they are as close to living/breathing people as possible. This is what will help readers connect to our characters.

Obviously, genre is going to dictate how extreme the mother damage is, as well as how and to what degree the damage manifests. If one is writing a cozy romance, a women’s fiction, contemporary fiction along the lines of Debbie Macomber, a cozy mystery, etc. then the more ‘run-of-the-mill’ mother damage is more appropriate.

Most moms are not all good or all horrible, but they are all human. In fact, most will fall in between.

When profiling your character, was the fictional mother/mother-figure:

• controlling
• a perfectionist
• constantly competing with her daughter
• guilty of obvious favoritism
• unable to show love
• one to withhold praise and affection
• immature
• someone who played the role of the child instead of the caretaker
• emotionally distant
• overly self-involved

You get the gist. All of these areas are common places mothers mess up to one degree or another, thus RIPE for creating inner demons and insecurities an MC must work through to solve a story problem.

But, for those who want to write suspense, thriller, psychological thrillers, dark fiction, true crime, horror, or any of those kissing cousins then, we have to take a trip to the dark side of mothers dear and deadly.

The Mother Shield

The mother shield is powerful. Most people cannot imagine that those tasked with caring for the frailest among us could be anything but loving and self-sacrificing. It is too terrible. This is how the mother mythos can serve as an amazing shield…or at least brilliant camouflage.

I believe there are (and have been) far more female serial killers than we could ever imagine (and emerging data/studies support I might be right). Women, mothers in particular, have a number of advantages which make them the perfect killers. For the sake of time, I will cover female serial killers more specifically in another post.

Suffice to say, society has the ‘madonna’ image of mothers. Mothers are sacrosanct. To even suggest anything else borders on blasphemy. This can create all kinds of challenges in life and in fiction.

Mothers and Munchausen by Proxy

M. Night Shyamalan’s movie The Sixth Sense thrust Munchausen by proxy disorder out into the world of popular culture for the first time (properly referred to as Fictitious Disorder).

The movie tells the story of a boy, Cole Sear, who claims he can see dead people. One ghost in particular, a little girl in a nightgown, hounds Cole. She terrifies him, namely because she’s always vomiting.

Come to find out, her mother poisoned her and now that the little girl is dead, her mother has moved onto poisoning the younger sister. The ghost recruits Cole as an ally to save her sister by exposing her killer…her mother (who suffers from Munchausen by proxy).

For a book that does an INCREDIBLE job probing this insidious disorder, I highly recommend Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects.

One section stood out to me, where she’s describing her mother and the toxic dance between the abuser and the abused.

I won’t give any spoiler alerts, because nothing in this book is what it seems. But, if you want insight into mothers, mental illness, abuse, Munchausen by proxy, and how this all plays out in fiction, then this is a must-read.

‘Mother’ & Factitious Disorder

Munchausen Syndrome—Factitious Disorder—is when a person deliberately makes themselves ill, primarily for attention. Munchausen Syndrome by proxy is when a person (frequently a mother or other caregiver) makes another person—usually a child, but also elderly people, the disabled and pets—seriously ill for attention.

I am definitely NOT an expert on this, so again I defer to forensic psychologists and experts Dr. Scott and Dr. Shiloh at L.A. Not-So-Confidential. If you want to learn more, listen to Munchausen Syndrome (Factitious Disorder) Part One and Munchausen Syndrome (Factitious Disorder) Part 2.

This is an extraordinarily complex mental disorder, which is why I’m not going very deep into the discussion. The important takeaway is that females—mothers—are the primary sufferers of Munchausen by proxy, thus are most often the abusers. Experts also often refer to this disorder as ‘medical abuse.’

There are plenty of real-life cases (too many). But, for a recent case, look no further than Gypsy Rose Blancharde and her mother DeeDee Blancharde. The 2017 Netflix documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest did an excellent job covering what happened.

Fictitious Disorder offers plenty of fuel for fiction. Gillian Flynn, as I mentioned, liberally applies ‘mommy issues’ in many of her books. There’s also a 2020 HBO movie, Run that probes into the shadow side of the mother figure.

A Tale of Mothers and Monsters

Toxic mother figures can inflict wounds their children carry for a lifetime. If we study the backgrounds of some of the most infamous killers in history, we see a disturbing pattern emerge when it comes to the role of mothers, especially in the early developmental years.

Again, depending on genre, case studies of real-life criminals (from killers to con artists) can be very helpful for crafting a villain with resonance.

Granted, (below) I’ve listed some of the most heinous offenders in modern history (that have documented ‘mommy issues’). Many of these criminals suffer with serious psychological damage. Thus, we are wise to take their ‘stories’ with a grain of salt, since they may or may not be the most reliable of narrators.

Also, some assertions are coming from third-party observers, such as the case with con artist Elizabeth Holmes.

‘Mother’ Issues Create ALL Kinds

Elizabeth Holmes’ mother has been criticized for relentlessly pushing her daughter to excel, thus possibly laying the groundwork for the Theranos debacle.

Aileen Wuornos‘ mother abandoned her in an abusive household where her grandfather allegedly molested her, and she claimed to have had a sexual relationship with her own brother.

Mary Bell’s mother rejected her at birth, left her with relatives and strangers and may have suffered from Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy since she frequently gave Mary drugs that made her severely ill.

Ed Kemper‘s mother was controlling and severely verbally, emotionally and physically abusive.

Charles Manson‘s mother, sixteen-year-old Kathleen Maddox, who a serious alcoholic, reputedly once sold him for a pitcher of beer.

Ed Gein‘s mother taught him men were evil and raised him as a girl.

David Berkowitz had a toxically close relationship with his mother.

Charles Albright’s mom was an intense germaphobe.

To reiterate, great writers have historically pilfered from real backstories. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. The wheel works.

Alfred Hitchcock’s famous movie Psycho drew liberal inspiration from serial killer, Ed Gein. Thomas Harris, author of the iconic novel Silence of the Lambs, also used real case studies and cobbled several killers together to create such infamous characters as Hannibal the Cannibal and Buffalo Bill.

Mother, May I?

In the end, all of us can thank our mothers for who we are today (for good or bad). The mother relationship is so crucial it has been the beating heart of myth, religion, poems and plays.

Thankfully, not every person with a toxic mother/mother figure grows up to be some deranged criminal. Some grow up to be incredible people who do great things despite their early traumas (Oprah Winfrey).

Conversely, some of society’s most notorious monsters had seemingly normal, loving mothers. Dennis Rader (BTK) is a prime example. From all indications, Rader had normal, loving, albeit imperfect, parents. Unfortunately, no amount of being a good mother can counter severe narcissism, which could have a genetic component.

All this said…

Last time, in my post The Deepest Wounds: Lies, Deception & Betrayal, I mentioned one way to create nerve-shredding story problems—rip away the thing people TRUST THE MOST. Maybe this is with our MC’s background. The mother relationship has damaged or destroyed their ability to trust.

We can also rip away what the audience trusts. No one sees the mother coming.

*coughs* Um…Psycho anyone?

In the End…

The world offers so much for writers to weave into story to add depth and texture. Since Father’s Day isn’t coming up, I’m not picking on dads. Moms, dads, siblings, kids, society, culture, religion, background, relatives, workplaces, bullies are all fabulous wells to draw from. Pay attention to LIFE, because that’s what adds the magic to the mundane.

Just remember, well-adjusted people make for boring fiction.

Thoughts? I LOVE hearing from you!

Thoughts about how much we can blame mothers for all that ails us? Any questions or comments to add?

I get this is a touchy subject, but not everyone had a mother they’re exactly excited to celebrate. That is simply life…which is what writers work with.

For those who have FABULOUS moms, it might be even more disconcerting to envision growing up with a mother like those listed above.

Any books, movies, experiences, stories?

Other than that, Happy Mother’s Day. I rented Mommie Dearest since, oddly, I had NEVER seen it before…despite knowing the references. Aaaand I wanted to hide in a blanket fort after watching. YIKES!

I love hearing from you, and to show my appreciation…

CONTEST

What do you WIN? For the month of MAY, for everyone who leaves a comment, I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice.

The Prize?

The unvarnished truth from yours truly. I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

***Will announce April’s winner next post.

MOTHER OF ALL DEALS/CLASSES!

The Write Stuff Special: 20 pages for $55

Only TEN SLOTS AVAILABLE! Offer ends May 4th, 2020. Sign up HERE.

Small Steps with Classes

***All classes come with a FREE recording

Bring on the BINGE: How to Plot & Write a Series

Thursday, May 19, 2022 7-9:30 P.M. NYC Time

For more information, SIGN UP HERE.

The Art of Character: Writing Characters for a SERIES

Thursday, May 26th 7:00-10:00 P.M. NYC Time

For more information, SIGN UP HERE.

Practice Your Pitch: Master the Log-Line

Thursday, June 2nd, 7:00-9:00 P.M. NYC Time. This is a TWO-HOUR INTERACTIVE WORKSHOP!

For more information, SIGN UP HERE.

The post Mommie Dearest: The Mother Wound & Fiction appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

The burning desire is the beating heart of all great stories. Without the burning desire, the story will fall apart faster than a reality star who’s lost her hair extensions.

We’ve discussed story structure more times than I can count on this blog, and for good reasons. When we understand the fundamental parts of story and how they work, why they work, etc. THEN when something seems ‘off’ we possess the knowledge base and vocabulary to detect WHY the story isn’t working then fix it.

The Burning Desire for the BBT

I know it’s been a while, so super quick review. The first crucial ingredient for any story is a core antagonist to create the main problem in need of resolution by the time we reach THE END.

Since the whole ‘antagonist’ concept tied my brain in knots for YEARS, I finally invented my own term—Big Boss Troublemaker (BBT).

Why?

Because every story must have a core antagonist or, by definition, it isn’t a story.

That said, not all antagonists are villains. Villains are only one type of antagonist. Very useful in thrillers, horror, mystery, science fiction, and the like, but not so much in general fiction or literary fiction.

To understand more what I mean about the BBT, feel free to go HERE. If we fail to understand the BBT, then frankly the burning desire is a moot point.

While all stories must have a core antagonist (BBT), that alone isn’t enough. We must also figure out what drives the BBT. What is the burning desire fueling the goal that will eventually come at odds with the protagonist and (eventually) create a hero?

If we look back at some of the most iconic books, movies and series, we will see the writers NAILED the burning desire.

***I’ve detailed this on posts about real ‘flesh and blood’ villains, but also when we have a BBT that might be more everyday or existential.

Again, in the essence of time, I recommend taking a look at the posts I’ve hyperlinked.

BBT Burning Desire Done WELL

In this section, we’ll talk about some excellent examples from film as well as literature.

Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury’s classic Fahrenheit 451 is an incredible, but terrifying, example of Man-Versus-Society. The BBT is a totalitarian government embroiled in endless (and pointless) wars. To keep the population from asking too many questions the government doesn’t want to answer…books are illegal.

The fire department, in this world, doesn’t exist to put out fires, rather to start them. A fireman’s goal is to hunt down any ‘offenders’ (people hoarding books), burn their stockpile, and possibly arrest them for crimes against the State.

IF, however, you read Fahrenheit 451, not ALL books are illegal. Only books deemed dangerous enough to encourage people to think, feel and, worst of all…QUESTION.

For a totalitarian government with a goal to keep people distracted and placated with fluff and nonsense, certain literary and cultural writings are deemed a direct threat to their agenda….ABSOLUTE CONTROL.

If people read, and maybe begin to think critically, then they might stop blindly gobbling down all the propaganda. Should that happen, then the powers that be could possibly lose power and—GASP—be held accountable.

Since it would be boring or even confusing for our fireman, Guy Montag (the protagonist) to simply ‘war with society,’ Bradbury gives us a proxy to represent the system…Montag’s mentor, father figure and closest friend Captain Beatty.

Montag’s desire to think for himself, to ponder the why of his world and be allowed to challenge the status quo comes in DIRECT conflict with Captain Beatty’s goal of keeping society ‘happy.’

Beatty remembers earlier times of complete social unrest bordering on anarchy, record rates of crime, suicide, depression, etc. and he genuinely believes people are better off ‘keeping it light.’

Bad pun. Oops.

I, Robot

The movie I, Robot was actually based off a collection of Isaac Asimov’s short stories and essays that questioned humanity’s increasing reliance on technology, robots in particular. How much free will were we blindly handing away in the name of convenience? What would be the ultimate consequence? Could the veritably sacrosanct Three Laws of Robotics be fully trusted?

Our protagonist, Detective Del Spooner, loathes technology, robots in particular. When a robot allegedly murders the leading scientist in the field of robotics (Dr. Alfred Lanning), Spooner believes he has all the proof he needs. Robots not only cannot be trusted, but they are dangerous and even deadly.

The ‘mind’ responsible for driving all the robots and their protocols is VIKI (Virtual Interactive Kinetic Intelligence). VIKI is there to ensure all robots adhere to the Three Laws of Robotics, so how can Spooner explain a robot directly defying the law dictating that no robot can harm a human?

It has to do with the burning desire. Granted, we are referring to an artificial intelligence. In Spooner’s mind, robots are fancy toasters, nothing more. What if, however, he’s wrong?

At what point do we—humans—create artificial intelligence that crosses over into a sentient creature that can reason?

Back to the burning desire. VIKI has been around long enough, observed human behavior long enough, that ‘she’ decides to make some changes. What Spooner comes to realize is that VIKI, and the legions of robots locking people in their homes, are technically ‘innocent.’

All three laws hinge on the first:

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Isaac Asimov

Since VIKI witnesses that we—humans—can’t be trusted with so much as a swizzle stick, she decides to take the strictest interpretation of the law. By locking humans up at home and policing our every move, VIKI is making sure no human comes to any harm. Technically a noble goal, but…*runs screaming*

Ultimately, VIKI was only doing exactly what we humans asked her to.

When The Burning Desire Fizzles

Whether our story involves a serial killer, a society-gone-sideways, a power-hungry ruler, artificial intelligence, or even a well-meaning mother-in-law, the burning desire MUST pass muster.

When the burning desire is weak, absurd or outright STUPID, it wrecks the story. I’ve spent many years as an editor, teacher, story doctor, you name it. The two issues most new writers will run into are:

• Failing to even HAVE a BBT, which devolves the ‘story’ into a frustrating series of ‘bad things happening.’ Readers/viewers will stagger away wondering what was the POINT?
• If a writer does have a BBT, then the motivations are nonexistent, weak, nonsensical or downright lame.

Too many times, I’ve worked with new authors who are on the verge of tears when, to me, the problem was clear. The burning desire is missing or fizzling.

For instance, a sorceress wants to bridge two dimensions bringing hell to Earth. Okay. cool. But WHY? Why would she do that? A maniacal tyrant who simply wants to see the world implode. Fine, but again…um, why?

Joker & Hipocrisy as the Burning Desire

We certainly can have a BBT content with self-immolation or the annihilation of others (even innocents). They can make for some of the most frightening villains.

It all hinges, however, on the WHY.

In The Dark Knight, Health Ledger-as-Joker demonstrated this CAN be done (and become the stuff of legends). Some men cannot be bought, cannot be reasoned with, and they simply want to see the world BURN.

Though Joker comes across as a total madman—and maybe he is—he’s also a master manipulator. His goal for wreaking havoc in Gotham is to force Batman’s hand, and ultimately test his nemesis’s convictions.

Is Batman a hypocrite like other ‘heroes’ in Gotham?

The Joker is a wildcard in gambling…and as a villain. This said, Joker promoting all-out anarchy actually does have a point. Batman believes he must protect the seemingly unassailable integrity of Gotham’s public hero, Harvey Dent. To do this, however, Batman ultimately must take the fall for blood that rightfully should have been on Dent’s hands.

For Batman to win, he must also lose.

Joker forces Batman into a no-win situation where our Dark Knight has to make the toughest decisions of all. In my POV, Joker maneuvers Batman into a final showdown that’s actually a stalemate.

And he succeeds brilliantly.

When it comes down to any antagonist (villain or otherwise), we simply need to ask:

• What does the BBT stand to gain?
• Does their motivation merit the level of their actions?

The Burning Desire Goes Emo: Horsemen

Last weekend I watched a movie called ‘Horsemen.’ In theory, this movie had all the elements necessary for a flick I would LOVE. It has a dynamite cast of actors, a fantastic premise, and appeared to run along the lines of Se7en.

It even had a great tag line:

A recently widowed detective still grieving over his wife’s death discovers a shocking connection between a serial killing spree and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Premise for ‘Horsemen’

Okey, dokey. I am going to TOTALLY and UNAPOLOGETICALLY ruin this movie for you. Granted, I know not everyone likes dark serial killer movies with gore. I don’t necessarily have a problem so long as any violence ultimately has a POINT.

Horsemen is a great example of stupid, gratuitous violence…heavy emphasis on the stupid.

The protagonist, Detroit Detective Aidan Breslin, is a single dad rearing a teenage boy and a younger son after his wife’s untimely death from cancer. He’s a very sympathetic character, a man doing his best to balance home with work.

We also realize early on that there is a lot of tension at home, particularly with the teenager who resents his father for not ‘being there’ when his mother passed away…and for not being there in the years since. Fair point. Makes for a layered protagonist.

Breslin is already emotionally shredded and spread too thinly. The last thing he needs is a serial killer. Not a serial killer, but seemingly a group killing for some unknown (but vague and ‘biblically’ referenced agenda). And they don’t settle for killing innocent people…they butcher them.

By this point, I am all, ‘Meh, fine. Worked in Se7en. See where this goes.’

Where did it go?

Welcome to the Land of STUPID

Come and See. Better still? Don’t.

By the time we are into Act Two (Warrior), Breslin knows they are dealing with a group of murderers trying to make a statement. There are (allegedly) four killers, each representing one of the four horsemen from Revelations: Red (War), Green (Pestilence), Black (Famine) and White (Conquest).

There is no need to go into detail because, bluntly, it was beyond absurd. Suffice to say the Horsemen have some sort of justification for slaughtering regular people who’ve committed no crime. Must be a big deal, right?

Nope.

I’ll only concern myself with the White Horseman for a number of reasons. Mostly because I have a limit on how much idiocy I can handle, but also because the White Horseman is supposed to be the biggest and baddest of the bunch—the leader and thus our BBT.

….and it’s the detective’s son.

The burning desire that justifies wholesale butchery of innocent people is….*drum roll*

Daddy wasn’t there for him enough.

*primal screaming*

His father is a detective in one of the most crime-riddled cities in the U.S. and wasn’t there when his mother died. Um, maybe because Dad had to pay the bills for like food, shelter and health insurance? And Dad wasn’t there enough after Mom died. Again, he is grieving and remember he is a HOMICIDE DETECTIVE?

So the son’s great plan is this. His dad is absentee because he’s too busy solving murders, bringing comfort to grieving victims and the bad guys to justice.

What would be a great idea?

Go on a killing spree that um…makes your father keep having to ditch you to find out WHO is committing these heinous murders.

*rails at the heavens*

Finding the Balance…in a GOOD Way

Hopefully I’ve offered a nice selection of books/movies where the burning reason was done well. It’s tougher to find examples of when it’s botched because these books, movies and series are often forgotten for this very reason.

***I have a rant somewhere in the archives about the Pixar disaster we know as Finding Dory, but have too many posts and can’t find it .

There is a sweet spot when it comes to finding that burning reason for our story to exist. If the burning desire is missing, vague, overly complicated or absurd, that is a formula for a reader to toss a book across the room.

Or post a blog/rant about a movie/series.

In Horsemen, the screenwriters possibly could have salvaged the movie, but it’s very unlikely. If the writers wanted the White Horseman to have a cause worthy of the crimes committed, they’d have had to ditch their little darling….having the BBT puppet master being the detective’s son.

To make the BBT the detective’s son, would have meant sacrificing the protagonist and having no ‘hero.’ This makes my point that when we understand what makes a great story, we can fix it before it’s too late.

Had the Horsemen screenwriters asked the really tough questions, they could have had a contender. Actually, was a simple fix, but we might talk about that next time .

In the End, I LOVE Hearing from You!

I know I’ve been away far too long, and I missed y’all! Mom and Hubby both had emergency surgeries, I cracked two back teeth, had to get in all my work on this last book that was 91,000 words with at least 125 citations and AHHHH!

I was just beyond burned out. Thanks for being so patient. It gave me space to refill my mental and emotional reserves. These posts take a lot of time and research.

But back to this post.

What are your thoughts? Can you think of movies where you found yourself struggling with maybe ‘forgiving the unforgivable’ because the BBT had such a great burning reason? Like Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs or Clyde Sheldon in Law Abiding Citizen?

What about movies, books, series that, like Horsemen, left you angry about losing hours of your life you can’t get back?

Also, I’d like to know what topics you might like me to cover, questions I might be able to answer, etc. I am rusty so suggestions are AWESOME!

I’ve missed y’all a ton and eager to get back in the groove.

The post The Burning Desire: The Difference Between Magnificent & Maddening appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

All stories require a core antagonist (the force/character that is responsible for generating the story problem in need of resolution). This said, there are many different types of antagonists. While all villains are antagonists, not all antagonists are villains.

The villain might only be one of many types of antagonists, but they have a power of transcendence that few other archetypes can match.

But since we went there. What goes into creating a worthy villain? How can we create a character that evolves beyond paper caricature and passes into timeless myth?

Moriarty, Darth Vader, Loki, Buffalo Bill, Voldemort, Dracula, Jack the Ripper represent the deepest dark necessary so our heroes can shine the brightest white.

When we think of our favorite stories, how often do we remember the villains, first? There’s something so alluring about the darkness.

This said, it’s the artist who learns how to mold the darkness into something timeless, a character retold every generation in new forms.

Breaking Bad: What Makes a Villain?

I watch a ton of movies and television series. I also read roughly 1-3 novels a week. I’m always studying, breaking stories apart so that I can understand them better. I do it for my fiction, but also so I can share what I learn with you guys.

Though the series isn’t for everyone (it’s pretty gory), I particularly love FX’s American Horror Story (Seasons 1-4) for studying villains.

***Everything was pretty ‘meh’ after Jessica Lang left the cast, but that’s just my personal POV.

Anyway, AHS is one of those shows that you have to get a few episodes into before you connect, namely because it is often cast with truly despicable characters.

It isn’t until you get a few episodes in that the writers start peeling back the layers and exposing the delicate undersides of the villains…and that’s when you really begin to care for them.

I know. On the surface, this seems bizarre, but it’s true. The early seasons of AHS are some of the best writing out there.

Jessica Lang almost always played the core antagonist in each season of AHS. Of all the seasons, though, Season Four Freak Show was my absolute favorite. It’s by far one of the most superlative stories on the small screen, masterful characters…which is why I’m referring to it today.

Btw, there is a bit of spoiler alert, but it’s necessary. So what do we do to really make the villain POP?

Give the Villain a Sympathetic Goal

In Season Four of AHS, Lang plays Elsa Mars. Mars is a self-centered, lying, conniving, murderous woman. But she is a deeply flawed and tragic character. Her goal is two-fold.

First, she wants to become a star in Hollywood. Secondly, she wants to build the best Freak Show in the world.

As a young woman, Elsa is victimized by a man who promises her the starring role in a movie. What he fails to tell Elsa is she has the starring role in a snuff film.

He films another man taking a buzz saw to both of Elsa’s legs then leaves her for dead. Through the sympathy and miraculous skill of an artist-sculptor, she’s saved and given life-like prosthetics and appears ‘normal.’

But this tragedy creates a horrible insecurity. She starts her freak show because deep down, she knows she’s a freak, too.

This makes her feel almost a maternal duty to collect the disfigured. To gather the tragic souls the world casts away and give them a home.

Villains are Heroes of His/Her Own Story

Elsa is a mother figure. Under the circus tent, her ‘children’ are stars and they are a family. She knows what life outside the show is like for a freak (she’s lived it). She also appreciates that she is a very different kind of freak.

She has the ability to blend into society. Her children do not.

Make the Villain Conflicted

Mars is a very troubled and conflicted character. Her goal to take care of her charges and her desire to become famous in Hollywood are always in conflict. Also what makes Elsa so good is also what makes her so bad.

She is relentlessly ambitious (good), but she is relentlessly ambitious (bad).

Remember that our best self and our worst self are often opposing edges of the same blade. This is true for protagonists (heroes) as well.

I see this even in myself. I have a compulsive personality. This is good (2000+ blogs), but can be very, very bad. I latch onto something like a pit bull and don’t let go…but sometimes I’ve latched onto something I should let go of (every ex-boyfriend ever).

As I like to say…

There is a fine line between persistent and stupid.

The reason this duality makes for a layered villain is that great fiction acts as a mirror and reflects a degree of reality back to the reader. When the reader sees the duality of the villain, she is also seeing the duality in herself.

That is the part that can be deeply disturbing.

Maybe we believe we are incapable of murder, but are we really? Or have we simply been blessed with the right life circumstances that have permitted us to never have to really get an answer to that question?

Give the Villain Noble Goals

To dovetail off the last point I made, Elsa does some truly detestable things…but we do see there is a not-so-evil motivation behind her actions. Thus, we sympathize and I think that is one of the ways a good villain can truly get to us.

We see the ugliness in ourselves, the great evil we might be capable of in the right situation.

Elsa is profoundly insecure. She created the freak show largely to ameliorate the pain from her deep psychic wounds. If she owns and runs the show, she can be the main attraction. But again, Elsa’s goals collide with the intensity of a tectonic plate shift.

She knows the show has to make money because she clothes and feeds and shelters her ‘monsters.’ But, to be blunt? She’s also greedy. So when another act overshadows her own? Her greed and her insecurity collide.

Make the Villain’s End Tragic

For me, the best villains are the ones we almost are silently rooting for and are really bothered by that. Elsa is one of those characters that in one episode you hate her and in the next you’re rooting for her and the end of the season is beautiful and tragic.

My friend NYTBSA James Rollins says he knows he’s done his job when the reader cries for the villain at the end.

This is also why NYTBSA Allison Brennan and I have had a long-running argument that Hannibal Lecter is actually not a villain but an antihero.

Allison thinks he’s a villain, but I posit that Hannibal is written SO well, he actually blurs those boundaries and becomes somewhat of an antihero.

Y’all KNOW you cheered at the end of Silence of the Lambs when he said he was ‘having an old friend for dinner.’

And what is SO EPIC about this is that the guy he is going to eat is a law abiding citizen who technically has done nothing illegal…but we still are rooting for Hannibal (a serial killer).

And that freaks us out more than a little bit.

Another great villain? The Goblin King from Labyrinth. Every woman over the age of thirty is still wondering why the hell Sarah didn’t take the deal.

Now for THIS Little Slice…

There is another kind of villain, a villain who deeply upsets us and who’s end is a joyous event. We cheer.

Audiences don’t want this type of villain defeated. Fans don’t want them dead. We want them OBLITERATED.

Salt the very Earth with their souls.

I loved Cercei Lannister from Game of Thrones, but largely because she was so complex. We loved her, hated her, but mostly loved to hate her. Which was why she deserved so much better in the end.

But, we’ve already talked about Game of Thrones...a lot.

Michael Connelly’s The Lincoln Lawyer has the best example of this type of villain. The movie is great but the novel? O…M…G. The villain is positively terrifying.

Why?

Namely because this villain exemplifies what we fear most (and what protagonist Mickey Haller also fears).

That we won’t recognize pure evil when we see it.

At first glance, Roulet is the guy every girl would love to land. He’s smart, rich, handsome and charming. But he is also a stone cold killer who exacts suffering for his own pleasure.

What makes this character so disturbing is, like Haller, we believe Louis Roulet is innocent and that he’s been the victim of a terrible scam.

So when we hit that pivot point where we realize we’ve been duped? It rattles us to the core.

Venus Flytrap Villains

This type of villain will exhibit the same traits mentioned above, but they are all a deception. This villain is a Venus flytrap. The villain looks like a good guy, but is actually disguised death.

In The Lincoln Lawyer, Roulet has a sympathetic goal. He is an innocent man. The prostitute has snared him in an elaborate frame job so she can sue him for damages in civil court and use him as her ticket out of turning tricks.

Roulet is conflicted. He fails to share various pieces of vital information with his lawyer because he is ‘protecting his mother.’

He doesn’t want to upset her and he cares deeply about her perception of him (E.g. he fails to mention he was going to Reggie Campo’s place to pay for sex).

Roulet has noble goals. For instance, Roulet claims he discovered his mother (also a real estate agent) raped and brutalized in a home she was showing. This is why he carries a knife. Trauma. Protective instincts.

He tells Haller that real estate agents often meet clients in homes alone and there is no real way to vet that they aren’t psychos (um irony), so he carries for protection.

Notice how Connelly hits on ALL the notes of a villain, but camouflages them as a hero.

THIS is why our world turns upside down when we realize it is all a lie. Roulet does not have a sympathetic goal at all!

He’s a sado-mysogynistic killer and his only goal is to exact suffering…then destroy another man’s life by framing him for his crime.

This villain is not conflicted at all. He is very well aware of what he’s doing. He’s narcissistic and believes he is above the rules that govern society.

He does not have noble goals. His goals are as black as they come. This is why, unlike a villain like Elsa Mars, when Roulet meets his end? We cheer.

In fact, regarding this, I actually prefer the ending in the movie where Haller’s motorcycle gang clients beat Roulet within an inch of his life before he’s hauled to jail.

A good way to make this kind of villain work is to create a deflection. Cast an innocent character as the ‘villain.’  It is essentially a ‘bait-and-switch.’

In the case of Roulet, the prostitute he brutalized carried the mantle of villain until Act Two.

Practice Makes Perfect

Overall, much of what goes into crafting legendary villains (or any character for that matter) has to do with study and practice. Watch television or movies actively. Take notes. Pay attention. Read a LOT of books.

Why did a villain resonate? Why not? Can you do something similar but different? Perhaps better?

Also PRACTICE. A fantastic way to hone our character-building skills is to use them…as much as possible. We have a brand new class that’s actually PERFECT for this. Maria Grace will be teaching how to write novellas this Friday (use Bite10 for $10 off).

While the full-length novel is what most of us are striving to complete, the novella is wonderful for cultivating an audience and for building skills. How we get good at writing villains is by writing a LOT of them.

The novella is a fantastic place to hone those skills (and also a lot of modern readers have the attention span of a crack-addicted fruit fly).

If we look at the authors most renowned for crafting villains—Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick—they wrote a LOT of short form works. Not only are many of these shorter works now considered ‘literature,’ but filmmakers later adapted many of these works into film. So I STRONGLY recommend her class.

***Remember a FREE recording is included in purchase price.

Also for additional help beyond this blog, I’ll be teaching Dark Arts: Building Your Villain next Tuesday (use Thrill10 for $10 off).

What are your thoughts?

Does this help you understand how to give depth to your villains? What are some of your favorite villains from the page or even the screen?

I love hearing from you!

And to prove it and show my love, for the month of NOVEMBER, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly.

I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

In the meantime, PLEASE treat yourself to a class!

Upcoming LIVE CLASSES Through November

Yes, I know most of us will be doing NaNoWriMo, which is why a FREE recording is included with your purchase.

Bite-Sized Fiction: How to Plot a Novella

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8th  7:00-9:00 p.m. EST (NYC TIME). Use Bite10 for $10 off.

Dark Arts: Building Your Villain

November 19th, 2019 7:00 P.M. tp 9:00 P.M. EST (NYC TIME). Use Thrill10 for $10 off.

Tick Tock: How to Plot Mystery Suspense

THURSDAY, November 21st  7:00-9:00 p.m. EST (NYC TIME). Use Thrill10 for $10 off.

Why Are We HERE? Scenes that HOOK

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22nd, 2019. Use Thrill10 for $10 off.

ON DEMAND CLASSES

The Art of Character: Writing Characters for a SERIES ON DEMAND

Use Binge10 for $10 off.

How do we create characters that readers will fall in love with, characters strong enough to go the distance? Find out in this THREE-HOUR class that also comes with detailed notes and a character-building template. Again, use Binge10 for $10 off.

This class dovetails with my previous class:

Bring on the Binge: How to Plot and Write a Series (ON DEMAND). Use Binge10 for $10 off.

Need some help with platform and branding?

Branding: WHEN YOUR NAME ALONE Can Sell (ON DEMAND)

Use brand10 for $10 off.

For the complete list, go to the OnDemand Section.

The post The Villain: Crafting Scoundrels, Sinners & Substance of Legends appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Bad people make better stories. Why? Because I cannot say this enough, ‘Fiction is about one thing and one thing only—PROBLEMS.’

Who better to create a lot of problems than damaged, broken, unlikable, foolish and possibly even unredeemable human beings?

***I use the term ‘human beings’ for all characters because aliens, otherworldly beings, and any ‘thinking’ creature will possess anthropomorphic (human-like) qualities.

So why do ‘bad people’ make better stories?

Perfect people, first of all, are unicorns and don’t exist. Secondly, they are boring. Thirdly, we can’t relate to them because we aren’t unicorns (just deluded we are ).

What’s the story killer with perfect people? To be blunt, these characters have nowhere to grow. Since ‘perfect people’ handle every crisis with a level head and can be trusted to always do the right thing, the reader won’t ever worry.

If the reader never worries, guess what kiddies?  You don’t have a story, you have a lot of words.

Villains are a whole other post. So is the Big Boss Troublemaker (our core antagonist responsible for creating the overall story PROBLEM).

Today, what I want to address is HOW to roughen up our MC and supporting cast in ways that will ratchet tension and drive the character arcs of everyone around.

We need a change agent who will turn pages, without turning off readers.

***Please keep in mind, it is impossible to write a story everyone will love. Knowing this, get in and get dirty.

Bad for the Sake of Bad

One of the most common mistakes newbie authors make is that they lack the confidence to make any character (who isn’t the villain) flawed at all. From the perfect hair to the perfect outfit, these literary paper dolls do all the right things.

After enough rejection or feedback from critique partners, the emerging writer might start realizing that perfect equals dull.

What then happens is they can go to the other extreme and overcompensate. They create a character so abrasive and awful, readers can’t root for them. Always remember, that artists don’t craft a bad character solely to be bad.

Every character—even a ‘bad’ one—serves a purpose.

There are going to be some possible spoilers in this post, but I’ll work hard to maneuver around that. Usually I strive for older movies and series, but after almost two thousand blogs, I need fresher examples.

‘Bad People’ Make Great Mirrors

John Malkovich in the Netflix original movie, ‘Bird Box.’

I read Josh Malerman’s novel ‘Bird Box’ and also watched the Netflix original movie. Both versions are excellent. The movie did a fabulous job (which is pretty remarkable in and of itself).

Even though the movie is very different from the book, it did a great job of maintaining the core idea.

***In this post, I’ll refer mostly to the movie version for simplicity.

I mention Bird Box because Douglas was one of my favorite characters. When chaos is unleashed and the world is very literally ending, our MC Malorie has no choice but to take shelter with a group of strangers or die.

Douglas is one of the founding members of this group, and he is not happy to add the very pregnant Malorie to their numbers.

Douglas is rude, selfish, acerbic, and blunt and one of my favorite characters because he is precisely what Malorie needs if she has any hope to survive and evolve. He’s a mirror.

What do mirrors do?

Mirrors show us what IS, not what we want.

When I look in a mirror, I’d love to see a hot babe with six-pack abs, the legs of a dancer, hair that rivals and an anime character…and flawless, wrinkle-free skin. But this is delusion, not reality.

A mirror shows me what IS. It shows me what’s good—that outfit is BANGIN’! But, it also shows me what I need to work on—maybe lay off the carbs. Ultimately, it shows me what I need to learn to accept and embrace—smile lines are a privilege denied to many.

Douglas minces no words. He doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what he is…a mean bastard who expects the worst and is usually right. Though it isn’t nice to say, Malorie IS soft (in more ways than being pregnant).

She’s been coddled by a modern world she took for granted. Malorie expected her sister to always be there, for her to simply have a doctor and hospital to give birth to a baby she doesn’t want. She’s transitioning into a world where a two-mile trip to get groceries costs lives.

Douglas shows her a new reality she must see if she has any hopes of living longer than a week.

To paraphrase Douglas, there are two kinds of people—@$$holes and the dead. The reason we ‘like’ him is he isn’t wrong. Civility is of zero value when civilization has collapsed.

Douglas also demonstrates a really painful truth.

Not everyone who smiles at you is your friend.

Stephen King’s “The Shining.”

While Douglas is ‘mean,’ he’s so much more than that. He’s a pragmatist, a survivor. According to Douglas it makes no sense to take in every person who begs for shelter, not in a world with limited resources.

It also makes sense to be extremely wary of WHO is allowed into their inner circle. Sometimes you have to make the hard choices for the greater good even if that means leaving a stranger outside to possibly die.

***Time will prove out how right he is.

If the goal is to survive when all hell breaks loose, then choose the party wisely. They no longer have the luxury of making bad choices, and not everyone is who they claim to be.

Douglas is very forthright and honest about who and what he is. He makes no pretense that he’s a miserable S.O.B. Yet, this is a quality that I found endearing.

When lives are at stake, truth is the most precious currency, even if it stinks.

‘Bad People’ Drive Change

Douglas minces no words about how he feels about Malorie. She is blind long before the blindfolds. She’s weak, soft and a liability. Mirrors show us what’s wrong, what we need to fix. Is our fly down? Do we have the back of our skirt tucked in our underwear?

Is there a giant glob of spinach between our teeth? Has a pigeon pooped in our hair and no one has told us because they ‘didn’t want to embarrass us’?

The mirror might show a lot of what we don’t LIKE, but it offers us the clearest vision of what must change. The same goes for our MC (and all characters if we do our job properly).

In Bird Box, Malorie has to toughen up emotionally and physically to make it through. Yet, at the same time, one of the reasons she doesn’t like Douglas is because he reminds her of her father.

She doesn’t want to be like her father so she’s dismissed any quality her father possessed as ‘bad’ and ‘unwanted.’ The story will show her that the qualities she hated in her father (and in Douglas) are the very attributes that will ensure her survival.

Ah, but what she will ALSO learn (arc) is there is a time and a place for these ‘negative’ qualities.

Before the end of the world, Malorie’s dad irreparably damaged his marriage, family, and his two daughters. Even Douglas admits his personality flaws and his drinking cost him two marriages and any meaningful friendships.

What Malorie learns is to not summarily dismiss these attributes as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ because these qualities have a time and a place.

When she’s fighting for survival, she can’t afford to be soft. Paranoia, ‘cruelty,’ emotional distance and a sociopathic level of compartmentalization keep her and those she cares about alive. But, once the storm has passed, the need for these ‘bad’ attributes fades away.

There’s a time to trade the plow for the sword and vice versa.

Should Malorie make it to safety with those in her care and FAIL to put away her father and Douglas’s attitudes and approaches? She’ll be alive, but won’t have a life.

Crafting ‘Bad People’ 

Sometimes, as we just discussed, a character might be ‘bad’ to force change in our MC. What makes Douglas such a fantastic example is that, as awful as he can be? He makes sense. We (readers) can see that he makes very good points.

If they take in too many people, they will starve or increase odds of dying because they’ll have to venture out to resupply more frequently, etc.

When it comes to your story, how can we use ‘bad people’ to strengthen the MC?

What is your MC’s greatest fear? Her greatest shame? What does your MC believe is true, which is, in fact, a lie? A lie that is holding that character back from actualization?

For this, we’ll look to the Netflix series Stranger Things.

 If you haven’t seen the series, I strongly recommend it because it’s one of the best examples of superlative storytelling and complex characters I’ve ever seen. I will work diligently not to spoil anything.

In Stranger Things the focus isn’t solely on the lead MC. The party is the protagonist (much like Joy Luck Club, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Lord of the Rings, etc.) and if the party fails, then so will the ‘MC’ Eleven, a.k.a. ‘El.’

What gives SO much depth and texture to this series is the complexity, the interlocking of all the supporting players. In the first season, one of the most interesting characters isn’t even (yet) part of the group of heroes.

Steve Harrington is the ‘popular kid’ trope from every 80s ‘Coming of Age’ movie. He has the great hair, the designer clothes, and drives a Mercedes. He’s a top jock from an upper middle class family surrounded by the standard superficial cronies we’ve seen in countless movies.

Steve is the CLASSIC rich @$$hole.

He’s self-centered, shallow and, ironically…he became one of my favorite characters.

It’s the story problem in Season One that makes him realize he’s shallow and that he’s surrounded himself with counterfeit friends (who are also miserable people). He has to choose between the keeping old him (popular Steve) or let go of that life and pursue Nancy.

Nancy isn’t vapid arm candy like all the other girls he’s dated. When facing the enemy, Steve finally realizes he wants more. The struggle offers clarity about who he’s willing to fight for, and he also learns what true friendship really is.

The transformation in Steve Harrington is nothing short of miraculous.

In Season Two, there was a different challenge.

Steve had changed…but not enough. He HAD to grow even more if the group had any hope of surviving Round Two with the enemy.

Steve’s greatest fear is being a nobody and his shame is that deep down, he really believes he has nothing of substance to offer. In Season One, the story problem forced him to see how he used his popularity, money and status as armor.

But what happens when all THAT is stripped away, too? When he can’t rely on being Mr. Cool to keep Nancy? How does he respond to being treated the way he treated others in Season One?

What does Steve DO when HE is the object of ridicule?

Steve can’t ‘level up’ unless he willingly lets go of the ‘old self.’ But, like most of us, Steve isn’t aware of the ‘old self’ and even if he is, it’s comfortable so he’s unlikely to give it up easily.

It will have to be STRIPPED away.

No better way to do this than to bring in a replacement. When the explosive Billy Hargrove screams into the school parking lot in his new Camaro—easily stepping in as the high school’s new Alpha male—Steve undergoes a personal extinction.

Billy Hargrove ‘Stranger Things’ Season Two.

Not only does he see who he used to be—and have to make peace with that shame—but he also sees what he is not. He’s no longer the strongest, the best, the baddest. This forces him to make hard choices.

‘Bad People’ Force the HARD Choices

Will Steve dedicate himself to fighting to regain the old, or will he evolve to something better? When he’s kicked in the confidence, can he find a better source of courage than great hair and status?

Without the almost sociopathic Billy Hargrove’s influence, it is fairly obvious Steve wouldn’t have a hard enough push required for meaningful change. Steve cannot hope to survive the story problem—the REAL PROBLEM—if he continues to care about that which doesn’t matter.

Billy is a VILE human being (though not without his own baggage and dimension I’m sure we’ll see in Season 3). He’s over the top in everything—his car, hair, clothes, sexuality, and especially his temper (RAGE).

But, Billy HAD to be virtually irredeemable for Steve to even see the message let alone ‘get’ it. Billy strips away Steve’s armor and this means Steve has to become stronger in who he is. If his insides are iron, he won’t need the external protection that can be so easily taken away.

In the End

‘Bad people’ make for amazing stories, and this goes for the MC too. If our characters don’t have flaws, weakness, blind spots, and shame, then they’re not ‘real.’ Readers connect with weakness, not strength.

We know pride, envy, fear, estrangement, insecurity, vulnerability, and anger. We’ve all been poseurs, pretenders, and done and said things we wish we hadn’t.

In your story, just make sure these ‘negative’ attributes serve a purpose.

Nothing lives in a great story rent-free.

‘Bad people’ don’t have to arc if they’re not the MC (or part of the protagonist party). Billy is a character that they ‘could’ kill off in Episode One of Season Three. It would be okay because he did his job in Season Two—he forced Steve’s character arc.

I hope they don’t do this because he’s too good of a character to waste. Also, there’s no better story than a redemption story. But, truth be told, it won’t harm the overall story if Billy isn’t in this narrative for the long haul.

It didn’t hurt in the movie Bird Box. Douglas didn’t evolve because he wasn’t supposed to. His purpose was solely to change Malorie.

On the other hand if your ‘bad person’ IS your MC or a major player (part of the group protagonist), then there will have to be something sympathetic/redeemable among all the grit.

We spend most of Season Two loathing Billy Hargrove, but there’s ONE scene that maybe could change some minds about why he’s the way he is and possibly who he could become (good or bad) in the future.

BUT, we’ll have to wait and see.

Suffice to say, all people are ‘bad people.’ Unless we’re a psychopath, we are all very well aware of where we fall short. Most of us struggle with habits, weaknesses and have a laundry list of what we’d like to change, remove or improve.

As authors, when we roughen up our characters, these flaws generate resonance. Personality collisions create the tension that drives the story and forces change in all the players.

Shiny and perfect is all right, but people pay fortunes for items with wear, that are ‘distressed.’ The dings, nicks, and stains show they’ve been through some stuff, have some stories to tell.

Their’ damage’ and ‘wear’ makes them all the more interesting…and valuable. So be bold and go do some damage! Bad people make better stories. If you need some more instruction on HOW to do this…

REMEMBER ON DEMAND CLASSES ON SALE FOR ‘MOTHER’S DAY’!

I have some fabulous classes for sale ON DEMAND ($15 off until midnight MONDAY May 13th). Delivered right to you to enjoy over and over on your computer (pants not required).

To celebrate Mother’s Day, use the code MOM15 for $15 off all ON DEMAND CLASSES. So if you are a mother or have a mother or just appreciate that writing can be a real mother *&^%$ use the code.

These classes won’t be offered again and I’m putting them on sale before deleting them from the hard drive to make room for the new. One of the reasons is these classes started running closer to three hours instead of two because there is so much new material. This means I need to split into two classes or charge more for the extra long class, so this is an EXTRA bargain.

Treat yourself!

ON DEMAND CLASSES

***NOTE: Classes are designed to play on computers (laptops or desktop) and our technology plays nicest with Chrome or Firefox. Many times the recordings are compatible with other devices like tablets or smartphones, but those devices aren’t always able to access the class because of the changes with HTML5. Use mobile devices at your own risk.

On Demand Fiction Addiction: Write the Books Readers CRAVE!

On Demand for a limited time. Watch all you like from comfort of home. $55

On Demand Story Master: From Dream to Done (A.K.A. Fast-Drafting 101) 

Yes, you can write a book in two weeks. I’ve done it using what I teach in here. On Demand for a limited time. $55 for basic/$349 for GOLD

On Demand: Harnessing Our Writing Power with THE BLOG!

On Demand for a limited time. $55 Basic/$165 for GOLD

The post Bad People Make Better Stories: Crafting the Perfect ‘Unlikable’ Character appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Every story begins with an idea. Alas, stories can only be created when at least two vastly different ideas collide. The place where they meet is the BOOM, much like the weather. Storms erupt because two very different bodies of air meet…and don’t get along.

Only one will win out. In the meantime, lots of rain, lightning strikes and maybe some tornadoes. After the powerful storms, the landscape is altered, lives are changed, some even lost.

It’s the same with powerful stories. Yet, instead of weather fronts colliding, differing ideas are colliding.

It’s wonderful to have a great story idea. Alas, an idea alone is not enough. It’s a solid start but that’s all. Loads of people have ‘great ideas’ and that and five bucks will get them a half-foam latte at Starbucks.

Ideas are everywhere.

What differentiates the author from the amateur is taking the time to understand—fundamentally—how to take that idea and craft it, piece by piece, into a great story readers love.

Building Ideas into Stories

Stories have key components required for building, and I promise we’ll get there. My goal, this go-round has been to elevate the teaching and deep-dive in a way I hope you’ve not experienced before.

I always found craft teaching either was so simplistic I was all, ‘Got it, sally forth.’ *taps pen* Or, the instruction was so advanced (assuming I was far smarter than I was) and it made me panic more than anything.

Like the ‘write your story from the ending.’ Sure, meanwhile, I’ll go build a semi-conductor.

There was this MASSIVE gap between X, Y, Z and why I was even doing X, Y, and Z. Why not Q?

And all to what end? How did I make all the pieces FIT? *sobs*

Anyway, this is why we’re taking things SLOWLY. I want to fully develop these concepts so you can create incredible stories far more easily. Yes, this is master class level stuff, but hopefully I will help mesh with 101 concepts so even beginners will feel challenged (as opposed to utterly LOST like I did).

For those new to this blog or anyone who wants to catch up, here are the lessons so far:

Structure Matters: Building Stories to Endure the Ages

Story: Addictive by Design

Conflict: Elixir of the Muse For Timeless Stories Readers Can’t Put Down

The Brain Behind the Story: The Big Boss Troublemaker

Problems: Great Dramatic Writing Draws Blood & Opens Psychic Wounds

How to Write a Story from the Ending: Twisted Path to Mind-Blowing End

Ideas as Character Catalyst

When we discussed the BBT, I showed how all BBTs are an IDEA. This IDEA might manifest as a villain or as a core antagonist. The core antagonist only different from a villain in that this person’s goal is not inherently destructive, evil or nefarious. Their idea(s) simply conflicts with what the protagonist’s idea(s) and what the MC believes he/she desires.

This antagonist generates a core story problem BIG enough to shove the protagonist out of the comfort zone and into the crucible. This pressure (problems) creates heat which is the catalyst that creates the cascading internal reaction which will fundamentally alter the protagonist.

These internal changes are necessary for victory over the story problem via external action (choices/decisions). The MC cannot morph into a hero/heroine carrying emotional baggage, false beliefs, or character flaws present in the beginning. Why?

Because these elements are precisely WHY the MC would fail if forced to battle the BBT head-on in the opening of the story.

The story problem, and what it creates, is like a chemical reaction. Our protagonist, by Act Three should transform into something intrinsically different…a hero/heroine (a shining star instead of a nebulous body of gas). The problem should be big enough that only a hero/heroine is able to be victorious.

Villains as BBT

Villains are fantastic and make some of the most memorable characters in fiction whether on the page, stage or screen (Joker, Buffalo Bill, IT, Dr. Moriarty, Cersie Lannister, etc.). A common misperception, however, is villains are ‘easy’ to write. No, mustache-twirling caricatures are easy to write. But villains, villains that get under our skin, who poke and prod at tender places take a lot of preparation and skill.

Dr. Hannibal Lecter is extremely dimensional. We, the audience, are conflicted because he’s horrible, grotesque, cruel… and suddenly we find ourselves rooting for him.

That seriously messes with our heads.

Dr. Lecter has an IDEA of polite society. Act like a proper human and be treated like one. His IDEA of what a human is entails all that separates us from animals, namely manners and self-control. Act like a beast, and beasts–>food.

This cannot help but conflict with any FBI agent’s duty to protect all lives (deserving or not), and help mete out justice in all homicides (even of those horrible folks we’re all secretly happy Hannibal made into a rump roast).

All I can think is thank GOD Lecter is fictional or half the folks on Facebook would now be curing world hunger.

Anyway….

Superb characters are never black and white, right or wrong because that’s an inaccurate reflection of humanity.

We (the audience) sense the falseness of such a simplistic character, and, while one-dimensional characters (villains included) can be amusing for a time, they’re not the sort of character that withstands the test of time. They don’t possess enough substance/dimension/gray areas to elicit heated debate and discussion among fans for years to come.

But villains are not ideal for all stories or all genres.

Core Antagonist as BBT

There are what people call character-driven stories which don’t require a villain. I twitch when I hear the term ‘character-driven’ because too many mistake this as a pass for having to plot. NOPE. We still need a plot .

Plot is what will drive the character change.

I’ve used the examples Steel Magnolias and Joy Luck Club in other posts so we’ll pick a different one today. The Mirror Has Two Faces is one of my favorite examples.

The BBT in this story is the IDEA that physical beauty is bad. This IDEA is manifested in the story problem, which is created by Professor Gregory Larkin. He believes he knows why he’s always been unlucky in love.

He’s attracted to her…mind.

Being an analytical Mathematics teacher at Columbia he gets a bright idea. He believes superficial attraction and sex is what has ruined all his relationships (and is partially correct).

He theorizes that physical attractiveness always undermines authentic intimacy. Thus, he postulates a solution. Find and date a woman he finds completely physically unappealing. Then he’ll find true love (Story Problem).

Enter in Professor Rose Morgan, a shy, plain, middle-aged professor who teaches literature also at Columbia. Ah, but Rose also happens to have a stunning older sister and a mother who was model-gorgeous in her heyday, a mother who always has to be the center of attention.

Gregory Larkin believes he can only find love without physical beauty, that physical attraction has only a bad ending.

Close, but No Cigar

Rose Morgan also has issues with beauty, though is not actively aware of it initially. Her mother’s obsession with her own beauty has propelled Rose to demur and become a wallflower. She dresses in frumpy clothes, wears no makeup, doesn’t exercise and does nothing with her hair.

Namely, she doesn’t want to compete with Mom. Mom’s distorted overvaluation of physical beauty has created an equally distorted devaluation of physical beauty in Rose.

When Larkin asks Rose out and the relationship blooms enough for them to marry, it seems his theory is sound. Rose wants to believe she’s okay with this. That she is okay that she was picked because she was utterly unattractive on the outside.

Sure, it stings, but in the end, does it matter? They are close, share similar interests, enjoy each other’s company and she’s no longer terminally single.

Only once married, does Rose realize she’s sold herself short in a big way.

She didn’t believe she longed for Puccini and romance and lust and for a man (her husband) to want her. That was for ‘pretty girls’ and she was lucky to even be picked at all. Right?

Right?

Wrong

One night, Rose presses Gregory for sexual intimacy and he freaks out. He rejects her advances, and is angry at her for upsetting his tidy formula for lasting love.

This crushes Rose.

Rose believes she repulses him, but is very wrong. He did want her, probably more than any woman ever before. Yet, he still clings to his false IDEA. He remains undeterred that physical attraction/relations will ruin true love. He leaves right after this disastrous night for a lengthy lecture tour.

Rose finally faces her fear of being pretty and her false beliefs that she a) is not pretty and b) does not deserve to be pretty. She cleans up her diet, gets her hair done, changes her wardrobe and wears makeup. She feels differently and notes others treat her differently, too.

Gregory also does some soul-searching and starts pondering he might be wrong. Maybe outer beauty does not instantly negate inner beauty. Perhaps beauty, physical attraction, lust wasn’t the problem. He was.

Maybe.

Showdown Between the Ideas

Gregory returns to NYC and sees Rose has bloomed. She’s a very different wife inside and out. Not only is she stunning, but she’s now confident and knows what she wants, what she deserves.

She apologizes for her part in the problem. Confesses she never should have agreed to a passionless marriage. She thanks him for helping her see her own cowardice, but in truth she wants passion and Puccini, love and sex and more than marriage melba toast.

Gregory is dumped…again.

This forces him to take a hard look at himself and his ‘theory.’ He’s forced to choose between his ‘flawless theory of perfect love’ or Rose.

Will he let Rose dump him and go in search of an even more physically unattractive female? Or will he ditch his theory and woo Rose back?

Ideas as Weather Fronts

What happens when a cold front meets with a hot front? A STORM! Same in stories. This is why it’s critical to understand the BBT and the proxy carrying out the idea. It’s why it’s just as vital to understand the protagonist and his or her IDEA to be challenged.

Like in weather the colder and drier the cold front and the hotter and moister the hot front, the bigger the BOOM.

Thus once you’ve selected the IDEAS that will clash and what sort of characters will serve as the delivery mechanisms, make sure to choose who will suffer/change the most. The higher the stakes the better the story.

Also ask (for both sides):

What does he/she want? Why does he/she want it? Why now? What happens if he/she fails to get what they want?

When we articulate these and craft these ahead of time, we can make sure to pack as much punch into the plot as possible. No reader wants to invest 12-15 hours into a story where there are low stakes or no stakes. Where no one changes. ZZZZZZ.

Y’all might laugh, but I’ve edited many a work with no stakes. When I asked the writer, ‘What happens if she doesn’t find out the secret?’ Usually, I got, ‘She um…just doesn’t?’

Nope. That isn’t a story, it’s a sedative.

À la fin…

Ennui Cat says love is for fools and brings only pain. He’s judging your book…and you.

But mostly you.

In the end, think how many weather metaphors we use when talking about people and conflict. A storm’s brewing. Lightning rarely strikes twice. Could feel the crackle in the air.

If conflict is thought of like storms, then reverse engineer this. How do storms work? What makes them bigger and nastier? Use this to help add power to your plot problem.

For anyone who longs to accelerate their plot skills, I recommend my On Demand Plot Boss: Writing Novels Readers Want to BUY. Two hours of intensive plot training from MOI…delivered right to your computer to watch as much as you like .

Or to make stabbing motions at my head with a pen. Die! Die! Kristen we loves you but hates you!

I also am offering my Bullies and Baddies: Understanding the Antagonist on March 29th (7-9 EST) recording included with purchase if you can’t make it. This class is for in-depth training on how to balance all types of antagonists for maximum impact.

What Are Your Thoughts?

Does this help make plotting a tad less intimidating? Are you perhaps seeing where/why your previous idea floundered? Didn’t realize you needed at least TWO for a story?

Where do you struggle? Because we ALL do. What you want to know more about? Where you get stuck, etc.

I look forward to helping you guys become stronger at your craft. What are some of your biggest problems, hurdles or misunderstandings about plot? Where do you most commonly get stuck?

I love hearing from you!

And am not above bribery!

What do you WIN? For the month of March, for everyone who leaves a comment, I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly. I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

***Will announce February’s winner next post.

By the way, yes I also offer classes, and so does my partner-in-crime USA Today Best-Selling Author Cait Reynolds does, too. We both want y’all to write amazing books because that means more word of mouth sales, and a world with better books.

Alas, we still should learn the business of our business so I hope y’all will check out the classes below.

NEW CLASSES (AND SOME OLD FAVES)!

Check them out at W.A.N.A. Int’l.

The post When Ideas Collide: Powerful Storms Make Superior Stories appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Problems are the essential ingredient for all stories. All forms of dramatic writing balance on the fulcrum of problems. The more problems, the better. Small problems, big problems, complicated problems, imagined problems, ignored problems all make the human heart beat faster.

Complication, quandaries, distress, doubt, obstacles and issues are all what make real life terrifying…and great stories captivating.

Face it, we humans are a morbid bunch. Most of us see flashing emergency lights on a slick highway, and what do we do? We slow down to see…while deep down desperately hoping we don’t see. We sit in a fancy restaurant and a woman throws a glass of red wine in her date’s face? Oh, we ALL pay attention.

Screeching tires, glass breaking or even a spouse on the phone muttering Uh-oh and our chest cinches. We must know what’s going on. Humans require resolution in order to return to our ‘happy’ homeostasis, even if deep down we know that ‘resolution’ is a lie. Delusion is inherently human, and so is neurosis which is good news for writers.

Can you say ‘job security’? *wink wink*

Humans Wired for Drama

If we take a moment to ponder people, it makes sense why problems make for excellent stories. First, all humans are wired for survival, thus any potential threat to survival makes us pay attention. We’re biologically designed to be egocentric. Thus survival is not a problem, it’s a given. It’s also why this conversation makes my left eye twitch:

Me: So what is your protagonist’s goal?

Writer: To survive.

Me: *face palm*

Survival is Not Story

Here’s the deal. We ALL have a goal to survive. If, at the end of the day, I am NOT DEAD? I consider that a pretty good day. My genetic desire to survive is why I don’t blow dry my hair in the shower, take up bear-baiting, or see how far I can drive backwards on a highway.

Survival isn’t interesting. Whatever threatens survival? That’s what’s interesting.

Secondly, humans possess a deep compunction to assign order in a world brimming with chaos. Remember our first lesson, when we discussed cause and effect? Our desire for order is directly related to survival. If we believe A + B = C, then when A +B =Z, we’ll drive ourselves nuts to know why.

What changed? Did we do, say, think something differently? Does this deviation mean anything? Is it dangerous?

Every superstition ever imagined hinges on human desperation for order and control.

We won the game when I didn’t wash my underwear and lost when I wore clean ones. Dirty underwear=winning. 

Thirdly, humans are innately selfish. This proclivity for selfishness makes us all psychically vulnerable. For instance, we develop neuroses of varying degrees of severity. Neuroses, fundamentally, are false beliefs regarding cause and effect.

I smiled at the clerk and she was extremely rude. So it is true. People don’t like me.

Or, the clerk caught her boyfriend in bed her mother minutes before heading to work and—in truth—we (the neurotic customer) have nothing to do with her bad attitude. Aside from being in the blast radius of the poor clerk’s Jerry Springer drama.

Chaos Abounds

When we factor in that humans a) are wired to survive b) crave order and c) are innately selfish, it makes sense why we are a story species. Stories are what discharges that leftover psychic energy left over at the end of every day.

Life rarely makes perfect sense, but stories do. Reality has no set order, but stories do. Every day bad guys win, good people die, and ‘stuff’ happens for no apparent reason which freaks us out.

These are the main reasons why stories are the balm that eases our jagged thoughts and weary heart. In well-written stories, we might not like the outcome, but it makes sense. The play or movie might not set well, but there is integral order. In dramatic writing, even when the good guy loses, he still wins.

Life can’t say the same.

The point of any great dramatic writing isn’t some canned message or ‘good guy always wins’ soma, or even some thinly veiled morality tale/lecture/pontification. Drama—when boiled down to its essence—is to feed the innately illogical and selfish id what it desires.

Entertainment.

But not simply any entertainment. Entertainment that speaks to the primal realms of the mind and offers release. Enter in…PROBLEMS.

A Hero Must Decide

Ever pay attention to the word ‘decide?’ De-cide. What other words end in ‘cide?’ Homicide, fratricide, sororcide, matricide, herbicide, pesticide, and y’all get the gist. Cide implies killing. Something, someone must die.

When we look to story, this is the point of a solid core story problem, because death is the ultimate objective. I know, I know. Missed my calling writing inspirational greeting cards, but bear with me.

In our last lesson, we unpacked my created literary term Big Boss Troublemaker, which is the BRAIN behind the core story problem in need of resolution. Strong BBTs make for stories that endure because IDEAS are impossible to completely destroy.

Like weeds of the human condition, we might eradicate a problem in one story but then POOF! It pops up again in another. Over and over, again and again.

This is why there are no new stories, only new ways of telling the same stories. All human stories are about the same things: love, betrayal, greed, acceptance, etc. These are emotional touch-points that imbue story immortality.

Same but Different

This is why Shakespeare’s plays are as relevant today as they were a few hundred years ago. It’s precisely how Baz Luhrmann can take a story about two star-crossed lovers trapped between two feuding families and set it in modern-day Verona Beach…and our brains don’t explode.

We accept Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes as Romeo and Juliet. We accept beach duels and gunfights, and John Leguizamo (Tybalt) spouting, ‘Peace? Peace. I hate the word, as I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee.’ We accept the Montagues and Capulets circa 1996 and oddly? We’re cool.

THIS makes perfect sense….

And this…

Not only does this make total sense, and speak to our souls…it is AWESOME. Romeo & Juliet is a play that is hundreds of years old, that tells a story we witness every single day. TODAY. We see these same dramas play out in our lives daily, whether in person, on-line or in the news.

The point of any story is the hero (heroine) has no choice but to de-CIDE. Ideas must die or victory is lost. Romeo and Juilet physically die in the end, but the IDEA that love can triumph over hate wins. Granted it’s a Pyhrric victory, but the IDEA that hate is more powerful—that might makes right—is ultimately defeated.

***It also proves Shakespeare’s sardonic point that romantic love leads to terminal stupidity, but that’s another post.

The Problem & Push

In any good story there are at least two IDEAS at war, meaning lots and lots of problems. There is the BBT’s (opposition’s) central idea, which will inevitably collide with the protagonist’s central idea.

As we discussed last lesson, ideas are relayed via the corporeal and this happens by proxy.

The proxy has a plan that forces the protagonist out of the comfort zone, and eventually gives the MC no choice but evolution or extinction. It’s do or die, whether that is a physical death, a psychic death, or both.

DEATH is always on the line. Whether we are writing comedy or tragedy, genre fiction or literary this maxim is universally true.

The MC must change internally (the IDEA) as well as externally (behavior), since talk is cheap. Action is what matters, because action is belief made manifest.

Problems at Play

Let’s use an example. Today, we’ll look at Zootopia. Sure, it’s a kid’s movie but a fabulous example how we don’t have to be writing Hamlet, There Will Be Blood, or Glenngarry Glenn Ross to write terrific drama with depth.

Judy Hopps is a bunny who dreams of going off and being a cop in Zootopia, a place where all animals coexist in perfect harmony and are not prejudged based off species or history.

Sure.

Zootopia (like all utopian ideals) is vastly different from the pretty picture, as Judy soon finds out when she enters the police academy. Then she gets an even harder dose of reality as a rookie cop. It is true—Zootopia is a wonder for sure—but it also has its fair share of prejudice, stereotyping, and mistrust.

The BBT is the IDEA that prejudice is inevitable and dangerous and there is only one option—eat or be eaten. Our proxy of this IDEA is the seemingly meekest and most helpless of all creatures—a sheep (Bellwether)—who’s the ‘hapless/spineless’ assistant to Mayor Lionheart (a lion, of course).

Bellwether doesn’t believe prejudice can ever be overcome, that all creatures will eventually resort to their baser natures. As a sheep, her kind have always been prey. Unless she uses her wits, she and her kind will remain perpetually in danger, a permanent menu ‘option.’

Granted, it’s a manufactured danger (neurosis), since predator and prey animals have managed to coexist in Zootopia without anyone being eaten for generations. Yet, her argument is compelling because her belief is grounded in authentic fear.

It is Bellwether’s perceived inevitable reversal that compels her to force ‘fate’s’ hand. She cannot endure the stress that she (and other prey animals) could be the daily special any day. Thus, she takes action to ensure prey animals are in control. TOTAL control.

Great Antagonists Actually Make a Good Point

This is what separates deep, layered antagonists (and villains) from caricatures. When we open our minds and think from the opposition’s POV, they kinda make a good point…which is what messes with our heads.

***FYI—Id, being primal and freaky, totally digs mind games and is still unsure if Dr. Hannibal Lecter is a villain or anti-hero. Sure he eats people, but only the ones who kinda deserved it.

Moving on…

Bellwether devises a scheme to ‘prove’ predator animals cannot be trusted, and thus must be contained for obvious public safety reasons. By inflaming deeply held, but politely hidden, beliefs among the animals, she will have all the justification needed to oppress those considered a threat (predators).

In the beginning, Judy Hopps naively believes she’s devoid of prejudice, completely enlightened, and without fear. Predators are not a threat. They don’t view her and her kind as food, but as fellow citizens and friends. All that being hunted and eaten stuff is ancient history.

This is Judy’s IDEA and it cannot help but collide with Bellwether’s IDEA that prejudice is inevitable and dangerous.

Desperation forces Judy to ally with a fox (historically known for enjoying rabbits as munchies) in order to solve the mystery. Predator animals really are going berserk, seemingly reverting back to their wild natures. Why?

Strong Protagonists Face Personal Extinction

Deep down, Judy believes the animals of Zootopia have evolved and can coexist (though is now facing escalating doubts). Problems bash Judy’s IDEA repeatedly, harder and harder.

A psychic sledgehammer slams into her beliefs, testing their actual strength. No matter what she does or tries, the evidence mounts that she’s delusional.

Everything she sees and experiences only seems to affirm predators are dangerous, cannot be trusted, and must be contained.

The core story PROBLEM—Why are all the predators suddenly going berserk?—gives Judy only two choices. She can give up or be brave and to take a hard honest look at herself.

Is she really as devoid of prejudice as she once believed? Really all that evolved, all that enlightened after all? Or deep down does she actually agree with Bellwether?

In the beginning, Judy believed Zootopia was perfect, but by the end of Act 2? Judy doesn’t even know why she’s THERE. All her psychic wounds are open and bleeding.

Eventually the story problem forces Judy to de-CIDE. One idea must die. Either Zootopia dies or the notion that prejudice is inevitable and dangerous must die.

For that to happen, Judy Hopps must expose Bellwether’s true colors and stop her nefarious plan, or Zootopia implodes. The old ways return only the roles reversed (prey in control) and all progress goes up in flames.

À La Fin

Both sides, antagonist and protagonist have their own unique IDEA. The story is the crucible that fires out the BS, and reveals truth. Problems batter both sides until one side finally wins. Just as a suggestion, in commercial fiction, it’s a sound plan for the protagonist (hero/heroine) to win. Otherwise it’s called a French film .

La mort est inévitable. Pourquoi se battre? Boire du vin.

For anyone who longs to accelerate their plot skills, I recommend my On Demand Plot Boss: Writing Novels Readers Want to BUY. Two hours of intensive plot training from MOI…delivered right to your computer to watch as much as you like .

Or to make stabbing motions at my head with a pen. Die! Die! Kristen we loves you but hates you!

I also am offering my Bullies and Baddies: Understanding the Antagonist on March 15th (7-9 EST) recording included with purchase if you can’t make it. This class is for in-depth training on how to balance all types of antagonists for maximum impact.

What Are Your Thoughts?

I do love hearing from you. Where you struggle, because we ALL do. What you want to know more about? Where you get stuck, etc.

I look forward to helping you guys become stronger at your craft. What are some of your biggest problems, hurdles or misunderstandings about plot? Where do you most commonly get stuck?

I love hearing from you!

And am not above bribery!

What do you WIN? For the month of FEBRUARY, for everyone who leaves a comment, I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly. I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

By the way, yes I also offer classes, and so does my partner-in-crime USA Today Best-Selling Author Cait Reynolds does, too. We both want y’all to write amazing books because that means more word of mouth sales, and a world with better books.

Alas, we still should learn the business of our business so I hope y’all will check out the classes below.

NEW CLASSES (AND SOME OLD FAVES)!

GASKETS & GAITERS: HOW TO CREATE A COMPELLING STEAMPUNK WORLD

Instructor: Cait Reynolds
Price: $65 USD Standard
Where: W.A.N.A. Digital Classroom
When: FRIDAY February 23, 2018. 7:00 PM E.S.T. to 9:00 P.M. EST

Who doesn’t love some steampunk cosplay? Corsets, goggles, awesome hats…

Steampunk has become one of the hottest genres today, crossing the lines of YA, NA, and adult fiction. It seems like it’s fun to write because it’s fun to read.

However, there’s a world of difference between the amateur steampunk writer and the professional steampunk author, and the difference lies in the world they create.

Is your steampunk world historically-accurate enough not to jar the reader out of the narrative with anachronisms?

Does your world include paranormal as well as steampunk?

Are the gadgets and level of sophistication in keeping with the technologies available at the time?

Steampunk is not an excuse to take short-cuts with history. Good writing in this genre requires a solid grasp of Victorian culture and history, including the history of science, medicine, and industry.

This shouldn’t scare you off from writing steampunk, but it should encourage you to take this class and learn how to create a world that is accurate, consistent and immersive.

This class will cover a broad range of topics including:

• Polite Society: Just how prim and Victorian do you want to get?
• Science, Technology, Medicine, and Industry: How to research these without dying of boredom?
• Creating the Blend: How to drop in historical details without info-dumping, and how to describe and explain your steampunk innovations without confusing.

GET READY TO ROAR: THE BUSINESS OF THE WRITING BUSINESS

Instructor: Kristen Lamb
Price: $55.00 USD
Where: W.A.N.A. Digital Classroom
When: Thursday, March 1st, 2018, 7:00-9:00 p.m. EST

Being a professional author entails much more than simply writing books. Many emerging authors believe all we need is a completed novel and an agent/readers will come.

There’s a lot more that goes into the writing business…but not nearly as much as some might want us to believe. There’s a fine balance between being educated about business and killing ourselves with so much we do everything but WRITE MORE BOOKS.

This class is to prepare you for the reality of Digital Age Publishing and help you build a foundation that can withstand major upheavals. Beyond the ‘final draft’ what then? What should we be doing while writing the novel?

We are in the Wilderness of Publishing and predators abound. Knowledge is power. We don’t get what we work for, we get what we negotiate. This is to prepare you for success, to help you understand a gamble from a grift a deal from a dud. We will discuss:

• The Product
• Agents/Editors
• Types of Publishing
• Platform and Brand
• Marketing and Promotion
• Making Money
• Where Writers REALLY Need to Focus

AMATEUR HOUR IS OVER: SELF-PUBLISHING FOR PROFESSIONALS

Instructor: Cait Reynolds
Price: $99.00 USD
Where: W.A.N.A. Digital Classroom
When: Friday, March 2nd, 2018, 7:00-10:00 p.m. EST

Let’s get down to brass tacks. Are you going to go KDP Select or wide distribution with Smashwords as a distributor? Are you going to use the KDP/CreateSpace ISBN’s or purchase your own package? What BISAC codes have you chosen? What keywords are you going to use to get into your target categories? Who’s your competition, and how are you positioned against them?

Okay, hold on. Breathe. Slow down. I didn’t mean to induce a panic attack. I’m actually here to help.

Beyond just uploading a book to Amazon, there are a lot of tricks of the trade that can help us build our brand, keep our books on the algorithmic radar, and find the readers who will go the distance with us. If getting our books up on Amazon and CreateSpace is ‘Self-Publishing 101,’ then this class is the ‘Self-Publishing senior seminar’ that will help you turn your books into a business and your writing into a long-term career.

Topics include:

• Competitive research (because publishing is about as friendly as the Red Wedding in Game of Thrones)
• Distribution decisions (because there’s actually a choice!)
• Copyright, ISBN’s, intellectual property, and what it actually all means for writers
• Algorithm magic: keywords, BISAC codes, and meta descriptions made easy
• Finding the reader (beyond trusting Amazon to deliver them)
• Demystifying the USA Today and NYT bestselling author titles
• How to run yourself like a business even when you hate business and can’t math (I can’t math either, so it’s cool)

Yes, this is going to be a 3-hour class because there is SO much to cover…but, like L’Oréal says, you’re worth it! Also, a recording of this class is also included with purchase.

The class includes a workbook that will guide you through everything we talk about from how to do competitive research to tracking ISBNs and distribution, and much, much more!

Time is MONEY, and your time is valuable so this will help you make every moment count…so you can go back to writing GREAT BOOKS.

EVEN MORE CLASSES…

Check them out at W.A.N.A. Int’l.

The post Problems: Great Dramatic Writing Draws Blood & Opens Psychic Wounds appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Kristen without makeup, LOL….

Many of us have been there. It’s late. We know we have “adulting” to do in the morning (which is in two hours). Our sensible self has been nagging us to get our @$$ to bed so long we smothered it with a pillow around midnight. Whether it’s a book, or Netflix or HBO or FX…we tell ourselves just one more episode. One more chapter. We can stop binging any time we want.

Suuuuuure…

Uh huh.

What is it that makes us lose all sense of responsibility and common sense when gut-hooked by these stories? By and large…VILLAINS.

But what goes into creating a truly terrifying villain? Or a villain who steals the show? Perhaps a villain who gains more fans than the HERO?

Excellent question.

To be blunt, villains are the soufflé of the character world. Preparation must be handled with utmost precision and care or it all goes FLAT.

Villains are among the most popular and memorable characters in all of storytelling history from Grendel to Darth Vader to Ramsay Bolton.

Yet, though these characters are extremely powerful, they’re (strangely) ridiculously tough to write. Villains can too easily become one-dimensional mustache-twirlers, too dumb to live, too boring to care, or just plain silly and unsympathetic.

I.e. Kylo-Ren, or as I like to call him, “Darth Emo”.

But, when writers do things right? It is the glorious Villain Soufflé writers are proud serve and readers/audiences cannot wait to devour….and then flat out stuff themselves half to death.

Face it, the hero is only as good as his/her opposition. The better the villain, the better the story. The better the story, the deeper the GUT HOOK. Want an audience who binges on your stories? There are many ways to do this, but nothing works quite like…

VILLAINS.

All righty, so today? Three critical ingredients for the perfect villain. Even though the villain character has limitless variations, we can at least address some NECESSARY ingredients that cover most every memorable villain.

Sort of like if you wanna make banana pudding, bananas are kind of a big deal. Yes, there are infinite variations of banana pudding but some ingredients have to be there or we don’t have banana pudding, we have something else entirely.

Villains are much the same.

Ingredient One—“Noble” Qualities

No blog worth its salt can discuss legendary villains without at least a nod to Game of Thrones. In fact, I could blog on villains for the next year using GoT and barely scratch the surface (of course it helps that George R.R. Martin has a cast of 2,312 characters).

Ah, Cersei though.

How we love to hate her. Yet, why does she resonate? Why does her character strike such a visceral chord? What makes her dimensional and real instead of a paper doll mustache twirling caricature?

First, she has “noble” qualities. She LOVES her family (her brother perhaps a bit too much for our comfort, but whatever). She’s a mother and will do anything for her kids to help, assist, promote, protect or even AVENGE them.

Literally.

She is fiercely devoted to her children (even a child as terrifying as Joffrey) and heaven help anyone who messes with her cubs. She’ll melt you with wildfire…then drop a city on you.

For reals. She did it

*Cersei drops mic then half of Westeros*

Most of us have kids, family, friends, loved ones, or even pets who we’d turn insta-psycho to protect…which is why we connect with Cersei. We share this powerful emotional vector which makes us hate her then root for her then hate ourselves for rooting for her.

Ingredient Two—A Sympathetic Viewpoint

Believe it nor not, Cersie possesses a highly sympathetic viewpoint. She’s a woman in a man’s world. Of all the Lannister children, SHE was the only one who paid attention, and who outpaced her brothers by a million miles regarding Rule with an Iron Fist/Throne 101.

SHE was the Lannister most qualified to rule, but instead, her father hands her off like chattel to marry a fat, sloppy, philandering joke of a leader, King Robert Baratheon (which explains a lot of why she chose Jaime *shivers*).

And it is this ever-pervasive powerlessness generated by the world she had no choice being born into that pisses her off more than a little (and rightfully so).

Her one brother Jaime has more interest in prancing around the country playing knight when he’s not in bed with her (*twitches a tad*) and the other brother Tyrion–in the beginning at least–is a drunken, womanizing, hard-partying dwarf she blames for her mother’s death.

She’s surrounded by men more “qualified” to rule from the Iron Throne and by “qualified” I mean they have man parts. The lion’s share of Cersei’s insane desire to gain the throne for one of her sons can be largely attributed to the fact that she believes she can rule vicariously through them and the requisite “man part.”

Of course after Season Six she’s there to blow $#!& up and she’s all out of children. High Sparrow is now a smoking crater glowing hotter than a Cherynobyl Ferris Wheel.

And that “Rule by Man Part Mandate”? She melted that, too…

The simple lesson is if Cersei had been born a man instead of a woman in a man’s world, a villain never would have manifested to begin with.

Remember this when crafting your villain.

In fact, though often we loathe Cersei, a lot of us gals can kinda sorta sympathize. Some of us wouldn’t have minded a few caskets of wildfire to unload on the last sales meeting.

You know the one.

That meeting where the boss’s drinking/golfing buddy who’s never had an original thought in his life stole your idea then landed your promotion solely because he possessed Mystical Man Part Powers.

Yeah.

And for the guys? Despite the Mystical Man Part Power, you have your own version of this “powerless and %$#ed over” scenario, which brings us to…

Ingredient Three—The Villain is the Hero of His Own Story

Moving away from Game of Thrones…. *pries fingers loose*

Why do we SO love Loki? Because Loki kind of has a good point and is the hero of his own story. In ways he is the male version of Cersei.

Bear with me.

For those who’ve slept since Thor released in 2011, Thor is the movie where we first met the Tom Hiddleston Loki we all know and love and hate…but mostly love.

In Thor, we’re tossed into a tale as old as time—sibling rivalry.

In the movie, Odin has created a fragile truce between Asgard and the Ice Giants. When the Ice Giants make a sudden play to retrieve the Casket, Thor (about to ascend as the new king) directly disobeys his father’s orders and runs off full of himself, all half-cocked and ready to do some damage.

Thor has zero concept of this little thing called “consequences.” Loki, however, does appreciate consequences both for Thor and the realm and his family, and is actually a far better choice to rule Asgard.

Loki, ever loyal, genuinely loves and cares about Thor (and the kingdom), and goes along with Thor’s raid on the enemy…all the while trying to talk Thor out of being a dip$#!t.

Alas, Thor’s asshattery creates a mass mayhem and places the kingdom in peril. Thor makes enough of a mess that Odin essentially puts Thor in the Asgardian version of TIME OUT—which apparently involves New Mexico.

This “punishment” only further demonstrates Odin isn’t truly punishing Thor, because everyone knows Lubbock, Texas is the far superior location for an Asgardian TIME OUT if Odin was serious about making Thor miserable.

Odin also decides to take a nap instead of putting Loki in charge, even though Loki’s still left to clean up the giant mess Thor made.

Giant mess, get it? I kill myself. Moving on…

In the midst of all this, Loki discovers his whole life is a lie, including his identity, and he experiences betrayal coupled with personal extinction.

He resents Odin for a vast number of legit reasons, but mostly he hates Odin for ever considering a selfish buffoon like Thor to rule Asgard. Thus, Loki sets out to prove his worthiness to his real father and place the realm under New Management.

With all Loki has endured, how he’s been betrayed, and his goal that the realm be ruled by “cooler” heads—pardon the pun—we the audience find it tough not to see Loki has some seriously valid gripes.

We see he really IS the hero in his own story.

In the End

I’ve given y’all three basic, but critical ingredients for a villain readers will love to hate or maybe even love. Villains are incredibly fun to write, but since they’re by nature unstable, volatile and often combustable, they need to be handled with care.

I’m teaching a brand new class Villains and Anti-Heroes TOMORROW and that’s where we get time to deep dive the really cool stuff, so I hope you will join me! I have been STOKED to teach this more advanced class and had to move it due to losing my voice last week, so y’all got another shot at signing up (recording is free with the class if you can’t make it in person).

I LOVE HEARING FROM YOU! And I am NOT above BRIBERY!

What are your thoughts? Does this help you understand how to give depth to your villains? Who are some of your favorite villains from the page or even the screen, small or big?

Which villains resonated with you and WHY? Which villains do you remember years later? You never get tired of re-watching the show or movie or rereading the book? What villains make you binge watch? Trade gas money for Netflix?

What do you WIN? For the month of September, for everyone who leaves a comment, I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly. I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

We are in the process of moving classes around due to the two MONSTER hurricanes so a fresh class list will be available next post. You can also dash over to W.A.N.A. International to check out what’s coming up and get your spot!

The post Bring on the BINGE! Creating Villains Audiences Can’t Get Enough Of appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Before we get started, I’d like to remind anyone who wants a WAY better chance at winning my 20 Page Death Star Critique, that I have started the Dojo Diva Blog and we are talking about Beginnings, namely giving ourselves permission to be NEW. Comments and trackbacks on the Dojo Diva count double and, since it is a separate contest, there is a LOT better chance of winning.

Moving on. VILLAINS!!!!

The antagonist is the most critical part to any story. No antagonist, NO story. Villains are only a type of antagonist and though this type of character has the power to be legendary, often what we see in books, series and movies are mustache-twirling caricatures. Villains can easily become one-dimensional plot puppets.

As writers, we must get in the head of our villains as much if not more than the protagonist. The reason is that eventually our protagonist must eventually grow to become a hero, and this is not possible if we fail to appreciate the goals, conflicts and motivations of the villain.

Plain and simple: The villain creates the STORY problem and provides the crucible that will create a hero.

No Sauron and Hobbits remain in the Shire wishing for adventure. No Darth Vader and who cares about Skywalker? No Goblin King and Sarah never faces the Labyrinth and her own immaturity.

I recommend studying movies to understand story structure, but I feel TV series are better for understanding the character development of villains. The reason is that series are far more similar to full-length novels. We (the audience) have more TIME to understand the villain and see him or her at work.

Today, I’d like to talk about ways that we can give villains depth. Great villains have some similar “components.”

Remember, the villain is always the hero in his own story. Wanting to “rule the world” just to “rule the world” is for cartoons. If a villain is wanting to rule, control, destroy, etc. they should have a really good/plausible/sympathetic reason for doing so.

In fact, when we do a great job at creating the villain, our audience will struggle with who to root for.

Granted, we do run into great characters like Joker (Heath Ledger) who are chaotic evil, but though this type of character might be great for a Batman movie, he will be really tough to cast in a novel. Even then, I’d go so far as to say that Joker DID have an agenda. Whether it was trauma or madness, we get a sense that Joker believes there is no good in the world and is on a mission to prove any goodness can be corrupted.

Give the Villain a Sympathetic Goal

Remember that the beating heart of a story is CONFLICT. Antagonist wants X and Protagonist wants Y. Their goals conflict and only one can triumph at the end. No cheating. In act three the Big Boss Troublemaker must be defeated. Period. None of this well the reader meets my antagonist in Book Two…

Every story has an antagonist responsible for the story problem and he or she must be defeated or the story isn’t complete.

***In series, the protagonist will defeat proxies of the core antagonist. Each proxy serves as the core antagonist for that story.

To help you guys wrap your heads around what I am talking about, let’s look at television shows. I highly recommend the series Justified for dimensional villains. In every season we are introduced to a new Big Boss Troublemaker. Season one is the Skinhead Bank Robber Boyd Crowder. Season Two is the Hillbilly Mob Boss Mama Bennett. Season Three is the Detroit Mob Boss Robert Quarles who’s been exiled to Kentucky to fill the vacuum left by the defeat of the Bennett clan.

What I LOVE about Justified is that the characters are dimensional and interesting. Also, each season nicely dovetails into the next with authentic human problems. This isn’t just a series for those interested in writing about crime. There are genuine human problems in this series.

Today, though, I want to hone in on what I feel is one of THE best villains I’ve ever seen: Mama Mags Bennett.

What is Mags’ goal? Yes, she wants to rule Harlan, Kentucky and surrounding areas with an iron fist (and make a healthy profit), but deep down, she believes she is taking care of her flock. She maintains order in a world riddled with chaos. The area is steeped in poverty, endless economic depression, addicts, jailbirds, absentee parents, lost youth, and troublemakers and she provides authority, protection and structure.

Yes, she is taking advantage of the people, but believes she is the lesser of evils. Her family has been on that mountain for generations and have been there to pick of the pieces every time a corporation has raped the area after promising prosperity. She believes that there will be predators, so might as well go with the devil you know and the one who isn’t going to take all the timber, strip mine the minerals and ruin the land with slag.

And frankly, she has a good point.

Also, because the area is riddled with addicts, she knows that bigger predators have their eyes on the area (I.e. Miami Mafia and Mexican cartels) and have no concern for the people. Yes, she provides weed, meth and oxycotin, but also provides jobs and protection. She also protects members of the flock from smaller predators. For instance, she will NOT tolerate a child molester and goes biblical on anyone who crosses that line.

Thus, we as the audience see she kind of has a good point. The area will likely always be lawless, so why not be ruled by a local who cares for the community?

Contrast

Great villains have contrast. Contrast makes a villain sympathetic. If a villain is always torturing people and doing bad stuff simply to do bad stuff, the audience can’t really connect. We have to have some area where that villain is human.

The entire season (series ) is loaded with contrast and there is no character more conflicting that Mags Bennett. First of all, let’s just look at some of the surface contrast.

Hillbilly Mafia

Dixie Mafia

These words don’t go together. When we think of Mafia, we often think of black suits and shiny Lincolns. When we hear “Dixie” we think of line-dancing, moonshine and banjos. We don’t default to dirty flannel, banjos and ruthless drug enforcers.

Yet, one element that has always made mob members so intriguing is their loyalty to family.

Helloo? Ever heard of the Hatfields and McCoys?

This area of the country is steeped in a profound loyalty to clan and family, thus it unexpectedly makes the perfect mob story.

Mags is so interesting namely because we can never seem to get a bead on her. When we meet her, she seems to be this sweet, gentle grandmotherly figure (which she is). She runs a country store and makes sure the local families can use their food stamps and welfare checks to put food on the table.

Yet, this same matronly character is later seen breaking her son’s fingers with a hammer because his bad decisions have jeopardized their larger operations and brought the attention of federal marshals. Granted, she cries the entire time and hates having to “correct” her son, but she knows if she shows any weakness of favoritism with her own kin, she will lose power and respect.

Thus, we SEE this woman do terrible things, but she always has a sympathetic reason (as to point above). Yes, it is awful that she breaks her son’s fingers, but she is genuinely afraid her son’s idiocy will get him killed or imprisoned, thus her “chastisement” is the far less severe of the consequences.

In her mind, she is saving him from himself.

The Villain Fires the Conflict for the Protagonist

Great villains torment some part of the protagonist’s soul. For the protagonist, it can be black and white to take out a bad guy, but that isn’t nearly as messy. In the case of Justified Raylan Givens is a federal marshal who also grew up in the area. He knows Mags and even likes her. He is torn between his duty to uphold the law and his personal history and feelings.

Taking out Mags is emotionally messy. And, though Raylan is the perfect person to shut her down, he kinda wishes someone else could have the task. Mags brings back old guilt, memories, shame, regrets and baggage.

Make The Villain’s End a SAD Thing

In Justified we hate Mags, we are rightfully afraid of her, but we also feel for her. She does a lot of really awful things, and though we want her stopped, we want her undoing to be appropriate. She’s like a man-eating bear. Sure we want the bear to be put down, but caging it and putting it in the circus seems unreasonable and unfit.

When Mags is taken down, we walk away feeling that her end was just and appropriate to the apex predator she was.

What are your thoughts? Do you think series are better for exploring villains and antagonists? Do you think they are a better cross-comparison with a novel? What are some series with memorable villains? How did the villain leave you conflicted? Did you find yourself rooting for the villain and little bit sad when he or she lost?

I love hearing from you!

To prove it and show my love, for the month of APRIL, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly. I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

For those who need help building a platform and keeping it SIMPLE, pick up a copy of my latest social media/branding book Rise of the Machines—Human Authors in a Digital World on AMAZON, iBooks, or Nook. 

The post Anatomy of a Legendary Villain appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

You missed….

This past weekend, I indulged a little and we went to TWO movies. First, date night with Hubby. We saw Maleficient and it was AWESOME. Sunday, we wanted to take The Spawn to X-Men, but there wasn’t a convenient showing so we settled for the new Spiderman movie, or as I like to call it…The Movie That Would NOT END.

No spoiler alerts here other than save your money and go see Maleficient. The Spiderman movie was dreadful. I kept checking my watch.

The only saving grace is that Peter Parker and Gwen Stacey were really likable people. But the movie dragged on…and on…and yes, ON.

Characters are important. I don’t buy into the notion of character-driven or plot-driven stories. We need both. No one cares about the plot if we don’t care about the people. Conversely, we can care about the people, but PLOT is the crucible that drives change. A hero is only as strong as the problem he faces.

One can see that Spiderman 2 was in trouble simply by looking at the log-line from the IMDB:

Peter Parker runs the gauntlet as the mysterious company Oscorp sends up a slew of super villains against him, impacting his life.

What’s the GOAL? Where’s the ticking clock? What’s the hero supposed to accomplish? This log-line does an excellent job of telling precisely what this movie is about. Nothing, oh and everything. “Impacting his life?” Really?

O_o

The log-line tells us exactly what to expect. Instead of genuine dramatic tension, we’re served bad situation after bad situation to the point of tedium. Running a gauntlet is NOT interesting. It’s CGI indulgence.

Even The Spawn (Age FOUR) fell asleep.

Additionally, the movie revolved around Parker keeping Gwen safe. This is a passive goal. It’s like “containing Communism.” Doesn’t work and just drags on.

Back to the Log-Line 

Basically, we should be able to tell someone (an agent) what our story is about in one sentence. That is called the “log-line.” Log-lines are used in Hollywood to pitch movies. In fact, a book that should be in every writer’s library is Save the Cat by Blake Snyder. It’s a book on screenwriting, but every writer can benefit enormously from Snyder’s teaching.

In the world of screenwriting there is a tenet, “Give me the same, but different.” This axiom still holds true when it comes to novels. Our story cannot go so far off the deep end that readers cannot relate, but yet our story needs to be different enough that people don’t just think it’s a bad retread. We as writers have to negotiate this fine balance of same but different, and that is no easy task.

Let’s look at components of a great log-line:

Great log-lines are short and clear. I cannot tell you how many writers I talk to and I ask, “What’s your book about?” and they take off rambling for the next ten minutes. Often why writers are so terrified of the pitch session is that they cannot clearly state what their book is about in three sentences or less.

Here’s a little insider information. When we cannot whittle our entire story into three sentences that is a clear sign to agents and editors that our story is structurally flawed. Not always, but more often than not. Your goal should be ONE sentence. What is your story about?

Elements of a Great Log-Line

A good log-line is ironic. Irony gets attention and hooks interest. Here’s an example:

The Green Mile is about the lives of guards on death row leading up to the execution of a black man accused of rape and child murder who has the power of faith healing.

What can be more ironic than a murderer having the power of healing? Think of the complex emotions that one sentence evokes, the moral complications that we just know are going to blossom out of the “seed idea.”

A good log-line is emotionally intriguing.

A good log-line tells the entire story. You can almost see the entire story play out in your head.

A vengeful fairy is driven to curse an infant princess, only to discover that the child may be the one person who can restore peace to their troubled land.

This is the log-line for Maleficient. It’s rich with emotion, complication and irony. In the protagonist’s anger she creates the story problem. How can she heal the kingdoms? We also get a glimpse of the character arc (vengeance to forgiveness?) and the goal (break the curse).

A good log-line will interest potential readers.

Good log-lines exude inherent conflict. Conflict is interesting. Blake Snyder talks about taking his log-line with him to Starbucks and asking strangers what they thought about his idea. This is a great exercise for your novel. Pitch to friends, family, and even total strangers and watch their reaction. Did their eyes glaze over? Did the smile seem polite or forced? If you can boil your book down into one sentence that generates excitement for the regular person, then you know you are on a solid path for your novel.

Yet, if your potential audience looks confused or bored or lost, then you know it is time to go back to the drawing board. But the good news is this; you just have to fix ONE sentence. You don’t have to go rewrite, revise a novel that is confusing, convoluted, boring, arcane, ridiculous, etc.

Think of your one sentence as your scale-model or your prototype. If the prototype doesn’t generate excitement and interest, it is unlikely the final product will succeed. So revise the prototype until you find something that gets the future audience genuinely excited.

You Have Your Log-Line. Now What?

Your log-line is the core idea of your story. This will be the beacon of light in the darkness so you always know where the shore is versus the open sea. This sentence will keep you grounded in the original story you wanted to tell and keep you from prancing down bunny trails.

****This is what I teach you how to do in my Antagonist Class. At the Gold Level, we work one-on-one until you have the one sentence DOWN and then plot from there, which is WAY easier with a solid log-line. Use WANA15 for $15 off.

The Fear Factor

Fear is probably the most common emotion shared by writers. The newer we are the more fear we will feel. A side-effect of fear is to emotionally distance from the source of our discomfort. The log-line will help you spot that emotional distancing and root it out early.

Is your log-line on target?

I’ve seen two behaviors in all my time working with writers. Either a writer will wander off down the daffodil trail because he is afraid he lacks the skills to tell the story laid out in the log-line, OR the writer will water down the log-line to begin with. Through future plotting the writer will realize hidden strength…then he can go revise the plotting or revise the log-line.

The best way to learn how to write log-lines is to go look at the IMDB. Look up your favorite movies and see how they are described. You can even look up movies that bombed and very often see the log-line was weak and the movie was doomed from the start. Look up movies similar to the story you are writing. Look up movies similar to the story you want to tell.

Solid novel log-lines will have 1) your protagonist 2) active verb 3) active goal 4) antagonist 5) stakes.

Here is a log-line I wrote for Michael Crichton’s Prey.

An out-of-work computer programmer (protagonist) must uncover (active verb) the secrets his wife is keeping in order to destroy (active goal) the nano-robotic threat (antagonist) to human-kind’s existence (stakes).

For this literary folks, here is a log-line for The Road.

In a post-apocalyptic Earth where every living thing but humans has died, a Man (protagonist) must travel cross-country with his son to the ocean (active goal) while battling organized, militant group of cannibals who hunt people (antagonist) and yet must still protect their sacred humanity in the face of certain death by starvation (stakes).

Plot Goal: Make it to the ocean Character Goal: If they resort to eating people they fail.

So here’s an exercise. See if you can state your novel in one sentence. It will not only help add clarity to your writing and keep you on track, but when it comes time to pitch an agent, you will be well-prepared and ready to knock it out of the park. Practice on your favorite movies and books. Work those log-line muscles!

What are your thoughts? Have you nearly had a nervous breakdown trying to get your story into one sentence? Have you used this log-line technique and discovered you had to change it and make it stronger? Did it save you needless revision?

I LOVE hearing from you!

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

For those who need help with branding, blogging and social media, please check out my latest book, Rise of the Machines—Human Authors in a Digital World.

My Antagonist Class is coming up. At the Gold Level, we work one-on-one until you have the one sentence DOWN and then plot from there. The beauty of this class is once you’ve been through this process, it will make you a faster, better leaner plotter in the future and will save SO MUCH rewrite. Use WANA15 for $15 off.

If you think you might need some professional help, I have my First Five Pages Class coming up. Use WANA15 for $15 off. Also there is a GOLD level. This is NOT line-edit. This is ripping apart your first pages and then SHOWING you how to fix the problems not only in the beginning of your book but throughout.

The post How to Tell if Your Story is On Target—What is Your Book About in ONE Sentence? appeared first on Kristen Lamb.