I’m excited and honored to be the guest of a successful
author such as James Hatch and on a site with one of the sexiest names in the
blogosphere. I don’t know if I can live up to the sizzle, but I’m going to give
it a try. So onward to a discussion of something every fictional good guy
and/or gal needs—a bad guy and/or gal.
Be clear: There are plenty of fine
books without black-hat characters. A great example in my most recently experience
is Denis “They-screwed-him-out-of-a-Pulitzer” Johnson’s Train Dreams. (Click on http://bit.ly/Qz1w8v
for my rant on this subject.) Wendell Berry pens tale after tale without
introducing an archetypal antagonist I can recall. There’s plenty of trouble,
naturally, in these books—no trouble, no story, after all. For others of us,
however, the villain is our artistic bread and butter, and creating personified
evil isn’t all that easy. Here’s hoping I can clarify some of the choices and
put forth a principle or two.
Vast forests
have been clear-cut parsing the motives of nasty literary characters from Iago
and Richard III to Anton Chiguire of No
Country For Old Men. But consider this: Maybe these people/characters are
bad for one reason: They’re bad.
In Medieval
morality plays, which tradition informed Shakespeare’s writing, the devil wore
a horned red mask, and the audience knew right away he was up to no good. Thus,
for Elizabethan audiences, Iago, though he doesn’t wear the mask, didn’t need a
psychological reason to mess with Othello. He needed to be clever and
formidable and have the power to assume a pleasing shape, but motive, shmotive.
And Cormac McCarthy’s Chiguire doesn’t need a reason (money is involved, but
I’d argue it’s secondary) for popping people with his “captive bolt pistol.” He’s
just bent that way. Like the serpent says to the lady in the song: “You knew I
was a snake before you let me in.” Thus, from early on through
McCarthy and nearly every paranormal story, writers give us villains who are villains
who are villains.
Many bad guys are more
complex, of course. In my The Second
Vendetta, Michael Yellow Squirrel has a legitimate beef. The Army forced his
Arapaho people onto a reservation in his childhood—the old story of broken U.S.
promises. Because his father kidnapped a mother and child and tried to use them
as leverage to gain more land, Yellow Squirrel’s family was particularly
targeted. That was in 1864. It’s now 1910. Everyone else has moved on, but
Yellow Squirrel still wants to wipe out the pioneer family of the kidnap
victims because he thinks the mission to rescue them led to all the other
depredations. So, what started as a true grievance became misdirected fury against
descendants who had nothing to do with the original incident.
More complex than Michael
Yellow Squirrel are the malefactors in Melissa Foster’s Chasing Amanda. I won’t give too much away and spoil your reading
of this terrific book, but suffice it to say that good people with fine
intentions perform an act of mercy that over time becomes, almost
inadvertently, an act of wickedness.
These few examples don’t
exhaust the catalogue of creations, let alone of infinite future possibilities.
However, I think that we can extrapolate from them a few cardinal rules.
First, your villain must feel
real and be powerful. If you paint a sneer on a cardboard figure, then have
your protagonist kick it over, you’ve created boredom with a capital “B.”
Batman’s Joker and Penguin aren’t just cartoonish incarnations of evil (though
they are that), they’re formidable opponents with brains, resources, and the
capability of taking down Gotham and our superhero entirely. They outsmart and
outmuscle the forces of good over and over before they finally succumb. If your
antagonists don’t have that prowess, your readers won’t give your protagonist
many points for defeating them.
Second, don’t be afraid to
make your bad person likeable and sympathetic, or at least admirable and
fascinating. Would we care so much about Batman’s victory over the joker in The Dark Knight if Heath Ledger hadn’t
made him such a compelling character? Would we care so much about whether Ron
Rash’s supremely evil Serena rose or fell if she weren’t such an awesome force
of nature?
Third, make sure your villain
grows out of the soil of your story. Don’t bring her marching in and commence smashing
the china because you, the author, need conflict to feed the action. Protagonist
Molly Tanner’s involvement in the Chasing
Amanda dilemma grows out of her psychological needs as well as out of events
in her recent past. Without those elements, she’d have likely been as oblivious
to the story’s surrounding events as everyone else in town, and the underground
mystery would never have been uncovered. Similarly, Serena lands in the middle
of the battle to create Smoky Mountains National Park because of her character,
not just because Ron Rash decided it would be interesting to put her there.
Finally, don’t let your
villains out of your readers’ sight. They’re the main source of your story’s
dramatic tension, and even in the middle of a heroine’s love scene on a balmy
summer’s day, a threat needs to lurk offstage, even if your protagonist is
totally unaware. That doesn’t mean we need to hear the wolf growling and
slobbering in the woods as in a grade C horror flick. It does mean that we need
reminders, hints, that something evil this way comes. Or will soon. Or at least
might.
Many have said that the devil
is the most interesting character in Milton’s Paradise Lost. So must your villain be—whatever category to which
he/she belongs—or you have a Disney story in which nothing truly bad ever
happens to anyone. In other words, no story at all.
The Second Vendetta Synopsis:
Not again.
It’s taken Andy Maxwell two
summers—1908-1910—to help his family recover from the effects of the murderous
attack on them and their Sierra Nevada Ranch. That vendetta nearly killed his
mother, severely damaged barn, house, and livestock, and exhumed some
long-buried family secrets—including the fact that his father was black. He’s
had to alter his whole notion of who he is and where he came from. But now that
he’s Shanghaied the vendetta’s perpetrator, nursed his mother back to health,
and got the ranch operating again, he thinks he can return to grad school and
pursue his history doctorate in peace.
Not so.
First of all, it turns out they
don’t want a miscegenated mongrel in the University of California doctorate program.
Just when he’s enlisted the eminent San Francisco journalist, Ambrose Bierce,
to help him attack that problem, it turns out that the murderer’s Shanghai
arrangement didn't stick. Michael Yellow Squirrel has returned for another try
at eliminating every last Maxwell on earth. So much for school. Andy’s back to
defending himself and his family against a savage and formidable enemy.
And then there’s the election.
Hiram Johnson is running as a
reformer for California governor against the railroad barons and needs a
Republican Assembly candidate from Andy’s district to replace the
recently-deceased incumbent. Time is short. Andy’s a prominent rancher with
name recognition among the local voters, and Johnson wants him on the ticket,
but why would Andy make himself an easy target for his nemesis? The answer? The
promise of a post-election appointment to the university board of regents where
he could influence the policy that bars him from his dream of a place among the
academics.
And then there are the women.
Andy’s just revived the
relationship with the love of his life, the debutante daughter of a prominent,
if corrupt, state senator, and that’s going pretty well. But an Arapaho
princess he thought he’d left behind two years ago suddenly returns to threaten
the new version of his old love.
So, Andy Maxwell, how are you going
to deal with all these quandaries? My historical thriller, The Second Vendetta answers that question and many more with a
tale-telling style that pulls readers into the book and doesn’t let them go
till they’ve turned the last page, wishing there were more yet to turn.
Biography—Carl R. Brush
Carl Brush has been writing since
he could write, which is quite a long time now.
His historical thriller, The
Second Vendetta has just been released by Solstice publishing, and a
prequel, The Maxwell Vendetta is
scheduled for release by Solstice in early 2013.
Journals in which his work has
appeared include The Summerset Review,
Right Hand Pointing, Blazevox, Storyglossia, Feathertale, and The Kiss
Machine. He has participated in the
Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, the
Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Tin House Writers’ Workshop.
Carl lives with his wife in
Oakland, California, where he enjoys the blessings of nearby children and
grandchildren.
Buy Links:
Solstice Publishing: http://bit.ly/P31bYQ
BARNES AND NOBLE http://bit.ly/VyrvgU
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