No One Thinks Of Themselves As The Bad Guys

From the billionaire CEO, to the war-mongering politician, to the supervillain in power armor, or the tyrannical stepmother, fiction is chock full of villains. However, with a notable few exceptions that prove the rule, no one sits around in their doom fortress tapping their fingers together and practicing their diabolical laughter, pleased with how truly evil they are.

While someone might be the villain of the story, people generally don't think of themselves as the villains in their own lives. And one of the important keys to a memorable antagonist is for the audience to see that villain's perspective. Because that perspective is going to be key to understanding the villain's motivations, and showing how (from where they're standing, at least) their actions make sense.

No one cared who I was until I put on the mask...

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How Does The Villain See Themselves?

Villainy is often a matter of where you're standing. So take a moment and consider where your antagonist is, and how things look from their end of the field. Most importantly, though, ask how it is they see themselves, and how they protect the idea that they are a good person (or, at least, how they justify the things they've done).

Take a character who's a billionaire CEO. This guy is out-of-touch, he engages in unsavory business practices, and he exploits people and the planet alike. However, that's from the outside looking in, and it's easy to see from where we're standing. But take a moment to ask what his perspective is, and what he believes. For example, does he view the law (and particularly tax law) as a game to be played and won instead of something that should inform one's morals? Because paying an additional $200,000 in fines every year for ignoring restrictions, but making an additional million dollars as a result, is just the cost of doing business. Alternatively, is he so completely isolated from the struggles of the people he employs that the very idea he isn't providing enough for them never crosses his mind? Especially when he's surrounded by people who are constantly spending time in their vacation homes and on their yachts, so he never sees anyone actually struggle?

You can extrapolate this to all sorts of villains. Does the cruel stepfather legitimately think he's toughening up his stepchildren with his punishments? Does the scarred commander of the imperial army truly believe that crushing smaller nations is a necessity for peace? Or does he believe that following orders and doing his duty is more important than the morality of those orders? Does the cop truly believe that he's protecting society and his community, even though he's ruined lives with his laundry list of prejudices about who the "real" criminals are in society?

He shouldn't have been carrying a pink squirt gun. Anybody would have done what I did.

That's one half of the coin; asking what motivates your villain, and how they see themselves and their actions. However, villains often take actions that they know are wrong, and which cross ethical boundaries. Some things aren't just a matter of perspective... so how does your villain justify those actions so they can sleep at night?

Is this villain blinded by their own grievance, or a need for vengeance, which allows them to ignore the way they're hurting other people if it's in service to their own pain? Have they dehumanized a certain group of people, allowing them to harm or victimize them without feeling bad about it because "they deserve it" or "they'd do the same to me if our positions were reversed"? Have they gaslit themselves into believing a situation was different than it was, convincing themselves of a false narrative that allows them to feel justified? Is the villain so consumed by greed that they can't be bothered to think about other people because their fortune is worth any cost? Are they driven by fear so deep and visceral that they'll commit atrocities just to make it go away?

If You Can't See Where They're Coming From, Look Harder

To be clear, while some villains should be misunderstood or redeemable, that is not always the case. Just because you can understand someone's reasoning and rationale doesn't mean you should identify with them. However, to make a character feel believable, we need to ask ourselves how they can look at themselves in the mirror, and then go to bed after the things they've done.

And maybe they do struggle. Maybe their conscience bothers them. Maybe there are cracks in the facade... and if that's the case, you should show the audience those things too!

For instance, does that billionaire give a lot of money to a certain charity because it helps assuage his guilt, and he feels like he's somehow squared the harm he's done? Does the serial killer go to church to light candles and pray for their victims, using the ritual and the belief that a higher power has forgiven him to face the world again? Is the cold-blooded mob hitman doing his best to be a good father to his kids, and to give them the opportunities he didn't have so that this life isn't even something they consider taking up?

Humans (and human-related characters) are capable of astonishing feats of mental gymnastics when it comes to explaining why they aren't bad people, and in some cases why they're actually the victim in a situation rather than the villain. And even if we never get a comprehensive psychological evaluation on the page, knowing these things about your villains can help you write them in a way that feels more genuine, organic, and believable, instead of just having them twirling their mustache as they deliver a monologue to the audience about why they hate colors and want to outlaw sharing.

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Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

The Pressure of The Blank Page

Like a lot of authors I have a decided compulsion toward acquiring the materials of my craft. Notebooks big and small make me happy, I will pick up pens abandoned in parking lots to recruit them to my cause, and I will never say no to another hot cup of coffee.

Some people argue that coffee is not a required tool of the writing trade, and that's fair. But if you can do this job without being caffeinated, I'm suspicious of your status as a living human.

To each their own.

I always get a smile on my face whenever I pick up a new pen, receive a notebook, or someone gives me a little bag of go-beans so I can keep this operation going. However, there is something that I think a lot of other writers experience but don't talk about... which is the pressure that having all of these tools of the trade can put on your shoulders when you feel you aren't using them often, or quickly, enough.

But before we get into it this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron!

Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

The Pressure of The Blank Page

I won't lie, since I was in high school I've had a box of notebooks that I carried with me every time I moved. I rarely used any of them, but I kept them the way that you keep that box of cables and cords; just in case you need it. While I always had a need for a pen between being a college student, and then a reporter, I never used them as fast as I acquired them. Coffee is a recent addition to this list, but I started drinking it at the beginning of the pandemic and I've almost never had to pay for it since then between people clearing out their cabinets, or sending me gifts when they found out I wasn't picky about my brands or roasting type.

I have come to the conclusion that it is unlikely I will ever write through all the ink in these pens, or that I will use every sheet of every notebook I have stacked up on my shelf. However, I go through a couple of pens a month, and a few notebooks every season. But there's always more. This is both comforting, and a little weighty. Because I feel like it is my responsibility, my duty even, to use these tools to pour forth ideas from my mind and into reality in some way, shape, or form.

The coffee will get drunk, let's not be silly on that score. I may have to share it with other people from time to time, but it's going to be put to good use.

Make it good. Don't waste space, or ink!

I believe there's another word for this feeling, but I've come to calling it the Pressure of The Blank Page. Because all of the pens that stand ready at my desk, and all of the notebooks in a row, stand like soldiers in a line... and it's up to me to call them up for service one after another as the need requires. But while I do need them, and I do use them, I also know that I only have so many words I can write a day. Does my brain have enough ideas to use all of these materials in time?

Maybe.

I'm normally very confident about my skill level, and what it takes to do my job. I also know that I tend to go through a shopping bag of paper and a tin full of pens every year just keeping the assembly line going with things like my 100 Kinfolk project, or supplements like 100 Sci-Fi Cults. But between YouTube scripts, TTRPG supplements, short story ideas, novel layouts, and random brainstorms, I honestly wonder if I have more materials than I do ideas sometimes.

Of course, that's the thing about ideas; they aren't finite.

I'm absolutely certain that if I never had another idea, then I might find myself at a standstill eventually. It might be in five years, ten years, or even twenty years, but eventually I would get out all the ideas I have stored away on the back shelf of my brain until I've caught up on my back log.

That's the thing about ideas in my head, though... the tap doesn't turn off.

I have new ideas fairly often, even when I'm not trying to. I'll be down at the gym when two thoughts spark off in my brain, and I have to jot down the glimpse of the idea I caught in that brief flash. I'll be mid-game rolling some dice, and an outline for a new supplement will come to me. I'll sit down to help a friend through a story they're working on, and by the time we've solved whatever plot problem they're working on, I'll have had a new idea of my own.

I'm not special in this regard, either, and that's something I wanted to tell people this week. Because a lot of us can get overwhelmed wondering what we're going to do with our hoard of supplies and inspirations, and if we should leave them to a friend, a child, or perhaps a favored niece or nephew. Take a second. Breathe. You aren't going to run out of ideas any more than you're going to run out of readers.

With that said, though, if you've got a stack of notebooks you've been holding off on writing in because they're too nice, or your ideas aren't good enough... well, there's no time like the present, eh?

Of Course, More Materials Are Always Appreciated

If you're one of those folks out there who is cursed with spare notebooks or pens, and you want to send them to a good home, feel free to reach out via my email gadget on the page here. This offer goes double for anyone looking for a sponsor for notebooks, pens, coffee, and other authorial accessories. I'm always happy to talk about products that make this hard job a little bit easier, after all!

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Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Talking About Your Story Might Stop You From Actually Writing It

If you're friends with a writer, chances are good you've experienced what it's like when one of us has a story to tell. Under good circumstances you can sit with us over dinner and coffee, and spend hours exploring this strange world that lives inside our skulls. Under bad circumstances, you get drenched by the downpour that comes with our brainstorms.

However, there's an issue that I've found a lot of writers have... namely that once we've opened our mouths that we often forget to engage our hands, and actually write the stories we talk about.

It is, unfortunately, the hardest part of the process.

Before we get into it this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron!

Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Undercutting The Process

Before we go any deeper into this topic I want to be very clear, here; talking through your story is always a good idea. For a lot of writers it is an extremely necessary part of the process, allowing us to explore certain ideas, think out loud, and to get around problems in the plot.

With that said, sometimes writers get so enamored of talking about our stories that we don't actually write them. Put another way, it's like we showed up to bake a cake, but instead we just ate all the icing and called it a day.

If you slather it on thick enough, it will still support candles, right?

What I mean by just eating the icing is that, for a lot of writers, talking about the idea is the fun part of the process. Taking notes, building the world, engaging with the characters, asking questions, and sharing all of that with our friends is usually an engaging activity. It's where we have the most fun, and it's where we get the satisfaction of feedback, and sharing an experience with someone else.

However, this activity can actually make us take a shortcut past the actual hard work of writing the story if we aren't careful. Because we sat down and talked through the tale, we walked someone through all of the twists and turns, and explained the ending and themes we're going for, our brains then lose interest in it. It doesn't want to actually write that story anymore. Now it wants a new idea to get excited about, and to go through the whole process of exploration again.

This can be exhausting for everyone involved. If you're the writer who finds themselves constantly avoiding the final step of writing the story, you may feel like you're constantly caught between the boring drudgery of forcing yourself to chronicle an idea you're no longer interested in and taking hits of good brain chemicals while you daydream about newer, more exciting ideas. Those who get pulled into these exercises might also feel tired after a while because for all the fun of the creative process, it can feel like the story is never going anywhere; that it's all just a bunch of hot air that's never going to lead to anything.

How do you fix it, though?

Sadly, I don't have an answer to this. If I did, I'd write a book, become a bestseller, and retire. But the best advice I can give is that you need to want the book done more than you want the enjoyment of just playing around in another sandbox. I'm not saying you shouldn't think about other ideas, and that you shouldn't give yourself moments of play and fun while you're slogging through a novel, but you need to make sure that you don't abandon the story you had just because you've moved from drawing the blueprints to actually building the thing.

If I do find more useful tricks, though, rest assured that I'll share them as soon as I come across them!

Looking For Some Additional Reading?

I don't really have any neat segues, but I figured I'd leave some additional links for folks who just want to kill a little time, and help me out a bit. If you're down for giant robots fighting alien bugs in a life-or-death battle in the grim darkness of the far future, check out Broken Heroes if you haven't seen it yet! If you'd like to step into an ongoing saga about resistance to fantasy fascists, and the deeds of a shadowy vigilante attempting to free the city from the boot on its neck, then read the first of The Silver Raven Chronicles!

And if you're a fan of the World of Darkness, you should definitely take a moment or three to listen to the latest adventure Jacoby has found himself on in The Butcher's Door, dramatized below! Don't forget to subscribe to the Azukail Games YouTube channel if you enjoy it, as well.

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

There Are Motivations Other Than Vengeance and Tragedy, You Know

Motivation is why characters do the things that they do. Sometimes that motivation is immediate, like they need to pull one last heist because their kid is sick and needs an operation they can't afford. Sometimes that motivation is long-term, like holding to an oath they swore when they were young that they refuse to give up on even in the face of certain doom.

There is a mistake that a lot of writers make, though, and it's assuming that for a character's motivation to be interesting that it has to come from a place of pain. That rage, a thirst for vengeance, or some great tragedy are the only motivations worth bringing to the page... and I tell you from experience this can often negatively affect your writing.

So take a moment, and reflect on the motivations you use. Then ask yourself if you reach for the same ones over and over again, and why that is?

Really sit with it for a bit, and contemplate.

Before we get into it this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron!

Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

I want you to take a moment and think of everything you know about Batman. What came to mind first? Probably that he's the world's greatest detective, a deadly martial artist, and the CEO of a billion-dollar corporation. However, chances are good that you also remembered the fact that his parents were gunned down in front of him when he was a child, and that this traumatic event has become key to his one-man crusade against street crime.

That sort of fact about a character's background and motivation seems like it would be super important, right? As if that's where you'd plant the seed of a character and grow outward from there? Well, according to most reports of comic book history, the dead parents backstory was tacked on later. When Batman first landed on the comic book scene he was just a grim avenger in a cool costume fighting cultists, mad scientists, and weird mutants. He was compelling enough through his looks and actions, and didn't actually require this motivation of sheer tragedy to get the audience interested in him. It was just sort of tacked on, like some sprinkles on an already tasty cupcake. And even once it was established, it was really a huge focus of the character until his gritting up in the 1980s... it rarely, if ever, came up in depictions before that (particularly in the TV series that vaulted the character to heights of fame).

Batman could have had dozens of other motivations. From taking a vow like a literal Dark Knight (one of service and not vengeance), to civic pride, to simply obeying Rule .303 (those with the ability and the means have a duty to assist), he was a blank slate at the time. The audience was already buying the comics, proving the tragic backstory was not a necessary component of who the character was.

It worked, but it wasn't required.

Now, this is not to say that tragedy and revenge are never integral to who a character is, what they represent, or the story you're trying to tell with them. From Darth Vader, to the Punisher, to the Phantom of The Opera, these grim, tragic aspects are often central to what characters represent. However, this becomes one of those all rectangles are squares, but not all squares are rectangles sort of scenarios. Because while these motivations are central to some stories and characters, they are by no means central to all of them as some kind of necessary ingredient.

Just because you can doesn't mean you must.

Content, Happy People, and Dragon Hunting

I've talked about this subject a bit on my gaming blog Improved Initiative, specifically in the posts Do Content, Happy People Hunt Dragons? and Why So Many Sad Backstories? but I think it's worth repeating. A dragon doesn't have to have murdered someone's grandparents, or be actively threatening their family, for them to be motivated to go stop it. The character might have a strong sense of duty, demanding they protect others from harm even if they themselves are now in danger. They might be employed as a dragon slayer, meaning that this is the entire reason they're kept on the payroll. They might seek the thrill of the hunt, or even need a part of that dragon's body in order to make a medicine to stave off sickness, push back old age, or merely to become stronger.

Once you've eaten a dragon's heart, you can skip leg day.

All of this is not to say that you immediately need to alter your protagonist's motivation in your story. If you have a character who's obsessed with catching a serial killer because they murdered that protagonist's son, and that works for building drama in your story, stick with it. If your villain is motivated by a sense of aggrieved entitlement because they were never recognized for their genius, and no other motivation works as well for them, don't fix what isn't broken!

The point of this exercise isn't to tell writers to rely less on dark, tragic motivations for their characters and stories. It's to ensure that, before we reach for those backstories, that we examine all the options we have available to make our story work. Sometimes it's an old vow taken by an aging, cynical knight that hits us even harder than someone trying to settle an old score.

And for those who could use a bit of a jumpstart on thinking outside this particular box, I'd recommend giving 100 Character Goals and Motivations a look! While written for RPGs, it's just as useful for writers trying to find some fresh inspiration.

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my cat noir novel Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!