DR: The Vicissitudes of Villains

In a recent discussion on a writer’s loop, author Laurie Alice Eakes said, “In the manuscripts I critique—and maybe those I write, too—the villains tend to be the weakest characters when they need to be amongst the strongest. If you don't have a villain, you may not have enough conflict. But you may have a villain and not realize it. In the manuscript I'm working on, my villain isn't really a person—it’s a circumstance, a situation, the heroine's own fears and attitudes. Villains aren't always mustache-twirling, cape-waving, maniacally-chuckling men behind the curtain.”

I cheered when I read these words because I’ve often fretted about my “villain problem.” The books I write aren’t mystery or suspense or legal thrillers or science fiction or even, usually, “high concept” novels. I write women’s fiction—stories about ordinary people facing extraordinary challenges. But the situations I write about are usually realistic and possible. I get letters from readers who say, “I went through the exact same experience your character did.”

I seldom have a flesh and blood villain in my novels. This is worrisome because books on the craft of writing spend chapters on the importance of creating strong villains. And often it seems the human (or at least living, breathing) villains of best-selling novels and movies are even more memorable, more newsworthy, than the protagonists of the piece.

I have a long way to go before I master villains, but I’m learning that it is possible to take a set of circumstances or a dilemma and imbue them with traits that make my protagonists feel and react the same way they might toward a human villain; and in ways that thwart their desires just as powerfully as any human villain could.

One of my villains was Alzheimer’s disease, bringing confusion, frustration, anguish and ultimately grief to my suffering heroine and even worse to her caregiver husband. I’ve also written some pretty malicious villains with names like Addiction, Poverty and Death. There are so many circumstances we can create for our characters in order to bring about conflict and inflict the anger, pain, bitterness, and vengeance usually meted out by a flesh-and-blood villain.

But perhaps we relate better to the concept of a villain when he has a beating physical heart, however metaphorically heartless he may be. Fellow novelist James Scott Bell once advised that an inanimate villain usually works better if there is a human character to represent the opposition. So if my villain is cancer, I might portray it more convincingly through a doctor who is gruff and lacking compassion, or through a pharmacist who feeds his own drug addiction by substituting a placebo for the medication that could ease my hero’s pain.

The quintessential villain, whether human or circumstantial, brings a sense of hopelessness to the plot. And that’s where things get fun. Because our ultimate job as Christian writers is to return Hope to the reader. A holy Hope—One who is able to vanquish the most evil villain our writerly minds can conceive.

Deborah Raney is the author of A Nest of Sparrows and Over the Waters
http://www.deborahraney.com