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On writing villains.
Chatterbox: Inkwell
On writing villains.
On writing villains.
I can't be the only one who adores writing evil characters, can I? They're just so fascinating and kind of cathartic.
I bring it up because one of my three major writing projects at the moment is Once Upon a Tin Wonderland*, a TV show based on a crossover between Once Upon a Time, Tin Man, and Wildhorn's Wonderland, the plot bunny of which was conceived from the idea that putting Regina, Azkadellia, and the Hatter in a room together would be really bloody awesome.
*I am aware that this title doesn't actually make any sense. I don't care, because I think it sounds cool and that's good enough for a working title in my opinion.
As often happens, the characters have already run away from me even though I'm only on the second episode. ESPECIALLY the Hatter, who, after approximately fifteen minutes of screentime total, is already hands-down the most despicable, psychopathic, and flat-out evil characters I've written. And I'm loving it. It's so much fun.
Soooo... Does anyone else REALLY enjoy writing villains? What's your favorite sort of villain to write (mine are Complete Monsters whose sympathetic backstories don't cancel out their Complete Monster-ness, and Chessmastery types)? Do you find them easier or harder to write than heroes? How do you go about developing villains and is it different than the way you write other types of characters?
Because we haven't really had a proper discussion on the IW for a long time, it feels like.
(O.O LOOK GUYS I MADE AN IW POST WITHOUT TEAL DEERING!!!!)
submitted by TNÖ, age 19, Deep Space
(February 2, 2013 - 6:23 am)
(February 2, 2013 - 6:23 am)
I am in love with villainous characters. I hesitate to call them actual villains, because most of them fall into the chaotic neutral category, but they are definitely my favorites.
My favorite kind of villain to write? Eh. Um. Things. My villains don't really have symapthetice backstories, but most of them have these really strange quirks that don't necessarily cancel out their "badness" but makes them seem more of a person that a complete psychopath. Exhibit A is Hector Ray Devonne-Everett (I still haven't thought of a good way to abbreviate). He's completely psychotic, but he writes trashy romances under a fake name and likes clipping bonsai trees. Chessmastery types EFF TEE DUBS!
Wait, what's teal deering?
Yava says seven! Or, wait, that's zevn. But close enough.
--L
(February 2, 2013 - 12:38 pm)
I always like to have as complete a backstory as possible for all of my characters, villains included. It helps me know why they make the choices they do (because everything comes from somewhere, and even insane chaotic characters have reasons for their actions, even if those reasons are "I'm bored let's make something interesting happen"). I find this leads naturally to them having fully fleshed-out personalities; usually if I try to just add in quirks it feels artificial and fake to me because I don't know where it's coming from. If that makes sense.
Not all of my villains do have sympathetic backstories (my!Tom Riddle—insofar as he's a villain, anyway, since he's really more of a Heroic Sociopath than a Villain Protagonist—for example is fully aware of the fact that his early life was, if not overly happy, also not nearly as bad as canon!Voldemort makes it out to be. He's just, you know, a sociopath), but I enjoy making their backgrounds sympathetic because it's an exercise in balancing the appropriate amount of Woobie-ism with the necessary Evil-ness. This is why my Complete Monsters are half again more likely to have a sympathetic backstory than the other types of villains I write—because the point of a Complete Monster is that they are utterly lacking in redeeming qualities. So if I can make my audience feel sorry for my Complete Monsters without ruining their Complete Monster-ness, I feel I've done my job correctly.
The villain I've been spending the most time on in the past few days is the Hatter in OUaTW, mostly because she quickly revealed herself to be even more of a psychopath than I thought she was. To the point of, within weeks of their first meeting, threatening to erase the personality of and brainwash/turn into a mindless zombie slave her future love interest. And this is in the second episode, and she's only had about fifteen minutes total screen time. It's just gonna go downhill from here.
Of course, she's also fairly pitiable, since she's the personification of another character's pain, fears, insecurities, self-destructive tendencies, repressed desires and unwanted personality traits, and there's nothing she can do about it. That, and my!Wonderland is an immutable Crapsaccharine World/Genius Loci that will rewrite people's personailities to maintain the status quo, and this is considered the better option by locals, because the alternative is the whole realm undergoing massive entropy and ceasing to exist. ...so yeah. Living there stinks.
Hector Ray sounds awesome. Especially the bonsai clipping. I've got this image in my head of a large room full of bonsai trees and this mad-scientist-y person obsessively clipping them while running over his evil plans. Regardless of whether this is accurate to the actual character, it's awesome.
teal deer = TL;DR = Too Long; Don't Read.
I do it a lot because my default mode of communication is rambling.
(February 2, 2013 - 2:52 pm)
The quirks seem more natural to me, I guess, because I try to work it into the plot as much as I can. With Hector and "Miss Violet de Chantenay's" books, I have a scene where the protags and a random gargoyle are forced to read one of them to decode a message from him (because Hector is vain, and nobody reads his books willingly).
And the Hatter sounds like a pretty amazing villain.
(I'm going to have to start calling Yava Spambert again, aren't I? Xe just threw emcz at me.)
(February 2, 2013 - 4:39 pm)
I literally just gigglesnorted at "Miss Violet de Chantenay." YES. THIS IS PERFECT.
I can't take complete credit for the Hatter, of course. I have a lot of really great source material to work with:
In Wonderland, she lays waste to the Looking Glass Land, casually deletes the personalities and brainwashes anyone who happens to go through the Looking Glass into her kingdom, and has every intention of (and nearly succeeds in) deposing the Queen of Hearts and establishing a dictatorship over Wonderland as well. More personally, she kidnaps Alice's young daughter, Chloe, and comes *this* close to executing every single named character in the show except for herself and her henchman, Morris (this would be the love interest I mentioned. He's the March Hare). And she honestly, truly feels that she is 100% justified in this—the actor, Kate Shindle (<3), explains it thusly: "She has this plan, and in her mind it's brilliant and perfect. It just happens to be terrible for everyone else."
It's not as if she's just a Well Intentioned Extremist who believes she's doing the *right* thing, either. She's perfectly honest about the fact that she's pursuing this plan because she (a) likes power and (b) because (it's heavily implied), in true Jekyll/Hyde fashion, she gets stronger as Alice gets weaker and vice versa, so destroying Alice's life is partly a matter of self-preservation as well (when asked why she has it in for Alice, her response is that "before [she] laid it to ruin, the fields of [Looking Glass Land] formed a chessboard, where the rules state that two pieces cannot occupy the same square at the same time. One of them must take the other..." Considering that she also refers to herself as Alice's reflection, and to Chloe as both "bait" and a pawn that Alice doesn't dare sacrifice, the metaphor isn't exactly hard to follow.) Seriously, though, go to youtube and find the video of "I Will Prevail." And specifically listen to the lyrics and the glee with which Kate Shindle delivers some of the nastier lines. You'll see what I mean. (Alternatively, ask, and I can rant about "I Will Prevail" and how it's a masterful picture of megalomaniacal psychopathy for thousands of words. I love it so much.)
(February 2, 2013 - 5:34 pm)
He likes carrots. And sorry, typo. Violetta, not Violet.
I am definitely going to have to check out Wonderland. I've heard you rant about it many times and I'm very intrigued.
(February 2, 2013 - 8:03 pm)
*deep breath*
I am NOT obsessed with Wonderland in the slightest, NOR have I compulsively listened to the cast album or my bootlegs for hours on end on a near-daily basis for eight months now. I ALSO do not feel compelled to think about the characters and extrapolate backstories from what is implied in the show itself on a daily basis. And I CERTAINLY don't reference it repeatedly to EVERYONE in hopes that someone will recognize those references and SQUEE over the show with me.
No.
#blatantlies
Um, in other words: there's a complete video recording of the April 2 Broadway preview on youtube. If you search for "wonderland musical part one" it should get listed on the first page. DO EET NOW!! :D
(February 3, 2013 - 12:34 am)
I'm surprised I liked the beginning of Wonderland as much as I did.
On writing villains, I like writing villains better than main characters most of the time. Because they don't have to be sane enough to tell a story through. And I like to give them really weird weaknesses.
(February 4, 2013 - 5:56 pm)
...only the beginning...?
I always challenge myself to write protagonists I like better than my antagonists (whom I almost always like very much). Of course, this leads to me having VERY grey and black morality/anti-heroes/anti-villain protagonists. It's related to the way that my characters also tend to go insane if I don't keep a close eye on them.
(February 4, 2013 - 7:55 pm)
I didn't watch the other parts. But I will.
(February 5, 2013 - 5:51 pm)
By the way, speaking of Riddlecentric fanfics, I just read a really good one called Not Optimal. It's by the author of Six Years, Six Applicants. I highly recommend it; it was very in-character and well-written, and like most of that author's stories, it was hilarious.
/completely unrelated/
(February 5, 2013 - 7:30 pm)
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(February 2, 2013 - 2:27 pm)