Who will be my villain?

I’m in trouble, dear reader. Struggling to find my bad guy.  The villain.  The antagonist.  Having so long thought about my sweet hero characters, creating their world, their lives, it somehow becomes so hard to bring in the rolling dark clouds that are required to make a novel move forward.  We can’t always be out in our gardens, smelling the roses and the lavender. Life doesn’t work like that, and nor does it make for a gripping read. 

At first I thought it could be the cheating boyfriend. But he was killed off before the opening scene, so it can’t be him. Unless this is a haunting story, and yes, I do want my readers to be haunted, but not in the ghostly sense. I want them to be driven to continue reading the sequel, or the trilogy. And yet, I digress. Back to the baddy. Back to the drawing board, the Pinterest board, the storyline of all my favourite books. And to find inspiration for that nemesis. There’s a few other sideline characters within the manuscript already, but could I make them the ultimate villain throughout the whole story?  Do they have enough to become my Darth Vader, my Professor Moriarty? My Sheriff of Nottingham, my Jonathan ‘Black Jack’ Randall?  

Side note.  Can we all agree that Alan Rickman was the most incredible artist when portraying on film the most wonderfully complex bad guy characters. A magnificent actor. I miss him.

Thankfully, having recently finished a tremendous John Truby Anatomy of Story course, he’s provided us with a few guidelines for the ultimate bad dude:

• My opponent – don’t think of him as ‘just the villain’. He has his own dreams and aspirations.
• His purpose is to prevent my hero from getting their ultimate goal. 
• And a great opponent attacks, relentlessly.
• So my hero is forced to fight, again and again. 
• Otherwise, where is the conflict generated from?

The antagonist doesn’t always need to be one person. It could be a setting. The ocean. A building. A pandemic. We have the Black Death of 1348, and then a few plagues in the 1500’s and 1600’s.  And coincidently, these little skirmishes fall right smack bang in the middle of the book. Perfect.  My second villain. Because as Mr Truby taught us, for maximum narrative drive, you want the hero to fight more opponents than just the main opponent.

So, with my thinking cap on, it’s time to develop the character of my bad guy.  Dig in, find out what makes him, or her, tick.  What drives them toward their ultimate goal.
 
Thank you dear reader, for being so patient with this seemingly never-ending manuscript creation.  

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Bedside reading:  The Mirror and the Light, by Hilary Mantel – her writing just makes me ache with inspiration, if not a little despair that I’ll never be this good.

What’s on Audible: The Family Upstairs, by Lisa Jewell – riveting.

What’s on Podcast: Books and Travel by Jo Frances Penn – and yes, the irony of being in a Level 4 Lockdown and listening to a travel podcast is not lost, but this is a fantastic delve into much more than just travel locations with terrific interviews.