Wednesday 25 March 2015

With Villainous Intent

If you ask authors about writing villains a lot of us will say 'I LOVE writing villains.' Then possibly we will back  off a bit, and start to hedge, in case YOU start to back away.

But it's true. I don't know why - generally nice and relatively law abiding people like to get their teeth into something villainous - strictly on the page of course. Psychiatrists, or psychologists or whatever would probably have a theory, but most of us don't go there. We just carry on writing them and having fun.

Forgive us, please.

And admit it too, you enjoy reading them.

Right, that's established us all as guilty parties. A conspiracy of villainy. Like the general enthusiasm for reading crime fiction, we enjoy on the page what would be horrible to encounter in real life.  

At the moment, in the WIVSP - Work In Very Slow Progress I have two villains. One I want the reader to feel sorry for and the other who is a monster. The 'sorry for' one has just made an appearance in the MS. The monster I am working on. Will I be able to manage the contrast? I hope so. The 'sorry for' one is interesting to tackle as what he has done is terrible, yet writing him is very sad. And the monster? I'm expecting him to be a lot of fun.

But maybe I shouldn't say that.

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