The Perfect Villain

Oh, what the heck . . . continuing with this series of posts, what makes the perfect villain?

My answer to this has changed over the years. A lot. I think my answer has changed in direct proportion to life experiences, to things I've witnessed, maybe, to how I have changed as a person. Call it my Villain Journey.

You see, I used to, when I was about 25, 26, 27, 28 . . . read exclusively--and I mean exclusively--serial killer thrillers. Thomas Harris . . . Derek Van Armen (I don't believe he ever wrote another book after his first, brilliant Just Killing Time book), a couple of John Sandford's tossed in. Then, one night, I was reading Just Killing Time and I got the medical condition known as The Creeps. I couldn't shake 'em. The Creeps took over and soon, I was an insane woman, checking under my bed, in my closet, locking and re-locking all my doors and windows. I even checked under my couch, which, for the record, was TWO INCHES of space, but I thought perhaps a serial killer could have taken out some of the stuffing and secreted himself away in there. I checked in my washing machine. In my dishwasher. I knew, for me, there was one cure for The Creeps. STOP READING TORTURE PORN. Because that, to me, was what it amounted to. It seemed, again to me, that most of these books were evolving as ever more creative ways to torture people, to prolong their anguish. And I was "done." I haven't read one since and don't ever intend to. Serial killers may be the "perfect villain"--just not for me.

So I moved on. I became enamoured of this series by Robert K. Tannenbaum--until eventually his ghostwriter left it and the books, frankly, started to suck. Nonetheless, I like the D.A. character in this book, and there wasn't one villain but many. So it became more about the hero matching wits with various villains. However, in a couple of them, conspiracy and politics were woven so my new villain was the Zealot.

Zealots scare me. Look at this story from CNN today. People like this terrify me. I don't want religion in my kids' classrooms. If I did, I would pay to send them to a private religious school. But there are Zealots of every religious stripe, and every cultish belief. And I consider it a form of insanity. So . . . they became my new Perfect Villain.

Finally, I am working on my newest work in progress, which I have not even announced the sale of yet, mostly because I've been so busy. And the tagline is that it's a tale of obsession. In it, at one point, a jealous man destroys the ONE thing a woman loves. My new villain model is the lover or friend who betrays. The husbands who kill their wives, the wives who put arsenic in their husband's oatmeal. Somehow that idea of the "perfect" facade hiding sinister secrets (like the Scott Peterson case) intrigues me.

So that's my Villain Journey. What's yours? Who is your Perfect Villain and why?

Intimate Evil

No, I am not talking about Demon Baby. I'm talking about villains.

I realize, right now, as I am more stressed than I have been in a long, long time, that what is worst about my stress is how it presses up against me. When I lie down at night and say my prayers, it presses against my chest. Because some of my stress has to do with something happening with one of my kids, it suffocates me. It's there, constant, and though I pray and "give it up" to the Universe, it's all around me sometimes. That's how it is when you love people fiercely.

And that pressing against me, almost physical, is what I am striving for in one of my works in progress. My hero is up against a conspiracy, and it threatens him. And it presses in, closes in, suffocates, raises the stakes at every corner. Can't breathe, can't think, can't run, can't escape it.

I think the scariest evil is that. It invades your space. It's intimate. It's not "out there" but coming closer to hearth and home. It's the stuff of nightmares, isn't it? When I think of some of my recurrent nightmares, they are consistently that I am hiding from evil (usually in the form of a serial killer in my dreams, occasionally wandering post-apocalyptic bands of evil people--such are dreams). And I must hide in small, claustrophobic places. Waiting to be found. In tiny places. Heart pounding. And then weighing my situation. Do I make a run for it? Go out in the open? Risk coming out of hiding to find a BETTER hiding spot?

Okay, sure, I can page Dr. Freud regarding my dreams. But really . . . as I step back and look at what I am trying to accomplish in my writing, that's it. Intimate evil.

So how do you raise the stakes in your writing?

Bad to the Bone

None of us likes being around mean people. One of my kids is saddled with a bully for a teacher--it's only every other day, only for one period (well, actually a double-block period). But it wrecks my kid's day. Which sucks. I wish I could tell him people like that are a rarity, but I know they're not. He's an Everday Villain. In my little world, I have the Mean Mom in the neighborhood. I actually have come to the conclusion--call it a hunch--that she is Mean Morning Drunk Mom. Which is sad. But she's not the first Mean Mom I have met--not by a long shot. Nor will she be the last. And Mean Morning Drunk is a "type." So is "bully." As writers, we are probably better than some at analyzing traits. Pull together a series of traits, and voila . . . you have a character. So when I see Mean Morning Drunk Mom and she has her coffee cup, I secretly, as writer, wonder what's in it? Is it vodka? Is it a shot of Bailey's in her coffee? Baileys AND vodka? Then I wonder . . . does she go back to the house and sit and watch soap operas all day in a sleazy negligee? (Yup, writer's imagination!) Actually, I know she is in sales, so THEN I wonder what she is like to her customers. Maybe she stores a fifth of vodka in her top desk drawer and slurs while making calls. And suddenly, I have a character. I can't help but think all sorts of things about Bully Teacher, NONE of which is appropriate for a PG-13 blog. But . . . that's the writer in me. I invent stories about bad guys and Everyday Villains . . . and invent stories about the good guys, too. But . . . all of this got me thinking this a.m. about bad guys and types. The Bully. The Nasty Drunk. Snippets of "bad" that get to go into books. But there are as many different bad guys as there are people, and we color them with nuances and their own particualr brand of crazy. However, I started trying to compile a little list.

TREACHEROUS TYPE. In the dictionary, this one is characterized by faithlessness or readiness to betray trust; traitorous, or deceptive, untrustworthy, or unreliable. Now, in romantic comedies, I would say you use this type one a lot if you have a nemesis for your heroine. The treacherous friend who betrays the main character and sleeps with her boyfriend. In darker work, it's the person on the team who's ready to double-cross. They have their reasons, sometimes for money, sometimes for jealousy, maybe for fame or for ego. This type of bad guy is less overt, usually.

EVIL. Actually, in the dictionary, this one is wicked or immoral. WICKED . . . makes me think of Dorothy's nemesis. It can also mean arising from the NATURE of evil, specifically, "the force in nature that gives rise to wickedness or sin." That's the devil, folks. Or the belief in a force of good versus a force of evil. To me, this category includes the Hitlers of the world. It strikes me as more of a force. In BLOOD SON, the leader of the vampires had actually survived the genocide in Hungary, witnessed mass slaughter, and it colored his world. The force of evil gave rise to genocide then created this monster who then became a force unto himself.

SOCIOPATH. Here we go with Hannibal Lector. "Someone whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience." These are the bad guys who can do extreme wrong and feel no guilt. They are NOT conflicted. So if you have a conflicted bad guy, he's not a sociopath.

NARCISSIST. Oh, I know one of these. Unfortunately. "A psychological condition characterized by self-preoccupation, lack of empathy, and unconscious deficits in self-esteem." Self-preoccupied, yes, most of us know that part of the definition. BUT see that lack of self-esteem thing? That drives it. God, these people are difficult to be involved with. They make interesting characters--again, paying attention to the second part. The unconcious that throws a curveball of self-loathing.

GANGSTER. Guess what? In the dictionary, this is just a "member of a gang" or a member of organized crime. So the reason in many of my books that these guys are family men and have a gentle side as well as a dark side is gangster is more of a profession. Now, what leads a person into this line of work varies, but it does not have to be one of the categories above it.

Okay, so you get the idea. Right now, in my current work in progress, I have EVIL as my bad guy. He split the clan, and he is motivated by an almost animalistic hatred. He is a force.

However, I am doing a proposal with a narcissist in it--a mother who never was able to love her child because that would have interfered with her life's work. And am playing with a romantic comedy in which there is a treacherous enemy who wants to undermine my heroine's business by any method.

What about you? Got any other bad guy types? There are plenty. Plus there are some that pick and choose from different types. And add to that there's an entire host of psychological disorders that form the basis for bad behavior--everything from borderline personality disorder, to alcoholism, to drug addiction, to . . .

So? How do you serve up your bad guys this morning?

Gollum

There is an incredible lesson to be learned, I think, from the character of Gollum/Smeagol, created by J.R.R. Tolkien.

He, at first, seems hopelessly vile and evil . . . but then, he has a truly pathetic, tragic, deeply sad back story. So much as you hate him and mistrust him, there is a part of you that feels compassion. You feel torn.

I think any author or moviemaker that plays that gray middle--neither black nor white, but some middle ground where the morality is far more complex and muddled, has created something deeper, more reflective of the real world. To be able to play on emotions like that takes skill. But real life is so much like that. Someone you love profoundly wounds you, and much as the simpler path might be to cut them from your life completely, that is the path for cowards--sometimes. The more complicated path, the one that DEMANDS more of you as a human being, often is the one in which you feel for their mistake and try to save them, or try to forgive and move on. Or make yourself vulnerable again because of unconditional love.

In my current work in progress, one of the main characters has done the most awful thing I think a human being can do. She has murdered. But . . . there is a complicated, and I hope Gollum-esque journey, that brought her to the precise and broken place where the choice she made seemed sane to her. Thought afterward, like Gollum, she became a pathetic version of her former self.

Anyway, that's what I am hoping for. And Gollum is the example I am keeping in mind, though my book is not fantasy at all.

Thoughts?

The Allure of Evil

I watched The Departed last night, and some of the funniest lines were spouted by the bad guys.

How's your mother?
She's on her way out.
We all are. Act accordingly.

F*ck yourself, you piece of sh*t.
And I need the identities of your undercovers.
Blow me. Not literally, though, unfortunately there's no promotion involved.

I laughed out loud. And that, is the allure of evil.

I had more than one reader tell me that they were bothered by how much they liked Uncle Two in The Roofer. Or even Frank. They're murderers. No questions asked, no guilty consciences. But they're loyal guys with totally sick, dark senses of humor--senses of humor that I share.

But does that mean I am glorifying violence? It's a question asked every time Scorsese makes a film. It was a question asked about The Godfather trilogy. It's asked about The Sopranos. And as I work on The Devil's Agents, it's something people COULD ask. But I don't. I never wonder whether I am glorifying violence. Because I'm not. I'm merely depicting it in full, round detail.

Evil is alluring. It's that simple. If it wasn't, people wouldn't sin, if you want to get all Biblical about it. Having an affair--easier than working on a marriage. Taking drugs--easier than facing your problems. Killing your estranged wife--easier than getting a divorce. At first. That's how evil sucks you in. Then it gets hard and twisted and difficult. But first . . . it has to be alluring.

Bad guys can be funny. They can be daddies. Not fathers, but dear, sweet, wonderful daddies who pick their little girls up and twirl them in an "airplane." They make sacrfices for their families sometimes--families they adore. They kiss their wives. They make love. They sit down and say grace around the dinner table. And they also kill without much thought. THAT is the reality of some gangsters. And if you play it that they don't have the humor and the allure, then you miss out on their charm, and then you miss out on that particular nuance of the story.

If some adolescent kid decides the violence is something beyond cool . . . and does something about it? That points to that particular child's upbringing, genetic makeup and so on. But the artist--filmmaker, author--was right to depict evil as it IS, not as people want it to be. People want their bad guys wrapped up in an evil bow. Like a sign pointing--EVIL HERE. But more often than not, bad men are alluring.

That's how they entice you. That's how little girls believe their daddies are all heroes even when they're out at night shooting other bookies for invading their turf. That's how they get new recruits. That's how they operate.

Thoughts?