V is for Villains

May is Villains Month at Prosers! This week, I'm reposting my villains discussion from a couple of years back. And in a couple of weeks, I'm going to talk about my newest favorite book about villains and villainous characters: Vicious by V.E. Schwab.

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All right, fantasy writers. We need to have a little chat. It’s about our villains – because they seem to be getting more and more clichéd as the years go by.

I give a large part of the blame to Tolkien. Lord Sauron is sort of the gold standard of villains, the predecessor to innumerable Dark Lords that harassed medieval villages, kidnapped heroines, and generally sought to plunge all that is good into darkness.

  

 In all honesty, I’m actually fine with the Tall, Dark and Evil. It’s those villains that are one step down that I really bother me: humans that are presented as so horribly monstrous or villainous that there’s basically no humanity left to them. Some thriller or mystery novels are especially bad about this, and seem to compete over how many negative traits they can give to their villains. It can get a little ridiculous. I've come across some villains who are evil, sociopathic, perverted, serial killers who also hate kittens and rainbows, and usually tries to sexually assault the heroine near the end of the story. What, were the authors afraid that the readers would be all, "Well, he's killed three dozen people, but he hasn't run over any puppies lately! Maybe he's not all that bad!"

 In anime, the evil level of any villain is easily determined by the size of his or her shoulder pads

Pretty much every author I talk to is aware of this issue. One solution that many of us choose is to give the villain a twist of good, a redeeming feature to make them seem less of a caricature and more human. More often than not, this ends up being a love for cats. Though villains’ cats are always sleek and well behaved, and don’t shred the Shroud of Evil into tiny pieces, or bat the Orb of Pain around the kitchen floor, or interrupt multiple times as the villain is trying to just get her friggin' blog post finished.

I’d like to propose the opposite. Instead of giving a bad guy a twist of good, why not instead start out your villain as a good person – with just a little twist of evil? I'm not necessarily talking about the bullied kid who suddenly turns psycopathic and sends flying monkeys after the school (I think I might be getting my Buffy the Vampire Slayer plots mixed up here). No, a person who is good, and who has been good, who has a chance of fate that makes them choose the wrong path. I'm also a big fan of people who believe they are doing the Right Thing.

I do understand the point of making a villain the epitome of evil. Then the hero doesn’t have to suffer any qualms about taking him/her/it out. I do sympathize – it can be a bit boring if we have to watch the hero suffer through agonies of guilt after utterly destroying someone who was essentially a good person. Let me know if you have any ideas on how to convey that. Other topics for study: how evil does an action have to be to merit punishment? What matters more, motives or action? What is the most essential trait of a villain - is it just opposing what the hero desires? Is that all it need to be, or should it be so much more than that?

Here are a few examples of interesting, complex villains.

Baron Wulfenbach

Is he evil? Is he good? Who knows? He does try to kill Agatha on a fairly regular basis. But he's Gil's father, and he's opposed to the Other, who seems to be the Big Bad in the series. And besides, am I really supposed to like a bad guy this much?

Here is a link to Baron Wulfenbach just trying to squeeze a little fun time into ruling an empire... though I think Othar wishes the Baron had a different idea of "fun."

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20040105 (the feature on the Baron goes about 10 pages)

  

The Queen of Attolia

She might start out seeming rather like a caricature, but by the third book in the series, well....... Just read the whole Queen's Thief series. If you need more encouragement than that, go see the 800 posts we’ve made about the series, like here, here and here. Not to mention the one Melanie did just last week!)

Loki from the Avengers

I suppose you could argue that his complexity comes from the fact that he’s a trickster character rather than a true villain. He’s definitely more bad than good, but every so often, we get a glimpse of the pain underneath the evil. Plus, he’s hilarious.

Who are your favorite complex villains?

... But Maybe Not Too Much

Two weeks ago, MaryAnn wrote an excellent post about suffering in POV characters. She said,

"I think making the characters suffer ups the stakes, it makes you feel that they have a lot to lose and that success isn’t a given, in fact, it is almost impossible, and that ratchets of the tension while making the hero feel vulnerable, more relatable."

I absolutely agree. However, over the summer, I read a couple of books with characters who go through extreme suffering, and instead of making me care more about the characters, it frustrated me. So what's the deal - did the authors take it to far, or am I expecting too much of my favorite characters?

The two books were The Queen of Attolia, by Megan Whalen Turner, and Fire, by Kristin Cashore.. Without revealing any spoilers, I can tell you that both Gen and Fire suffer crushing losses throughout the course of the story. I should also note that I think both these tragedies needed to happen to these characters; it's not the losses, it's how they're portrayed that somehow bothered me.

Grief isn't a pretty thing. It's a swirling, tar-like mass of sorrow and rage and regret. It takes a long, long time to heal from such a thing, to get back to some semblance of normalcy. I know that personally. So why didn't I have more empathy for Gen and Fire?

To be honest, I'm still not entirely sure (this is why even though I'd read the books in summer, I hadn't gotten around to writing the post yet). Is it because I expect more from characters, especially those otherwise portrayed as heroes? Well, maybe a teeny bit. I mean, I would like to think I have a more nuanced appreciation of character growth than that, but maybe I spent too many years watching Disney movies.

Maybe it's because Fire and Gen's grieving comes at bad times for their kingdoms. Both have to be scolded by friends or relatives to leave their grief and pay attention to the troubles around them. It's probably unfair for me to be irritated by that, too. I mean, in the times that I've grieved, there hasn't been an invasion of monsters to California or anything, so it's not like I can empathize on that level.

Or maybe it's because of something else. During the original run of Star Trek: The Next Generation, you may remember that Gene Rodenberry died, and Rick Berman took over as executive producer. My uncle, the biggest Trekkie I've ever me, complained that after Berman had taken the helm, the show had devolved into the bridge crew squabbling throughout every episode. "I don't tune in to watch that sort of thing," he told me. "I started watching Star Trek because it presents a hopeful view of the future, where we can actually work together to achieve results."

And maybe that's a big part of why I read traditional fantasy. I want to see characters overcome impossible situations, to handle every challenge with grace. To act in the ways I wish I could.

I'm not advocating perfection. Perfection is boring. But I do wonder now how to hold that balance, to make characters realistic, to portray suffering without becoming maudlin.

If you've read those books, did those moments frustrate you too, or not? To you as a writer, do you want to try to achieve a balance of those two elements, or do you find one more important than the other? And have you come across any well-done portrayals of suffering in POV characters?

Caricature and Character

Lately, I’ve been writing Harry Potter.

Yes, yes I have. I’ve also been writing Shannon Hale’s, The Goose Girl, and Megan Whalen Turner’s, The Queen of Attolia.

Okay, I can only wish I was writing them for the first time, but I have been copying them and plotting them out and trying to glean every ounce of craft I can from them. And I’m hoping a few things will start to sink into my thick cranium.

Caricature

Now before I begin this magnum opus, I have to give a disclaimer. Having had exactly one college writing course (graduate level technical writing – not exactly a repository of literary nuance), I may have my definitions a little skewed, but I see caricature as having certain characteristics over-emphasized and others minimized. Like the pictures that street artists draw, or like a helium balloon, larger than life, but filled with nothing but air. Am I getting close?

Early on in figuring out this writing thing, I learned the importance of well rounded characters, deep backstory, motivation and on and on. But what I think I see in copying JK Rowling is how much, and how successfully, she relies on caricature. Sure, the main characters in Harry Potter all have characterization in spades. But how many other beloved characters are basically overly exaggerated caricatures? When I hear Crabbe & Goyle, I think lumbering, not-too-bright brutes. Percy? Fudge? Filch? Even the names of the characters are so evocative of their traits. And yet I love to loathe Lockhart and Umbrage, particularly because they are overblown.

Character

Megan Whalen Turner, on the other hand, takes great pains to make sure almost every person in her novels is complex, both personally and in their relationships with other characters. The father of the main character could be considered a moderately minor character, but we learn that he’s had a turbulent relationship with his son: disappointed expectations, not being able to save his son from himself, pride, acquiescence to his son’s choices, but never quite being settled with it. He is completely realistic in his actions and reactions. And yet, in four books, this well-rounded, this utterly human man has remained nameless.

These are, imho, two brilliant authors with two equally brilliant approaches. As a writer of MG and YA, I mull these things over in my head. When is it appropriate to use caricature and when is deeper characterization needed? Are there types of writing or age groups that respond better to one or the other?

Walkin’ Down the Street

And when I start putting the same assessments into real life I realize we’re probably wired to make snap judgments, to sort and categorize: Look! it’s the bubbly intern, the frazzled mom, and that salesman that always makes us feel a little greasy.

Maybe all we really need of the pimply cashier slouching at the end of the self-checkout is for him to be a caricature in our lives. But sometime, something might happen that lets us see a little deeper to the kid saving for college and worrying that he’ll need to pay the electric bill instead because his mom lost her job. Maybe in real life, even more than in books, it’s important to try to see beneath the surface and find the real person behind the caricature.

What do you think? How do you view caricature and character?

~ Susan

For more, visit:

meganwhalenturner.org

www.jkrowling.com