Writers in the Storm

Angela Ackerman

Writers are encouraged to dig into their hero or heroine’s past to understand what factors (including wounding events) are steering their behavior and motivation in the story. By doing this we can ensure our protagonist’s goal aligns with the unmet need driving them, tailor challenges that will force them to face specific fears, and raise their awareness of destructive emotional shielding (flaws, biases, dysfunctional behaviors) that is holding them back. Internal growth, after all, is what character arc is all about!

Putting time into backstory is a no-brainer for the protagonist…but there’s another character often overlooked who also needs this type of development: the villain.

The villain (if your story has one) plays a crucial role. He’s the main source of conflict, making the hero’s success that much more difficult to achieve.

Few things disappoint readers more than a cardboard villain who is “evil for evil’s sake.” Yet, we see this portrayal countless times, which steals the power from an otherwise incredible tale.

Compelling characters have real motivations…villains included.

Just like the protagonist, we should always know what is driving the villain in the story. Here are three key areas to brainstorm to help you build a credible antagonist that readers will love to hate.

Negative Life Lessons

All characters enter the story with a suitcase of past pain, including your villain. The fear of being hurt again motivates him just as it does the protagonist, but how this manifests through behavior will be darker. Uncovering the wounds of the past is a must because to write the villain’s dysfunctional behavior well, we need to know what caused it.

To find the wound, ask yourself, who hurt him, and how? What negative life lessons did other people or circumstances teach him that led to his current jaded worldview? Someone, or something, caused him to become the person he is now, and his past trauma, whether it involved a significant loss, a humiliation that can’t be forgotten, or a betrayal that locked his emotional shielding into place, is at the root of it.

Moral Beliefs

Another area to examine is the villain’s moral center. Core beliefs shape our actions, but in fiction, the villain’s code of conduct will change significantly due to the skewed way he views the world.

Imagine two people who suffer the same devastating circumstance—say, one of their children dying in a hit-and-run accident. Though they end up with the same missing need of safety and security, depending on personality, support system, mental state, and a slew of other factors, they could go about filling this need in different ways. One might pursue a career in law enforcement, seek to change the law regarding drunk-driving offenses, or open a rehab center to make it easier for alcoholics to receive treatment. Goals like these are inherently positive pursuits and make sense for someone seeking security.

Another person could go a completely different direction: stalking and ultimately murdering his child’s killer or going on an arson spree and burning down bars around town. He thinks that eradicating the responsible person or establishments from his neighborhood will make the world safer. But because he refuses to work through grief and instead allows fear to dictate his behavior, these goals are ultimately dissatisfying, leading him to commit bigger offenses in a desperate effort to find peace.

Morality is often the biggest difference between protagonists and villains. His do-not-cross line, if he has one at all, is set much farther back than the protagonist’s, enabling him to do unthinkable things to get what he wants.

Coping With Unmet Needs

Unmet needs are also the result of a wounding event. Being hurt in such a deep, psychological way leaves the character in a protective state: he’d rather go without something (love, pursuing a dream, freedom, etc.) than risk having it stolen from him again. The longer this need goes unsatisfied though, the unhappier a person becomes. In a change arc story, the protagonist will eventually reach a tipping point where he’s no longer willing to live without his unmet need, but the villain doesn’t always get to this place. Why is that?

One possibility is that the antagonist once made an attempt to work through his wounding experience and that attempt was unsuccessful, reinforcing the same pain he first felt. As a result, he became hardened and unwilling to risk that kind of hurt again.

Another likelihood is that the villain refuses to revisit the wound and heal because it’s too painful and so simply muffles the gnawing void by pursuing whatever temporarily eases the hurt. This may result in him rejecting his emotions so he feels nothing for himself or anyone else, thereby enabling him to seek revenge (Howard Payne, Speed) or do truly horrific things without remorse (Jigsaw, Saw franchise).

Or maybe the villain’s dysfunctional behavior is personally satisfying to the extent that he’s not willing to give it up. Vices are ultimately destructive, but on a base level they’re enjoyable; for someone who is in denial or is mentally imbalanced, these activities can act as motivators that make it difficult to sacrifice them in favor of lifelong changes for the better. Understanding how your villain copes with his unmet need will help you write his actions in a way that rings true.

A villain’s motives will have deep roots.

Villains are products of their past, just like everyone else. Genetics and anomalies can play a part, but the overwhelming majority of deranged individuals are that way because of the negative people and events they were exposed to. Knowing what’s driving him and why he’s chosen his particular goal helps you to portray a villain who is credible. If you need help with this, pull out your Emotional Wound Thesaurus book, or visit One Stop for Writers’ vast collection of emotional wounds.

What’s your villain’s motivation in the story? Let me know in the comments!

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About Angela

 

Angela Ackerman is a writing coach, international speaker, and co-author of the bestselling book, The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression, as well as five others. Her books are available in six languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. Angela is also the co-founder of the popular site Writers Helping Writers, as well as One Stop for Writers, an innovative online library built to help writers elevate their storytelling. Find her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Janice Hardy

For some writers, a blank page is a scary thing to face. Others see all that white space as an opportunity, and can't wait to dive in and tell their story. The vast majority of us probably fall somewhere in between, with some ideas making us eager to write, and some fighting us every for word.

I've discovered through (often painful) trial and error, that my novels go smoothest when I spend some time planning them. I don't have to figure everything out, but knowing what my core conflict is, what my character arc will cover, and who my antagonist is makes it a lot easier to write the novel. I struggle less, my plot comes together more easily, and the first draft turns out much cleaner.

Since October is the planning month for writers gearing up for National Novel Writing Month in November (where you write 50,000 words in 30 days for those who haven't discovered this yet), let's look at some ways to help you jumpstart your next novel idea.

1. Know what your book is really about.

Not truly knowing what I was writing has caused me more writing frustration than anything else I've ever encountered. I've written hundreds of pages I later threw away because I had no idea what I wanted to do. Now, I take the time to figure out my story before I do anything else.

This doesn't mean I need to know every detail, or even have an outline (though I do prefer outlining), but I do need to know what the major problem of the novel is. If I can't clearly identify what my protagonist is struggling with, and what problem has to be solved by the end of the book, then I'm not ready to write the novel.

The best tool I've found for clarifying my idea is to write a one- or two-sentence pitchline for it. Capturing the essence of my story in a few sentences forces me to really know what story I'm writing. If that sentence is vague with nothing to plot from, that's a big red flag I don't have a story to tell yet.

2. Know what your protagonist(s) is going to do.

Many a premise novel has stalled around page one hundred, because a great idea was set up, and then the writer realized the protagonist had nothing to do once that idea was established. The idea was driving the story, not the protagonist--no goal, no motivation to act, no stakes, no conflict. The book was nothing more than the description and explanation of an idea the writer loved.

An idea you love is a great start, but strong stories are about interesting people solving interesting problems interesting ways (many of you have heard me say this plenty of times). I've written entire novels with multiple points of view and dozens of characters where not a dang one of them wanted to do a darn thing. Sure, they went where I told them to, recited their lines like good little actors, but it was all make believe. Nothing about the story felt like real people trying to solve real problems that readers would care about. And this holds true if the problem is saving the world from zombies, or finding love when you've given up on it.

Being clear on what your interesting protagonist needs to do makes it easier for you to have her do it, which creates the plot and gives you things to write about. But that's only half the battle. The other half is...

3. Know who your antagonist is and what he (or she) is up to.

The other half of writing a strong story is putting solid conflict in the way of your protagonist's goals. Once you know what she needs to do, clarify why the antagonist is making it hard for her to do it. Even if the antagonist isn't seen until the climax, his actions will have consequences to what the protagonist is doing, often from page one.

The easiest drafts I've ever written have been ones where I knew going in who my antagonist was and what he was up to. His plan was solid, his motives clear, and I knew how he was going to mess things up for my intrepid hero. So much of what the protagonist does is due to what the antagonist has done, so this is a partnership you want fully fleshed out. It's the back and forth of trying and failing, winning and losing, that keeps readers glued to the page.

4. Know why it all matters.

One of the harder bits of feedback to receive is, "why should I care?" but it's some of the most valuable feedback you'll ever get. If readers don't care, they won't read, and it won't matter how well written a story is, or how cool the idea is.

Whatever your protagonist is doing, give her a reason why doing it matters. Understand your characters' motivations and what's at stake for them if they fail. You don't need to know every detail at the start of the novel, but a general sense of why this is important will help you know what conflicts to use and where the story might go.

A question I like to ask is, "Why can't the protagonist just walk away?" If you can't answer this, or the answer is, "they can but then the plot won't work," that's a red flag that your stakes aren't where they need to be yet.

If you feel confident about the answers to all four of these questions, odds are that your first draft will go more smoothly and you'll run into fewer issues. There will still be things to work out, of course, that's the nature of writing, but you should have a lot fewer writing sessions where you stare at the screen in frustrations and have no idea what to do next.

Plotters or pansters, a little thinking about your story before you start writing it can make a huge difference in how easily that story makes its way to the page.

How much thought and/or planning do you do before you start a novel?

If you're looking for some motivation (and a lot more guidance than these four tips) for your newest novel idea, I'm running a free at-home workshop on my site, Fiction University, all October long. Come on over and check out Idea to Novel in 31 Days. It's also perfect for anyone planning to do NaNoWriMo next month.

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About Janice

Janice Hardy is the award-winning author of the fantasy trilogy, The Healing Wars, and multiple books on writing, including Understanding Show, Don't Tell (And Really Getting It), Planning Your Novel: Ideas and Structure and Revising Your Novel: First Draft to Finished Draft. Her newest release is Understanding Conflict (And What It Really Means). She's also the founder of the writing site, Fiction University. For more advice and helpful writing tips, visit her at www.fiction-university.com or @Janice_Hardy.

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More Help On Writing Your Novel  

Do you have a great story idea? Do you want to turn it into a novel?

Janice Hardy takes you step-by-step through plotting and writing a novel with her book Planning Your Novel: Ideas and Structure. She'll show you how to find and develop ideas, brainstorm stories from that first spark of inspiration to a complete story, develop the right characters, setting, plot, as well as teach you how to identify where your novel fits in the market, and if your idea has what it takes to be a series.

With clear and easy-to-understand examples, Planning Your Novel: Ideas and Structure offers ten self-guided workshops with more than 100 different exercises to help you craft a solid novel. Each workshop builds upon the other to flesh out your idea as much or as little as you need to start writing (useful for both plotters and pantsers). You'll find multiple options that allow you to find the right process that works for you.

For those who like a hands-on approach with easy-to-use worksheets, a companion guide, Planning Your Novel Workbook is also available in paperback.

Finding a critique group/partner (I call them 'critters') is one of the most frustrating things about being a writer. Then, when you find the perfect one, and life intervenes, and they drift away. 

Don't you hate when that happens?

So I thought it might help if I laid out the rules for a  perfect crit partner, for those who don't know them.

1. Choose someone who writes in your genre - After all, who knows the tropes, style, and rules better than them? Unless you - Choose someone who writes in a different genre - In my original crit group, the Sci-fi author taught me world-building. The Action/thriller author taught me tension and stakes. The WF author taught me conflict.  

Bottom line: You'll learn something either way - don't let this be a barrier,

      2. Choose someone waaaaay better than you - you get a lot out of it. Until they get bored, and tired of getting not much in return.  In which case you - Choose someone who's a rank noob - and they get a lot out of it. Until . . . you get the drift.

Bottom line: Try to find someone just a bit better than you are. If you both feel this way about the other - it's a match made in heaven!

     3.  Make sure you can meet in person - unless they live across the country. Then you - Skype, Call, crit via email, send owls, whatever. 

Bottom line: No reason in this century for logistics to be a barrier.

         4.  Choose someone who is a fan of your writing - because how can unmitigated praise be bad? Unless you actually care about the quality of your work (and isn't that what critting is about?) in which case, choose someone who doesn't think you're all that.  

Bottom line: All that's really required are manners and mutual respect.

          5. Be true to your story and your vision, regardless of feedback - I've seen more than one story lost because the author heeded every single bit of advice. Unless you - Ignore wise advice. You're the author, and you know best. In which case, you're wasting your critter's time. Oh, I see, you just came for unmitigated praise!

Bottom bottom line: NO writer can put out something worth reading without feedback. We know what we meant to get on the page, but we don't have the objectivity to discern if we accomplished that. Finding your perfect critter isn't easy, and when you do, there's no guarantee it's permanent.

It's normal to be transitioning at all times, into and out of critting relationships. Don't be afraid to get out of a bad one, and continue to take risks, getting into new ones. Trust me, it'll be worth it.

Because a perfect critter is as rare and elusive as a unicorn,

but wow, are they worth the search!

So tell us, how do you feel about your critting relationships - the good, the bad, the ugly!

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About Laura

Laura Drake is a city girl who never grew out of her tomboy ways, or a serious cowboy crush. She writes both Women's Fiction and Romance.

She sold her Sweet on a Cowboy series, romances set in the world of professional bull riding, to Grand Central.  The Sweet Spot won the 2014 Romance Writers of America^®   RITA^® award in the Best First Book category.

Laura began a video blog for writers, answering their burning questions. You can watch all the episodes HERE. If you have a question you'd like her to address in a future episode, leave her a comment!

Did you know Laura teaches craft classes? Check out her upcoming ones, both online and in person, HERE