Wednesday, January 04, 2012
Every story needs conflict, and often that calls for a villain or two. Maybe your villain isn't out murdering people (Colleen!) Maybe they're only a catty bridesmaid at a wedding who gives your heroine the stink eye -- they still have to be believable.
What makes us believe a person could inflict evil on another? Usually, it's some internal wounding that the villain carries around with them, but you've got to find that motivation to make your villain or antagonist, multi-dimensional. For example, let's take a man who is a huge presence on the forefront of Christian Evangelicals. He is a master preacher. People are moved by his words to love God more and one day, he leaves his wife and five kids for a beauty queen. Without explanation or any sign of remorse.
There are two multiple ways you could go with his motivation for inflicting such evil on the people he is called to love and cherish. (Keep in mind, this would be the kind of villainy that could have a lot of collateral damage.)
1. He realizes his faith has never been more than a show. He is a fraud, and he wants to get away, but doesn't know how. So he takes the coward's way out because he doesn't want people to tell him that he can come back. He's been preaching the Word for years, he knows what it says. He no longer believes it, and feels it's more honorable to give his wife a chance with someone who can love the Lord and her.
2. Or...the teenager could have been in danger from a trafficking ring, and he has taken her as a bride to protect her because he knows the group would not dare come after the girl when he is under surveillance for the huge scandal.
3. He has attachment issues from a lifetime of being passed around from foster home to foster home and though he wants to be there for his kids and give them a different life, his need to matter is bigger and he can't fight it anymore. He's given his kids more than he ever had, and rationalizes that his wife can sell the house and live for years on the profits.
You get the idea. Find a reason your antagonist acts the way they do. Don't just make them villains. We ALL have the ability to inflict evil. The question is, what would make us do it?
Labels: CBA, Christian Books, companions in writing, villains, Writing advice, writing characters
Kristin
posted at
7:39 PM
Comments (3)
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Today, I'm turing in my novel, "Paris in the Rain." It was a bear to write. I had one vision. Others had another and we met in the middle, which sounds easier than it was. I'm a pretty linear writer, so when I start moving stuff around, Fall becomes Spring and I don't know what era I'm living inside today.
As I look around my house, I've put off a lot of things until I was done with the novel. A new roof (it's raining already!), new windows (ours have black mold and sweat in the cold) and just general homemaking skills. Have you ever taken too long to get to something (maybe a doctor about a cough?) and then, you're in far worse shape?
Prioritizing one's life is a very hard thing to do when everyone counts on you. The other day, i stopped writing my novel, though I had no time to go to see my friend visiting from Tiblisi, Georgia and then the final David Crowder Band concert. I was late turning in my stuff. I didn't meet my deadline, but I thought on my deathbed, will I feel worse I didn't see my friend who came across the world and my favorite band that I've followed since the beginning, or will I miss my deadline?
Neither one is a great feeling. You're always letting someone down, so how do you make your priorities?
Labels: companions in writing, Family Friendship, Paris in the Rain, Prioritizing
Kristin
posted at
6:15 PM
Comments (2)
Friday, September 09, 2011
Have you ever wondered how a writer can spend hours a day alone in her own head, making up stories on the computer--or even by hand--without losing her mind?
Who says we don't?
A writer's life can be a lonely life, hence one reason we reach out to one another. I worked for fourteen years writing manuscript after manuscript with no sales. And then I met Mel, and we began to collaborate on the novels I had written. And then we got married and when he came home from work he would talk about the exciting life of an ER doc. He once told me that he felt his job was a sacred trust. I gasped and said, "Honey, what a great title for a book! Why don't we write one together?"
I would like to say the rest was easy, but it wasn't. Those first six novels I wrote with Mel's input were the most difficult I had ever written, because not only had I studied the art of novel writing for fourteen years, but Mel had studied the medical arts for about the same amount of time. We were very knowledgable in our fields, but I wasn't knowledgable in his field, and he wasn't knowledgeable in mine. Mel had to learn a new language when he went to med school, and it's called medicalese. I didn't understand that language. He didn't always understand mine. I had to explain what I needed for a specific scene, and then I had to get him to slow down and stop talking so I could write it down. Then I had to ask him to pretend he was talking to a kindergartner. Our six hard-hitting ER-type novels proved our love for each other in very concrete ways. If a marriage can make it through that kind of miscommunication without more than one fight, it can last through anything .
After those six books, we switched publishers, and they didn't want hard-hitting ER novels, they wanted women's fiction. We continued to write about characters with medical skills, and we still included medical scenes, but we backed far away from the constant trauma of ER medicine. You cannot imagine how relieved I was. Mel says he still misses it, but I think secretly he's relieved he doesn't have to work so hard. Editing a complete manuscript for me and placing a medical scene here and there is easier than dumbing down a whole book ilea with complicated procedures for someone with the understanding of a five-year-old.
Working together on a book is just like working together in life. There will be disagreements and misunderstandings. The trick to getting through it with friendship intact is to trust your partner's heart. Mel didn't purposely make medicine difficult for me to understand, he simply took for granted I had a brain. I didn't purposely make him rewrite and dumb down medical scenes just to irritate him, I simply needed to make sure all of our readers would be able to see the scene in their minds as they read.
Mel and I are thrilled with the books we've worked on together, and we look forward to working on many, many more. We also look forward to more years of marriage, of loving each other through the hard times, and learning to trust one another more deeply. That's what true collaboration is about.
What are some of your tricks and practices for getting along with others?
Labels: collaboration, companions in writing, coworkers, getting along, Partnership
Hannah Alexander
posted at
11:36 PM
Comments (8)
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Have you ever wondered how a writer can spend hours a day alone in her own head, making up stories on the computer--or even by hand--without losing her mind?
