Vermin and Volcanoes, Viruses and Vices

Vermin and Volcanoes, Viruses and Vices

or Non-Villain Antagonists

by Linda Robertson

Last week I mentioned Jaws, Twister, and Zombies, but this week the topic is the non-villain antagonist so I'll add to what I started--but wait, there's more! I'll even throw in a bonus...

As you read this, consider the heroes/protagonists in these stories. What was it about them that made their journey through the plot interesting? What was it about them that made the story more important?

1.) JAWS
Creatures have to eat. A shark eating things that swim in the water does not make that shark a villain, it makes it a predator in its natural environment. This is any wild animal in our world. From scorpions in the desert, to snakes in the rain forest, or dinosaurs  in Jurassic Park.

They're not evil, they're just hungry.

Throw a character in an environment where they collide with these creatures and you have a story of exploration and survival.

2.) TWISTER
Natural disasters make great stories. The Poseidon Adventure. Titanic. Armageddon. Ice Age. 2012. The Perfect Storm. Deep Impact. The Day After Tomorrow. Flood. Magma.
They're not evil, they're just destructive.

The key here is going to be character development vs. the escalation of the danger--from the disaster getting worse or from other characters also trying to survive. What line is this character not willing or able to cross, and how can you force him/her to find a way to cross that line in order to overcome this obstacle to survival?

3.) ZOMBIES
Here we have the un-natural. A virus, a spore, a non-human organism. Yes, I mean Zombies. The Thing. Alien. Godzilla. The Borg. I, Robot. Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The Blob.
This can certainly tip over into full on villain in the form of the "Big Bad" but it does not have to. This is what we find when we explore beyond our world, or when aliens invade our world, or when we create something that will be our own undoing.

They're not evil, they're just programmed/engineered/born that way.

Throw a character in an environment where they encounter these things and you have a story of discovery and exploration and survival.

BONUS:

4.) ADDICTION
A character battling his own inner demons such as his struggle to overcome an addiction is certainly a plot without a villain, and often is a compelling story.

He's not evil, he's just fallen down...but he wants to get back up.

The questions are: Can he? Will he? and How? Make us care. Make us worry. And in the end, make us cheer when he triumphs.

Friday the 13th! Abadon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here.

What an awesome day to get to write about villains! I'd totally go through the horror movie bad guys list for you, but after watching the first quarter of American Werewolf in London when I was probably far too young to have seen a guy's torso ripped open and the ribs shining in the moonlight - horror movies were O.V.E.R. I think I saw 30 seconds of Nightmare on Elm Street. Got one half coherent thought out. "Wow, misogynistic crap, who the heck . . . NOPENOPENOPE." So. Yeah. YOU contemplate all the knives, chainsaws and hockey masks. I'll -- avert my eyes.

I contend that bad guys get terrible press. You've heard how the history books are written by the winners. What if the same is true in novels? Nowhere else in life are good and bad so clearly delineated as in fiction (not just novels - TV, movies, podcasts, you name the media). Our world is filled with competing stories, all of which are trying to sell you a bill of goods delineating who the white hats and who the black hats are. How many sides have you picked? Or did the old Saturday morning westerns (pretend I'm not the only one old enough to have watched those, please) put you off believing in such simple binary definitions of good and bad? (You know, the stories native peoples are depicted as mindless, murdering savages, and wherein no one bothered to mention these people were fighting for their homes and survival because then they might be sympathetic.) Messaging matters. Perspective - the angle from which a story is told - matters.

No sane person wakes up and decides 'today, I'm going to destroy a random life.' Yes. I admit there are some deeply broken people in our world - but even most of them have some internally resonant rhyme or reason for whatever mayhem they commit. Foreign and horrific to the rest of us, maybe, but internally consistent - it makes perfect sense - to them. Having a solid internal drives makes for a powerful antagonist, who must act out of deep conviction. Maybe even out of deepest nature.

Consider: Are tigers or lions or wolves bad or evil when they chase down and kill some sweet little, bounding herbivore? Or do you suppose they have cubs or pups crying to be fed? What's evil in that situation - killing? Or letting the young starve? Do you have a dog or a cat at home? Are you crushed when the dog gleefully brings you a dead baby rabbit from the yard one spring day? Or when the cat catches and plays with a live mouse for hours? Are either of those animals being purposefully mean or bad? It might feel like it to us, but they aren't - they are acting in accordance with their deepest natures - they are predators. Each is specifically designed to do a job and do it with exquisite efficiency. In the wild, the dogs and cats ensured their survival with those hunting instincts and skills. Removed to our hearths and homes, those instincts and skills are displaced and often abhorrent to our sensibilities. In an environment filled with food, warmth and cushy sofas, watching our companion animals revert to being killers can be deeply unsettling. What if your story antagonist is in a similar position? Someone with specific skills and instincts that are utterly out of place in the world they live in? Your protagonists might have to destroy this antagonist, but, oh, what lovely conflict when your protagonist feels a tug of sympathy for that fish out of water antagonist.

There's also the subtle, slippery slope - which is probably the most realistic way good people wind up in horrible spots. We're surrounded by moral ambiguity. It defines our lives. We're presented daily with little, seemingly meaningless choices. Do you tell a white lie, smile, and tell your coworker that shade of magenta looks great when in fact it makes him look like an extra from The Walking Dead? Wait. Isn't lying evil? Or is hurting someone's feelings the GREATER evil? You're driving in a quiet neighborhood. No other cars. You slow down for that stop sign, but, heck. Not a car or a cop for miles. Why bother stopping? Is that choice evil only if you fail to see the child dart into the street after her kitten? Or have you started down a spiral by rationalizing away your bit of urban lawlessness with a breezy 'it didn't hurt anyone'? Is that the benchmark? Or can that be a moving target? There's a saying in our household: Break in and take all the stuff you want. Break in and touch my family and I will kill you come hell or high water. I am perfectly willing to take a life in the defense of my family. No question. No compunction. But look. Someone will get hurt. Have I just put on a black hat?

The fun of a great villain, for me, is playing with those lines. None of my villains mean to be villains. Some of them don't get the page time to make their inner stories clear, but that's my fault. The aliens in my first book are acting out of deepest, alien nature - what they do is necessary for their survival as a species. It doesn't help that humanoids are alien enough to them that they don't think of us as alive...In human terms, these creatures are brutal, horrifying, and worthy of being eradicated. Until the aliens and humans begin cracking one another's behavioral codes. In the urban fantasies, the big bad was an angel - or something close to it - who went to any length to destroy evil. It was that 'any length' bit that twisted him into becoming exactly what he hated. In those books, there's a lot of crossing the good/evil line for my protagonists, too. Because that's what a good antagonist does - forces or tempts your hero or heroine to cross the line. If that hero or heroine is lucky, they'll see the danger and step firmly back into solidly heroic territory. And if the reader's lucky, sometimes, the heroes remain standing with one foot just over the line.

Perils of the Writer: Having Fun With Your Villains

There's an adage that everyone is the hero of their own story, and I think the key to writing interesting villains is to embrace that idea. 
Take Thorn of Dentonhill for example.  (Sorry, it's a book I know really well.)  Willem Fenmere, the crime boss of the Dentonhill neighborhood, is definitively the villain.  But at the same time, one could easily write the same events as a book that's embedded in his sympathies.  Here he is, a successful underworld boss who's built an empire, and some mysterious upstart, outside of the system, starts chipping away at it.  At first it's just a nuisance, but it quickly escalates.  How and why is this happening to him?  Is it an old score being settled, or just the inevitable result of being the old man at the top of the ladder? 
I actually like writing my antagonist POVs, unless something in the story structure takes it off the table.  (A Murder of Mages, for example, wouldn't be much of a mystery if I just showed you the killer's POV, right?)  I think it goes back to my theatre and acting background.    Villains are the most fun, after all.  Heck, some of my favorite scenes in Thorn are where Fenmere is dealing with the Blue Hand Circle.
The best advice I can give for writing villain POV is to write them like you want the villain to win.  At least for that moment. Don't give them stupid mistakes for the sake of propping up the hero.  When you're in there, writing that scene.... root for them.  And that'll come through in the writing.

---
Just a reminder, I'm at Boskone this weekend.  Check out my schedule, and come say hi!  I don't have a signing period scheduled, but I'll gladly sign any copy of Thorn shoved into my hand at any reasonable moment. Though I do stress: reasonable moment.

The Happy Side of Villainy

Does your villain need a positive trait?

Of course not.

One word: JAWS.

Another: TWISTER.
Another: ZOMBIES.

If the antagonist of your story is doom and destruction without a conscience, by all means, lock and load. Pull the trigger and riddle that manuscript with evil.

Of course you will notice that the ONE WORD examples I offered are all ONE dimensional antagonists. Admittedly, there are some fine stories out there with thinking and functioning zombies, but grant me a little leeway on this. You know what I'm getting at.

What if you do provide your villain with a positive trait?

Two words: DARTH VADER.

Another: HANNIBAL LECTER.
Another: CERSEI LANNISTER

VADER was a henchman, lost in the dark side of the Force, a puppet for his master...but he could not stand by and watch his son die. Maybe not a heart of gold under all the mechanisms, but he showed us he had a heart.

Then we get prequels and find out what a sweet, cute and likable kid he was. We see how he was manipulated. And we know that he never wanted to be evil...but a very evil man recognized his power and did everything he could to ensure his control over Anakin.

Say what you will about the 'newer' SW movies with their quirks and flaws. But don't tell me you can watch Episode IV and see Vader the same way you did before you had the prequels. In that moment when the Emperor is electrocuting Luke, the indecision is clear. It has always been clear. But don't you now get the feeling that in that moment, his mind raced through the every moment since he met Palpatine, that he recognized in the man's actions in that moment, how he had been used and deceived for so very long?

LECTER was undeniably a brilliant psycho. But the...feelings...he had for Clarice humanized him just enough. She clung to her justice, risked everything for what she believed in, and this monster of a man who killed with ease and finesse chose to not kill her, to not hurt her, and to not go back to prison. Killing/maiming her surely must have gleamed like the more enticing solution, given his reputation, yet he chose self mutilation instead and removed his own hand. Evidence of madness, perhaps, but he elected not to take the "easier" course. Though it is still thoroughly creepy, when he spared Clarice, showed her--her, of course her--the depth of his mercy, when this surgeon sacrificed his own hand the dynamic created was infinitely more memorable.

CERSEI is a wicked, spiteful, ruthless, coldhearted bitch. But she would do anything for her children, for her family--except the dwarf little brother who's birth brought about her mother's death. Did the death of her mother create the monster that Cersei is? When she cries because she misses her daughter, are those tears real? Does Cersei Lannister truly have a heart that aches over such maternal sentimentality? Or are they crocodile tears that serve to maneuver her to some gain? We see how she deeply can hate. But we cannot help but feel uncomfortable and distrusting when she shows how deeply she can love.

So how do you choose a positive trait to give your villain?

There isn't a precise answer to that, as it is your story and therefore your decision to make. But here is a method that will help you consider your options:

Ask yourself, "What are my villain's negative traits?" Separate the answers into major and minor.

Example ONE:
MAJOR: GREEDY (he's a wall street schemer)
MINOR: PARANOID/SUSPICIOUS (always watching his back, covering his tracks) Where does he feel safe? What makes him feel safe?
               ARROGANT (he knows he's smart enough to pull this off) In what instance does he behave humbly?
               DISORGANIZED (every part of his apartment is a mess, there's laundry everywhere, take out containers strewn...) Where is he organized? Maybe the room where 'the plan' is laid out on the wall with thumb tacks and pictures is the epitome of organized. Hmmm...what does this order among the chaos say about him?

Example TWO:
MAJOR: INFLEXIBLE (he will rule the world and destroy anyone who gets in the way, and anyone of comrades who deviates from the plan)
MINOR: DEFENSIVE (do NOT question him) Who is allowed to question him without the usual repercussions?
                CRUEL (he won't just kill someone who fails him, he'll torture them so they learn their lesson before dying) In what instance does he show mercy? Sympathy?
                EXTROVERTED (in your face, not going to catch me) What would make him withdraw?

Your major trait should probably stand firm and unwavering, but in the minor traits, there will be something that stands out to you, something that has an opposite/positive side, and you'll probably have an instinctive idea of how to use this, a scene that will show this 'uncharacteristic' side of your antagonist and through this scene you will humanize him, shed light on his pain, weave complexity into his life and create depth to his character and, hopefully, make him more memorable.

Now get to it!

Framing Your Villains

Earlier this week, Jeffe and James established the foundation of great compelling villains is to give them logical, reasonable, and relate-able motivations...with suspect methods. Below are three ways of framing the villain in your story to become one of those antagonists we love and hate.

1. Could'a Been A Contender Protagonist
James did an awesome breakdown of Marvel villains vs heroes in his post yesterday; calling out the motivations of the villains and comparing them to the motivations of heroes. I'm going to take his premise one step further and propose that the best villains could be the heroes if only the story were told from a different POV. The means, no matter how horrible, can be justified if viewed through the right perspective. Imagine if Renfield had told the story of Dracula. Or if Watson had bonded with Moriarty instead of Sherlock.

I love, love, love SFF stories that provide two (or three) protagonists, who are direct conflict with each other while pursing the same goal. Their motivations and means prevent them from collaborating. When the Grand Climax comes, I'm not sure who I want to win because I'm emotionally invested in all of them.

2. On The Cusp of Redemption
Some of the most intriguing villains out there are one Grand Gesture away from redemption. We wonder will they? Won't they? And if they do The Good Deed once, will they do it again? Will they truly be redeemed or is this a ploy to lull the hero in false security? This makes the antagonist the ideal contrast to a hero who is one Bad Decision from villainy. Whenever the villain and the hero are that close in method and motivation...whenever the villain and the hero are one choice--one trait--away from becoming their nemesis, the stakes are higher and the characters compelling. 

I'll give a shout out to Papa Midnight in the Hellblazer series as an example.

3. The Noble Duty Diamond Maker
Ah, the rebel protagonist, sure to warm a woman's...heart. But what about the antagonist? The guy so rigid in his performance of duty that he drops diamonds when he walks. Clearly, we know his fatal flaw and the basis of conflict with the protagonist. But why is a guy who represents lawfulness and order a villain? Corruption? Then he's not a Noble villain, he's a different category of needs and desires. If you want a real gut-twisting villain of the Imperious Right, you have to know (and show) why he chooses the methods he does.

Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty, Javert in Les Miserables, Chauvelin in The Scarlet Pimpernel, all men of duty, all men following orders, all men of the law, all men whose methods were suspect but their motivations were driven by duty to god and country. Noble men. Villains none the less.


There you have it, dear reader, three frameworks to help you dig into the minds of your villains.

How to Build a Better Villain

I'm writing from the Coastal Magic Convention, right on lovely Daytona Beach. I've been doing sunrise beach walks each morning with fab book blogger Jen from That's What I'm Talking About. Wonderful way to start the conference day!

This week's topic, following on last week's ruminations on negative traits in our heroes and heroines, is how the development of positive traits builds better villains.

I confess I rarely, if ever, think in terms of villains. The word calls to mind the old-style melodramas, in which the villain is identifiable by a glossy handlebar mustache and an evil cackle. Just not my schtick. Because, you all should know by now, I'm a shades of gray kind of gal. I don't even really believe in the concept of evil. I think people do the things they do not acting out some struggle between good and evil, but because they're doing what they want and need to do. Everybody has reasons for their choices. Maybe not admirable or understandable ones, but reasons nevertheless.

Which is the key to writing a better villain.

Give them REASONS.

Villains are, after all, characters in your story also. They should be as fully fleshed as any other character, with goals and conflicts. This is probably why I shy away from the word "villain" - because that implies a single motivation, which is to be evil. Instead, the antagonist should have a noble dream or goal of their own. This is where positive traits come in.

Anyone who vigorously pursues their passion is fascinating to us. We love the story of the underdog who triumphs, the drive to succeed and secure personal victories. Whatever the villain of a given story is striving for, that motivation will be interesting. Even better if he or she sincerely believes that what they want is Good and Right and Necessary.

For example, in my Twelve Kingdoms books, High King Uorsin absolutely - even megalomaniacally - believes in the union of the warring kingdoms. He's a warrior, powerfully determined, nearly a force of nature. It's easy for the reader to see just how wrong and awful he is, but HE doesn't know it. He'd be an admirable person, if he weren't quite so narcissistic.

But hey - we all have our flaws. 

Halloween Villain Fun

by Allison Pang

So first off, Happy Halloween!

(For some reason, my posts seem to be coming up on a lot of the major holidays this year - but that's fun, so I'm going to run with it.)

Anyway, we've covered a lot of excellent ground this week on villains as protagonists, but I think overall that what makes a well-rounded villain is the ability for the reader to connect with them on some level - or at least understand their motivation. If anything, it can help with the creation of the protagonist as well - how they go about "defeating" the villain can say a lot about who they are.

I particularly like anti-heroes more than villains, or where the seeming-villain ends up being the good guy in the end. (Wreck-it Ralph, anyone? He's *programmed* to be the bad guy in his video game...and yet he manages to discover that he's more than that, to the point of attempting to sacrifice himself for the good of his friends.)
Back story can be *so* important. Take Magneto, for example - he's portrayed as a bad guy in the X-Men comics - and his methods aren't particularly nice when it comes to normal people - but a reader can understand that he's doing what he thinks he has to do in order to protect mutants. When you discover his back story of being imprisoned in a Nazi death camp and having his whole family murdered, well, now we can start to see how his experiences helped shape who he became. (Not that it should become an excuse for his actions, but at least we can see why he is the way he is, and that goes a long way in creating a complex character.)

What I find particularly fascinating is how in popular culture, readers and movie-watchers can often find it easy to "forgive" a villain because of their looks (or some need to tame the 'bad boy,' as was brought up earlier this week.) Sadly, it happens in real life as well - good looking criminals often get marriage proposals in prison, or are defended by those who cannot possibly believe someone who "looks innocent" could perform such terrible actions.

I could probably go on about what that says about society's obsession with perceived beauty and narcissistic tendencies, but that's probably a post for another day.

Seeing as it's Halloween, I want to take a look at some of the more popular types of villains in books and popular media common to this holiday instead.

1) The Slasher/Splatter-Killer. If you were a child in the 80's, you probably saw at least one of these sorts of movies - Friday the 13th, Halloween (ha ha), Nightmare on Elm Street, or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They were a staple of early video stores and basic cable.  I don't think these sorts of villains work very well in a book setting, though I'm sure it's been done - but as any fan of the horror genre can tell you, we don't watch these movies for anything more cerebral than to see people die in awful and creative ways. Although each of these villains - Freddy, Michael, Jason, Leatherface have some sort of basic back story to explain their presence and their need to kill, most of the time these explanations are pretty thin - but for some reason they're enough to make umpteen sequels, so what do I know?  Maybe that's what is so terrifying - there is NO explanation as to why these guys are killing...and there's no way to stop them. In some ways, these movies are almost like modern morality plays. Have sex? YOU ARE GOING TO DIE.  Virgin? You will probably get away. Maybe. (But check out Cabin in the Woods for a very tongue-in-cheek look at this particular set of horror tropes.)

2) Animals as Evil.  Again,the 70's/80's had whole horror book/VHS movie sections dedicated to animals going batshit crazy and frothing into killing sprees - Jaws, Swarm, Cujo, Piranha, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Alligator, The Birds, Sharknado, Them! (I've included some more recent and older ones in that list, yes) We don't usually see a whole lot motivation behind why these creatures kill - maybe someone wanders into their territory and wakes them up, or rabies, or whatever - but the main thing that scares us is that these creatures can't be reasoned with. No matter what you do, short of killing them, you're screwed. Bonus points if the animals become super large as they go on their killing spree. Like my personal favorite, Night of the Lepus:
Yes. Killer bunnies.

3) Insane Normals - Of all the potential villains, these probably rank among the scariest. These are the psychopaths that blend into society. They're charming, well-educated, and often living double lives. Think Norman Bates or Hannibal Lecter - they earn the protagonist's trust, only to turn on them later. (And possibly eat them, because hey, why not.) I find these the worst to have to watch/read about simply because people like this do exist - I can't simply shove them under the rug as pure fantasy.

4) The Devil Among Us So what do you do when the villain actually IS the Devil? Exorcism, of course! (And there's a ton of exorcist type movies and books, though I still think The Exorcist is the best, and I'll throw The Omen up there too. (And frankly, I dig Chernabog from Night on Bald Mountain).

5) Man as Monster Vampires, werewolves and other assorted shape-changers and paranormal creatures. Over the years we've seen a big change in how these villains are perceived - as terrible beings, a la Salem's Lot or The Howling, vs sexy vampires from Buffy or Twilight.  Some of what made the old-school villains compelling is that they didn't KNOW they were the monster - it's one thing to go up against a creature of night...what happens when it's you?

And though we do see some horror creeping back in to the vampire trope (Fright Night or 30 Days of Night) - they key to the modern shapechanger is that they usually have a chance at redemption, where as the villains of years ago were pretty much monsters out for human blood. (I think The Lost Boys straddles this line, actually - there's a little of both happening there.)  Also gamer peeps - check out TheWolf Among Us - it's based on the Fables comics, and what happens when Fairy Tale creatures secretly live in the real world. You get to play Bigby Wolf (As in Big B Wolf /Big Bad Wolf - it's really interesting to see how your past (eating pigs and grandmothers) translates into how people perceive you in the world today...especially because now you're the sheriff responsible for keeping order in Fable society.)

5a) Zombies Technically they started out as human and had very little say as to their creation, but rotting corpses tend to lack the sex appeal of the vampire/werewolf dynamic, so they get a subcategory. (And frankly, it's not even that the zombies are always villains so much as what they represent - metaphors for human consumption or corporate greed AKA Soylent Green is people!  I'll throw Frankenstein into this category- although we have to ask ourselves who the bigger villain is - the monster created without consent or knowledge...or the Dr. who made him. (Or in the case of Resident Evil - the zombies? or Umbrella Corporation?) See also, CHUD or The Hills Have Eyes. Not zombies, exactly, but groups of cannibalistic hillbillies still fits the Zombie bill for me. )

6) In Space No One Can Hear You Scream Alien villains are all over the place. Species. Aliens. Critters.The Thing. The Kaiju from Pacific Rim. It. War of the Worlds. We're pitted against creatures we can't understand and have no natural defenses for. Bonus for aliens who live in sewers and look like clowns.
s At My Door. Not quite the Devil, per se - but there's still a supernatural element going on. Hellraiser, Poltergeist, Evil Dead. Child's Play. The Ring. The Grudge. Christine. Opening the forbidden book (or box, or trinket) and releasing the evil inside. (This is usually the sort of book or movie where the protags fall into that Too Stupid to Live trope. Why do they go into the basement alone? Why do they read the book that was clearly made from human skin? WHY do they play with the puzzle box?)

8) Creature Feature Not quiet animals, not quite aliens - this is where the mutant weird things hang out. Gremlins, Ghoulies, Jeepers Creepers (and anything that comes out of hibernation every x number of  years to prey on teenagers before going back to sleep.) Tremors. The Blob.

9) Witches Lots of witchy villains floating about popular media, but I am actually going to simply mention The Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz - simply because I like how she goes from villain to anti-hero, given her backstory explained in the musical Wicked. She's much more sympathetic and her actions explained and it lends her much greater character definition.

I could probably go one with additional categories, but I think I'll end the post here by asking what your favorite horror villain is (I know I barely scratched the surface). And I'll also leave you with this:

Enticing Villains, Bland Heroes and the Lure of the Bad Boy

This week's topic of conversation in the bordello is The Villain Protagonist. Now, this is some clever winking by one of the Word Whores - I'm not entirely sure who.

The protagonist of a story is typically defined as the central character in a story. Some writers like to play with this and change it up so there is no central character - or keep you guessing about who it is. (George R.R. Martin comes to mind. Hint: the protagonist shouldn't die before the story is over. And usually not even then unless you're Nicholas Sparks or a certain YA writer.)

The protagonist typically struggles against an antagonist, which might not necessarily be a person. The antagonist is "whatever opposing force the protagonist struggles with, such as another character, environment, or something within the protagonist."

Pretty straightforward, huh?

It gets murkier when we start talking about the definition of a villain, which is why the craft Word Whore who suggested this topic is cackling away. Here are a few:

• a character whose evil actions or motives are important to the plot.
• a character in a story, movie, etc., who does bad things
• someone or something that is blamed for a particular problem or difficulty
• a cruelly malicious person who is involved in or devoted to wickedness or crime; scoundrel

Amusingly, the etymology shows the word comes from an innocuous beginning:

Villain comes from the Anglo-French and Old French vilain, which itself descends from the Late Latin word villanus, meaning "farmhand", in the sense of someone who is bound to the soil of a villa, which is to say, worked on the equivalent of a plantation in Late Antiquity, in Italy or Gaul. The same etymology produced villein. It referred to a person of less than knightly status and so came to mean a person who was not chivalrous. As a result of many unchivalrous acts, such as treachery or rape, being considered villainous in the modern sense of the word, it became used as a term of abuse and eventually took on its modern meaning.- from Wikipedia, "it could be true"

My point (and I do have one) is that we get onto very boggy ground when we throw around words like "evil," "bad," "malicious," "wickedness," and "scoundrel." The concept that "villain" derived from the concept of being unchivalrous helps showcase this.

Truly, evil is in the eye of the beholder.

After all, what's good for me might be bad for you. Our daily dramas are filled with "villains" who do "bad" things to us, from the person who cuts us off in traffic, likely never noticing our existence, to that nasty co-worker actively plotting to undermine us, to that toddler who has a meltdown in the grocery store. 

This is why it's much more clear to think in terms of the antagonist, rather than the villain.

It's also why the villain can be the protagonist.

Last week, in her excellent post, Word Whore Allison mentioned Erik of Phantom of the Opera. I confess that, when she pinged me on instant messenger and asked me if I would consider him disabled, I answered with my version of the story in mind. Because my Master of the Opera eSerial comes out starting in January. (The Act V cover is at the top - love that feel.) This is a great story to play with villain and hero roles - and swap them out. 

In the original Gaston Leroux book, the phantom, Erik, is presented as a true villain. Leroux wrote the story based on theater gossip and myths. Leroux's phantom is distorted in body and soul - murderous and perhaps slightly insane. Some reasons for his being that way are offered, but he is, in the end, a monster. In Andrew Lloyd Webber's production, Erik is more sympathetic - though he's still cast as the villain the heroine must escape. 

To the disappointment of women everywhere.

Chide us if you will for loving the bad boy. But we do. It doesn't help that the hero, Raoul, is pretty much a flat, uninteresting and unflaggingly noble guy. Spare me. What woman in her right mind would choose insipid Raoul over dark, passionate and fascinating Erik?

And before you tell me about the virtues of the "nice guy," remember that I have one. He's wonderful and I wouldn't trade him for anything.

We're talking fiction here.

At any rate, when I set out to write Master of the Opera, I discovered a few things about the original story versus the one I wanted to tell. One is that the heroine, Christine, is not really the protagonist of either Leroux's or Webber's version. She seems like she is, but really she has no agency of her own. Really she's the trophy. Erik and Raoul - and the other people who want a piece of her, such as the theater managers and her fans - battle it out to possess her. Raoul isn't the protagonist - he's not present for the most critical scenes in the story. So who is?

Right, Erik, the Phantom. The villain. 

In my version, I do what writers love to do and I change it up. Christine truly becomes the protagonist in mine. 

And the true villain?

You'll have to read it and see!

(Wasn't that an amazing bit of Word Whoring? I didn't even plan it that way...)