When we find a great teacher, we prize them not only because what we learn improves our lives but also because good learning can be one of the most exhilirating things we experience. Unfortunately, a lot of teaching stinks. It’s boring, rambling, forgettable.

I’ve made a study of teaching. I’ve had to. For almost 20 years I’ve taught and designed courses in the private sector. And for many of those years my work has been in a revenue generating department. What that means is that if my classes are ineffective and dull, nobody signs up, revenue falls, and a lot of folks will stand around and wonder if it might not be better to just replace me with a potted plant. At least a plant would be something pleasant to look at, plus it would also clean the air.

Now not everything I do is stellar (I wish that were so). Sometimes in the quality, cost, speed triangle, quality is the thing that takes the hit. But the point is I have to be alert and try to miminize the schlock. But how do you do that? How do you develop and deliver effective and interesting education?

Luckily, the field of instructional technology (I’m not talking about computers, but principles of instruction) has come a long way in identifying what works and what doesn’t. This is important because teaching theories of the past (many of which are still used today) often relied on rules of thumb and anecdotal evidence. Their precriptions were often ineffective and sometimes counterproductive. What’s exciting is that in the last few decades researchers in this area have put techniques and principles to the test. We know better now than ever before how to structure learning that is effective and interesting. And I have yet to find a better explanation of the proven techniques and principles than Ruth Colvin Clark’s Building Expertise: Cognitive Methods for Training and Performance Improvement, 3rd Edition.  

Don’t let the “training” part fool you. We often associate “training” with learning procedures and simple tasks (which is what leads to the “we want to provide sex education, not sex training” obfuscation). But Clark isn’t using the term that way. Training here includes all types of learning.

What Clark does is not only share the techniques that build expertise, but also the psychological reasons and research-based evidence for those techniques. This isn’t nonsense based on personality or political correctness. It’s practical and proven.

Among other things, you’ll learn:

• Why working memory is key to instruction and how to overcome its limits
• How to motivate learners
• How to structure learning
• When to use lecture and when to put learners into action
• What methods work best

You’ll learn when taking notes can actually be counterproductive and what you can do about it. Or how making your delivery more personable (and what that means) can actually improve attention. You’ll see why lots of practice isn’t always the best answer–sometimes your child will learn more if you do half of their homework questions for them.

You’ll find that there “Is no Yellow Brick road” in teaching. Instead, you’ll see that the effectiveness of any method depends on whether it’s suited to the specific situation. And Clark will explain what the key factors in any situation are so you know which methods to apply and the trade-offs you’ll make when you do.

If you’re a teacher in any setting–family, job, church, school, or recreation–or if you’re trying to teach yourself, this book (specifically the 3rd edition) will be a goldmine for you. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Mark your calendars!!

The free, 2009 Life, the Universe, and Everything symposium at BYU will run Thursday – Saturday, February 19 – 21.

The speical guests are Tracy & Laura Hickman (Dragonlance authors) and James C. Christensen (yes, the amazing fantasy artist). But there will be more than a dozen other authors there, including: L.E. Modesitt, Brandon Mull, James Dashner, Brandon Sanderson, David Farland, Mette Ivie Harrison, Eric James Stone, Howard Tayler, and a number of others.
 
Here’s what I’ll be doing:

1. Panel: The Principles of Suspense. Fri, Feb 20, 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
2. Workshop: The 3 Things You Must Learn to Write Killer Stories. Fri, Feb 20, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
3. Panel: Myth and Mythology in SF&F. Sat, Feb 21, 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
4. Reading: from the forthcoming novel and a few of my other published works, Sat, Feb 21, 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM

If you want to write fiction, you’ll want to attend the workshop. And if you’ve attended the workshop before, know that I’ve made some significant updates to the workshop content for 2009. I’m always learning, and so each time I teach this I’m able to provide more insight.

You’ll also want to carefully review the whole schedule. There are tons of panels with professional authors on them that are going to be both useful and interesting to writers.

My workshop focuses on three incredibly important things.  In the beginning, I didn’t know these key things, and that ignorance stymied all my writing efforts for years. Once I learned them, the way was opened. There was still a lot of work involved. But these principles increased my output of quality material 1000% (literally). The principles allowed me to write the story that got me my current three-book contract from Tor.

I’ve taught it now more than a dozen times to all sorts of fiction writers and they’re telling me they’re finding it very useful. You’re going to love this stuff, and I always enjoy sharing what I’ve learned with other writers. The three things are:

1. What a story really is. We’re not talking narrative taxonomy, although that’s included. It’s focused on the story effect upon the reader. And why this is one of the most important things you need to understand when writing fiction.
2. Parts & principles. Key principles of character, problem, plot, setting, and text as they relate to #1.
3. The creative process. The simple but powerful principles of how to get ideas. How to develop them into story. Why writer’s block is a gift and how to use it to produce MORE. Plus a number of other creative principles I wished I’d known.

It’s a highly interactive workshop. Again, the whole symposium, including the workshop, is free. I don’t know another place where you can learn from so many professionals for such a great price.

Hope to see you there!!

I love listening to writing excuses because I get to hear three smart and funny authors discuss interesting topics that get me thinking. This week’s writing excuse was on building non-humans in SF&F.

Here’s my take.

An alien race, if done right, can be a huge draw to a story. For example, Brandon Sanderson’s Kandra point of view in HERO OF AGES is one of the most enjoyable parts of that book.

However, I want to suggest that aliens (in fantasy or sf) create that draw only IF they’re kept sufficiently strange or mysterious. The minute they become common or too human, they lose their power to enchant.

That’s one thing I like about how Tolkien did the elves and orcs–we never got the National Geographic on them. They never became common. And so I always wanted to know more. Easterlings, ents, balrogs, the orders of wizards, dragons, etc. were the same. There were tons of tales Tolkien hinted at, curioisties raised, but those desires were never sated. This is part of what drove me to other fantasy books.

It’s the same thing that made me love mammoths and dinosaurs, bats and giant squid, and far-off places. However, once these things became common and explained, their magic departed. The curiosity generated by the wonder of things new is one of the key things science fiction and fantasy offer its readers. But I think authors can only keep it alive if they approach it in the same way a fan dancer approaches her work.

This leads me to another point. It’s true that focusing our world building on the conflicts and story touch points can keep us on track. And we do need to produce. However, I think if we strictly limit our alien development to the central story conflicts, we might miss many opportunities for that wonder. Some of what we develop might end up complicating the plot while other parts might only enrich the experience. And I don’t think that’s bad.

For example, one of the most poignant parts of the LOTR, of which there were many, was the tale of the ents and the entwives and Treebeard’s poem. Tolkien could have eliminated that and the story never would have been affected. But, O, how much richer the story was for that little side trail that still beckons. Or you might think of the ring Bilbo found. When Tolkien first wrote THE HOBBIT, it wasn’t THE ring of power. It was merely a ring that Gollum used. Only later, when he began to work on LOTR and was trying to figure out the main problem of the story did he work that detail into it becoming THE ring of power.

Why I didn’t read Humphrey Carpenter’s J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography long ago is a mystery. I owned the book when I was a teen (and stupidly gave it away in my 20’s). But maybe the long wait was inevitable. Back then I wanted more hobbits and sweeping saga, not biography. Luckily, that’s not the case today. 

Folks, this is a marvelous read. I’m sure part of the reason I have not read a biography with more interest is because I love The Lord of the Rings so much. But I think there much more to it than that.

Tolkien had a story life as a child and young man. Not story as in wonderful and easy, but as in hard. He was orphaned early, forbidden to see his love when he found her. So Tolkien’s life is compelling on its own, not just because he’s famous.

Furthermore, Carpenter writes, not a dry list of facts,  but a narrative full of particular and interesting details, transporting you back to the very times and places Tolkien lived in. He also transports you, if only lightly, into the mind of the man and some of his opinions. You’ll learn why Mordor is not Nazi Germany. How the batmen of WW1 found their way into his work. And that Frodo was originally named Bingo (can you imagine?). Carpenter also attempts to point out cause and effect as he sees it, to sum up key factors in Tolkien’s life, but without being glib. Carpenter writes all this with such clarity and grace I found myself carried along.

If you’re a fan of Tolkien’s work, don’t miss this book. Get a copy. Find a favorite tree, if you can. And then read.

This just in from Ken Scholes.

“In his debut novel, Servant of a Dark God, John Brown adds his voice to epic fantasy with a world I can see and smell and taste and believe in…and characters I can cheer for, travel with, and want to see again.”

–Ken Scholes, author of Lamentation

There are two answers to this question.

1. The story answer by Orson Scott Card, best-selling author

As long as the story needs, but 75k-100k is when it starts to “feel” like a novel.

2. The selling it to editors answer by Jenny Rappaport, literary agent

“Aim for 80k minimum and 120k maximum. Try to hit as close to 100k as possible, but not go over. There are exceptions made for fat fantasies and longer novels.”

“For YA: 50k minimum. Try not to go over 75k. You can nudge it to 90k if it’s a fantasy. YA is a little more flexible.”

3. What happened to one author, Brandon Sanderson, when he tried to write to “the market”

As in stories less than 200,000 words…

BTW, Brandon is now New York Times best-selling author.

This week’s Writing Excuses was an interesting topic. I’ve had similar questions from folks as I give my workshop on writing fiction. Here are some additions to the excellent comments made by our fearless Three.

Can you plan for a single draft?

In my experience and those of other published writers I know, wanting to start to draft only when you’re ready to begin writing THE draft that will take you clear to the end is only going to land you into a bog of dither.

Here’s why. It’s almost impossible to know if this attempt at the hill is going to work until you make the attempt at the hill. Much of the story creation, even for those who do a lot of the creation in summary/outline form first, still takes place in the drafting. And you never know if something you create while drafting is going to throw a monkey wrench into the whole thing.

Nobody I know who does a lot of development in the outline/summary form (and I’m one of those) has ever written a satisfactory novel without having to continually modify the original outline or abandon it altogether. David Farland tells a story of getting to the ending of one novel, the ENDING, and only then seeing a new ending that was going to be so much better than the one he planned. Which meant he needed a different beginning. Which meant a rewrite. And so he started the whole freaking story over.

Writing is like blazing a trail

Writing a novel is like seeing a far off destination that you’ve never been to before and to which there are no roads. You’ve got to make a trail to that destination. So when you set out you may be able to see a path for a mile or so, you may even have tried to get an overview of the terrain, but you must reconcile yourself to the fact that you are going to run into an impassable bog, or a cliff, or killer bees–you’re going to have dead-ends and backtracks.

No matter what you do, it’s gonna happen. It’s just part of the nature of blazing trails. Even if you scout out possible routes, some of those routes are just not going to work when the wagon train finally gets there.

This isn’t to say we must all become draft-only writers. There is HUGE value to some of us in having a starting line-up or knowing the ending or having the bare bones of the plot or having done a good deal of world building. For myself, I’ve learned I never get very far down any path if I don’t have a number of strong ideas for all the parts of story–character, setting, problem, and plot. But I only learned that by setting off time and time again and each time immediately having to stop. And new writers will never learn what they need, as was said, until they just start.

So if the reality is that every author is going to have hiccups and course changes along the way, then it’s far more important and useful and efficient, not to wait for the perfect moment to draft, and draft the story only once, but to just start drafting.

But how much pre-draft work is too much?

Okay, for those of you who want a specific number, let me help you. A new writer recently posted a question wondering if she migh have world-builders disease. Here was my response.

—

Ms. X, one way to approach your diagnosis is to determine how many books per year you want to write. Because world-builders disease is only a malady in certain circumstances.

If you don’t care about output and simply enjoy building worlds, then maybe you’re like Tolkien. He started The Book of Lost Tales in 1917 and didn’t finish THE HOBBIT until 1937 (20 years). He didn’t finish LOTR until 1949 (another 12 years). In this is your situation, then you are hale and hearty and have many years of enjoyment ahead of you.

If you DO care about output and want to write one book per year, then I’d suggest you get some drafting treatment immediately. Here’s why: you now have only 26 weeks to finish.

But wait: take out 4 weeks for vacation, sickness, relatives, and mosquito infestations. You now have 22 weeks.

Assume you get 2 good hours of writing 6 days a week for 12 hours a week. Assume further that you can get a conservative 500 words of finished product per hour, or 1,000 words in 2 hours. (Sure you may be able to write faster than that in any given session, but when you go back and fiddle with it the next day and the next, you have to accout for that.)

At this rate it will take you 17 weeks to finish a 100,000 word novel. And that’s only if you keep your story furnace hot with consistent hours each day.

But wait: that’s only a FIRST draft. You now need to let it sit a bit. Reread it. Send it out to readers. Then REVISE. You only have 5 weeks to do that!

Of course, your inputs to the equation might differ. But if your goal is a book a year, you need to get cracking. Most of your development will come as you write. It’s exciting and lovely. Don’t miss it. Get your starting line up written out in the next three days and then take the plunge.

I agree that the ability to develop and finish a story is more important, and rare, than coming up with or capturing random ideas, especially since “ideas” can be something as small as a two word sentence from your daughter or the colors on some weird bug that you found hiding out in a teacup in your cupboard. Finding one of those is like finding one brick for a 50,000 brick house. Big whoop.

I also agree that ideas captured in a journal or file of some sort is NOT the only way to start developing a story. Getting a prompt or story parameters, writing to specifications, is obviously a perfect spot to begin as well (e.g. get me a SF story no longer than 6,000 words by Dec 15th that includes a bug). It is, if you think about it, just another type of starter idea. Going from image to story parameters or from parameters to story images–I don’t think the order matters. They’re both aspects of the story that need to be eventually developed. And we all know that stories can start from seeds of all types–character, image, line, issue, setting, problem, technology, AND parameters. What makes a prompt for a real gig powerful is that it pushes you farther down the path from one brick to house. It does this because a huge part of getting a story written depends on making decisions, getting specific. And on getting the motivation to buckle down and finish the thing.

I’m also going to bet that for all writers MOST of the elements (dialog, plot, character, setting) of any story are generated during the pre-draft planning (including research) and drafting–during the actual writing. Not by continually ransacking idea files like some people do their closets, trying to find pants, shirts, and shoes that will make an outfit. Like most anything else, we generate things (ideas in this case) only when they’re needed.

It’s true we have to care about and believe in what we’re writing. But I don’t think how any story gets started is significant. Partially because no matter how big the initial idea, it’s still small compared to everything else that must be generated. But more importantly because I think just starting is the key, whether that’s motivated by shot of zing or a deadline or whatever. I say this because I’ve found that zing strikes me more when I’m on the move working.

So if the vast majority of captured ideas are never used, why observe and capture at all?

Here are my personal reasons.

1) Because when I fail to consume new sights, people, ideas, and experiences, I tend to keep using the same things over and over in stories–lines, descriptions, plot turns, etc. Doing this actually helps me see new possibilities and go beyond my current ken.

2) While I forget most of what goes into the file, I don’t forget everything. When I’m working, the context of the story often evokes memories of some of these things I’ve captured.

3) Because when I’m on the lookout, I tend to see more. And current idea captures are a great source for random juxtaposition for the current project. I’m writing a story, go on a walk, and see in the snow a raccoon splayed out spead eagle on the side of the road like it’s been sacrificed, its belly torn open, the cavity completely hollow, four thin, almost translucent, ribs rising to the sky. There is some blood, but not much, and where it has fallen the snow is Valentine pink. There’s nothing else around the animal but a multitude of bird tracks and a few dark strings of disconnected and frozen gut. Because this signals story idea to me, I stop and pause to get more details. I write them up, look a bit closer, sketch it. And the impossible to imagine random detail goes into the current story to work its magic.

4) Because being on the lookout just brings more zest to my life. The universe offers up a small wonder or dread to me, and if I’m trying to be alert, I’m more apt to see it, cherish it, if only for a moment, and go my way rejoicing.

Here are some thoughts from the man who brought you Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog and Serenity about the future of movies. I’m suspecting a lot of time-lengths and form that weren’t possible given the constraints of TV and theaters will start to rise.

Note sent, the next school day, with the 1st grader…

Dear Ms. Williams,

That’s not a dance pole on a stage in a strip joint! I work at Home Depot. That’s me selling a shovel.

Cathy’s mother,
Mrs. Smith

(thanks to my wonderful wife for passing that one on.)

My editor just emailed me another endorsement from one of the folks we sent the manuscript to. I’m so excited! This one’s from Kage Baker.

I’m a total stranger to three of the four that have responded so far. It continually amazes me how generous the pros in this genre are with both their time and praise.

Here’s the last one.

“A classic heroic saga, dealing with the bedrock issues of good and evil and identity. These are classic themes because they matter; and Brown makes them matter both to his young protagonist and the reader. It promises to continue for quite a distance, and I hope it does.”

–Kage Baker, author of House of the Stag and The Company series.

Here are the previous ones.

“Thoroughly engrossing from the first page to the last! John Brown shows himself to be a writer with remarkable depth and power. I haven’t seen a debut novel this good in years!”

–David Farland, New York Times best-selling author of Runelords and Ravenspell series

“In Servant of a Dark God, John Brown has created a complex and intricate world, filled with all the permutations of human good and evil, as well as evil that goes beyond the human, where neither heroes nor villains are quite what they seem at first, and where the cost of virtue is high indeed, yet where, in the end, the tenacity of such virtue is what is required to triumph.”

–L. E. Modesitt, Jr., award-winning author of the Recluce Saga

“A complex, powerful story of a youth trying to learn who he is and what he is, with no allies he can trust in a world stalked by a monster. A book that copies nothing I have read before and which goes its own way brilliantly.”

–David Drake, author of the popular Hammer’s Slammers and Lord of Isles series

Wow. I think I want to read this book!

If we root against villains based on moral judgments, then how is it possible to root for heroes who are not just bad boys but down right criminal, e.g. hitmen, mobsters, thieves?

It’s a wonderful question that has a simple and revealing explanation.  We root for these bad guys because they’re really good.

What?!

When talking about bad heroes, what we often do is:

1. Take them out of their context.
2. Focus on one or two negative traits, not the person as a whole.
3. Abstract them and miss what’s happening in real time as we process the story. We only have so much working memory and usually can only think about what’s being presented versus what we think about when we’re out of the story. What’s being presented in the story is mostly the threats to these heroes, not the consequences of their evil deeds. And if the consequences are show, it’s always modified by context (#1 and #2 above).
4. Confuse fascination with rooting.

When we actually look at what’s happening with the hero in the context of the story, what we find is that rooting is still based on moral judgments of who is good/right and who is not. We root for people we think are in the right (given their context) or are getting, undeservedly, the short end of the stick; we root against people who we think are in the wrong.

Here are some examples.

DISNEY’S ALADDIN

Thief. This one’s easy, I grant it. But it’s illustrative. I never once didn’t root for the boy. But I also never saw him as a true bad boy. He was nice. He shared the bread he stole with kids less fortunate. The guards were mean brutes. Jaffar was wicked and threatened the sultan and Jasmine who were good and innocent. was in a situation that provided some leeway for his behavior (alone, penniless).

1. Context. He’s fighting a much greater evil, someone we are rooting against.
2. Whole Person. He is a thief, but he’s also kind. Given his whole person, he falls on the side of good.
3. Processing. As we process the story we’re never shown awful consequnces of his theiving. Mostly just the good and courageous things he does. And the threats to his welfare.

THE ITALIAN JOB

Thieves.

1. Context. The movie starts with a heist and then a betrayal and murders by a traitor. Yes they’re theives, but we wittness a greater evil. The people they fight against are worse than they are.
2. Whole person. Except for the thieving, he’s a likeable guy.
3. Processing. We see few negative consequences of their actions to others, but we are constantly being presented with threats to them by guys who are committing greater crimes.
4. Fascination. I was incredibly interested in the scam–the plans, tech, everything.

THE PROFESSIONAL

Mob Hit Man

1. Context. He’s protecting a girl from other hit men. He’s fighting a bigger evil. He’s also taken advantage of by his boss.
2. Whole Person. He’s a hitman, but more time is spent on his kindness.
3. Processing. We see very little of the effect his hits have on others. Instead we are presented with threats to the girl and him.

DIRTY HARRY

Murdering vigilante

1. Context. He’s stopping guys who are doing terrible things.
3. Processing. We don’t focus on negative consequences of his vigilantism, but the threats from these really bad guys.

MATCHSTICK MEN

Scammers of the elderly

From IMDB “Roy’s private life, however, is not so successful. An obsessive-compulsive agoraphobe with no personal relationships to call his own, Roy is barely hanging on to his wits, and when his idiosyncrasies begin to threaten his criminal productivity he’s forced to seek the help of a psychoanalyst just to keep him in working order. While Roy is looking for a quick fix, his therapy begets more than he bargained for: the revelation that he has a teenage daughter–a child whose existence he suspected but never dared confirm. What’s more troubling, 14-year-old Angela wants to meet the father she never knew. At first, Angela’s appearance disrupts her neurotic father’s carefully ordered routine. Soon, however, with his own unique spin on parenthood, Roy begins to enjoy a relationship he never dreamed of having with his daughter.”

1. Context. Much of the time is spent his on his loneliness and issues with his estranged daughter.
2. Whole person. He steals, but we never see huge suffering from it. We see all the other issues he deals and have sympathy for him.
3. Processing. We’re focused on the threats to him, not the consequences of his one negative trait.
4. Fascination. I was fascinated by the scam and this pulled me along through the first.

CONCLUSION

What happened in all these stories as I experienced them was that the story carefully managed my view of the hero. He was always on the better side of the antagonists. He was always more good than bad, even if only by a little. And the story focused my attention most of the time on the bad/threats/consequences flowing from the antagonists, not the bad from the hero’s deeds.

What this shows is that you could write a story about a villain and make him the hero. In some instances it might be exceedingly difficult. For example, I think Hitler would be a hard sell as a hero, someone we’d root for. But the Neo-Nazis prove it’s not too hard a sell for some people. 

I don’t think recognizing the fact that we can make “bad” people sympathetic means authors are “simply being clever” or “pushing buttons.” After all, to write well you must believe and care about what you’re writing about. YOU have to believe it. Nor do I think it undercuts the notion that we root for people based on a moral stance. It just recognizes the fact that moral judgments, in fact, the vast majority of appraisals of situations, happen quickly with the facts at hand, which are the ones in our working memories. The ones the authors are controlling.

GENUS & SPECIES

I think there are a few facets to the question posed in the title. But before we get to that, I think we need to define what a villain is.

A villain is a type of antagonist. Every story has an antagonist, someone or something that opposes the hero or heroine, even if it’s the setting as in Jack London’s “To Build A Fire” or the hero himself as in Jim Carrey’s Liar Liar. But usually the antagonist is another character in the story.

Antagonists vary in many ways. One way that’s important to the story is how sympathetic they are. The spectrum runs all the way from those who generate fear and loathing to those who generate just a little less sympathy than the hero. Note: we can never feel more sympathy for the antagonist; the moment we do, they become the hero in our eyes. The definition of the antagonist is the person we’re rooting against, the person who is working against the person we’re rooting for.

So a villain is a species of antagonist that generates fear and loathing in the reader. It doesn’t matter if they think they have good reasons for their acts. We still feel they are evil and dangerous. Examples include: Darth Vader, Sauron, the kidnapper in Mel Gibson’s Ransom, Commodus in Gladiator, or the Joker in The Dark Knight.

So here’s what I’ve noticed about effective villains.

VILLAINS & STRUCTURE

1) In a villain/hero story situation, the villain is key because the hero is reacting to the villain’s plan. It’s a total threat/danger plot.

2) So the villain has to be active. He’s the one who WANTS something. He’s the one that starts the whole story. A weak villain isn’t going after this thing whole-hog or doesn’t have the power to do it or has no urgency and will.

3) Strong villains are ruthless AND powerful. Villains also need to have some brains–we need to be worried for the hero, remember? We have to know that they’re they type of person  that will take you out if you get in their way. Even if they have a well-spun way of making themselves sound ethical. But villains go beyond other antagonists in that we fear and hate them. They are evil.

4) The hero needs to be the underdog in the relationship, meaning less powerful, two steps behind, not as easily ruthless etc.  The bigger the plan the more high stakes and high concept the story becomes. But it’s the villain’s plan that drives it. And they will be taking steps to counter the hero, will probably be two steps ahead most of the story.

5) As always, as with any character, the villain’s plan and motives have to be believable. Even if they are evil. The minute a villain becomes too far-fetched, they lose their power.

CHARACTER INTEREST

In addition to the role villains play in the story, there are a number of other things that make them interesting. However, these things are not anything new or different. They’re the same things that make any character (or person) interesting.

- Larger-Than-Life Attributes (as in experience, power, skill, success, position, or behavior)
- Eccentricities and Particularities
- Outrageousness
- Humor
- Beauty
- Surprise (as in against type details, reactions, motivations, or backstory)
- Inner Conflicts (as in the “ethical” dilemmas they find themselves in)

While danger and threat draws the attention, rouses interest, and can be sufficient to make a villain memorable, I think the factors mentioned above have a wonderful effect.

THE CORE QUESTION

The root question when considering villains is what pushes readers toward the fear and hate of others?

Of course, it’s relative. But there are qualities that engender these feelings in us. Selfishness, brutality, sadism, madness, cruelty, a complete disregard for others AND the power to carry their wishes out. It’s someone who poses huge, immediate, specific threats to me or those I care about and does it without any concern or with relish. The more intense these factors, I think the more we move along the spectrum towards fear and hate.

So people say the best villains are those who are the hero’s of their own story and with whom we can empathize. I don’t think this is accurate. The Joker in the Dark Knight was a great villain and may have been the hero of his own story, but never in a million years would I empathize with him. It’s true we can smpathize more with people who agonize and resist horrible acts. And some antagonists do show scruples. But not every story demands that type of antagonist. Sometimes what’s needed is someone who kills grandma horribly and says “so what” or “it was fun”–and engenders fear and hate.

One last point. “Villain” is a reader attributed characteristic, i.e. the reader is the one who labels the character. This means the person has to be a villain in the READER’S eyes, not necessarily a villain in the eyes of the culture in the story. For example, In Not Without My Daughter the hero subverted and violated the dominant story culture, and I cheered for her. The guy who was sustaining the moral order of the story culture was the villain.

ROOTING

From what I can tell, all rooting response is based on some innate sense of justice, of what’s appropriate in a situation. For whatever reason, we feel discomfort when undesireable things happen to good or innocent people. We also feel discomfort when desireable things happen to bad people. The reason why we root for someone is because they have a lack of happiness or a threat to their happiness AND we belive they deserve better. I can’t see anything else we based that deservingness upon except some inner sense of justice.

It doesn’t mean the deserving person is a goodie two-shoes. It just means that in the context of the story and what’s happening, we think the scales of justice tip, if only slightly, to the hero’s side.

Some may argue this, but I don’t think it’s possible to root for someone or against someone without a moral judgment. It’s true that not every antagonist needs to or does act immorally. In fact, the antagonist might be doing the right thing, the moral thing, in his or her particular situation, and it just happens to oppose the hero’s desires. The key however, is that the story guides the reader to feel the hero should win at the antagonist’s expense. And that it’s right for the hero to do so. That “rightness” is based on a moral stance of what’s good and desireable in the given situation. The farther along the spectrum of antagonists we move towards villany, the more clear that moral stance becomes.

I eschewed Dean Koontz for many years because Dean Koontz was, in my mind, a horror writer. And I’d written horror off as a genre that was not to my taste when, in the early 1990’s, I read a story about a woman with metal teeth who lured men to her lonely house and bit off their penises.

Yeah.

Of course, a lot of people loved that book. But it was just one more in a line of such tales for me and I wasn’t in the metal teeth groove back then.

So horror was out. But then one day I needed something for my walks and hiking sessions and I decided to try Koontz’s Odd Thomas because I HAD read his Watchers many years ago and enjoyed it. And the cover text on this one didn’t feel like something with rabid females in it. 

I listened. And I fell in love with Odd Thomas.

Just this year I listened to Odd Hours. It was good. Not as good as the first in the series, but good enough. Then I picked up Brother Odd, the third in the series, read by David Aaron Baker.

Folks, it’s one of the best books I’ve read. Well, listened to. Koontz is a master of painting characters. I love how he does it. And he’s great with plot. And Odd Thomas, yes, is one of the most delightful characters I’ve come across. But in this book Koontz takes it all one step further. It’s a masterpiece.

Odd has gone to a monastery, hoping to find some solace. Instead, he finds a horror stalking the monks and the children they care for. And I won’t reveal any more. It’s a story full of suspense, humor, dread, wonderful characters, and some theme.

Don’t miss this book.

If I’d known Cormac McCarthy’s The Road had won a Pulitzer Prize in 2007, I might not have picked it up. So many books that have won the award just bore my underpowered literary sensibilities to death. Luckily, I’d listened to McCarthy’s All The Pretty Horses a few years ago and enjoyed it. So when I saw the audio book, performed by Tom Stechschulte, in the library I checked it out. I’m so glad I did.

The story is set in the Eastern US (although you don’t learn that into well into the book, and then only by one reference to them traveling through “the Piedmont”) years after a nuclear holocaust and the resulting choas that turns America in a bleak place of ash and death. A father and son travel a mostly deserted road south to warmer weather, pushing a grocery cart with their few belongings. The father’s sick; he might be dying. And if he dies, we know the boy will die too because there’s nothing to eat but tins of what they can scavenge from houses that were ransacked and abandoned years before. And because others who survived have turned to hunting and eating people.

This is an incredible story about the relationship between this father and son and the dangers they face. McCarthy tells the story in plain detail. In fact, his understatement and attention to detail in this terrible landscape make it all the more powerful. Stechschulte’s reading is perfect.

The film is due out in 2009 and features Viggo Mortensen. But I wouldn’t wait for the movie if I were you. I’d get the book now. Or the recording. I couldn’t put this tale down. I’m betting you won’t be able to either.