Offset Your Epic Hero With a Despicable Villain, a Post by R. Clint Peters

When my friend suggested I read “Characters, Emotion, and Viewpoint” by Nancy Kress, I discovered how important the development of characters is.  Why did I like John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee series so much when I was younger?  First, because I knew the character.  Travis was not a single dimension, flat sheet of plywood with a hole I could stick my head in to look like a bodybuilder.  Travis was a friend.  When he was successful, I was successful.

I recently had a conversation with one of my captive readers (my family) about some of the characters in “Murder by Suicide”.  Apparently, something has rubbed off from all my studies.

The characters in “Murder by Suicide” are now three-dimensional because they have been described, they have viewpoints, and they have emotions.  Everything Ms. Kress said they needed.

I’m not yet going to compare my characters to Travis McGee.  I’m still working on the development of my hero(s) as he or she relates to the villains in the book.  My hero isn’t your run-of-the-mill good guy, and the villains can’t be your run-of-the-mill bad guy, either.

Remember Superman and the villains that got loose when Krypton exploded?  They were definitely not run-of-the-mill villains.  In many respects, they were equal to Superman.

So, to make your hero stand out from the rest of the characters in your book, create a spectacularly nasty villain.  He needs as much development as the hero, to allow your hero the opportunity to overcome the needed obstacles.  And, it gives your reader someone to hate.

In the latest Ryce Dalton novel, The Michigan Connection, I’ve actually developed two nasty villains.  I started with one villain, but recently introduced a second.  My plan is to merge the two villains.  The latest villain is not someone you’d like to move in across the street, and I will be making him or her nastier as the book progresses.

The book is at 50,000 thousand words, approximately 120 8 1/2 x 11 inch pages.  Why is this important?  A couple years ago, I read an interview with an author I’ve forgotten the name of (but I’m sure he was well known).  The author said when he got to 75,000 words, he began to look for an exit strategy, a way to close up the book.  I am sure I can create  some despicable things for my villains to do before I need to develop the ending.

#RClintPeters #TheAuthorsClub