Don’t
make your good guys too good, or your bad guys too bad. The only one who’s ALL
bad is Mean Pete. Hah!
Ahem...anyway,
Mean Pete and one of my old gym teachers aside, most folks are a combination of
good and bad, and to not instill both
qualities in your hero and villain is to deny them depth and dimension, to keep
them from seeming human enough to be real.
If your characters aren’t real, the reader won’t identify with them. And
you want your readers to identify with both the hero and even to some extent
with your villain, so that not only can the reader see how the hero came to be
who he is, they can see how the villain came to be who he...or she...is, as
well.
Don’t be afraid of making your villains women. I love having the occasional villain in my
own westerns be a woman because one, it’s somewhat unexpected, and, two, women can
make even better villains than men because women are innately aware of our male
heroes' soft spots. And a really nasty female villain will not be at all
reluctant to exploit those soft spots for all she’s worth.
But
remember not to make your female villain ALL bad—a disease that’s going around these
days in both books and movies. In Misery, Stephen King helps us identify with Annie Wilkes by showing us how mentally disturbed she is--and often sad because of it--so that we can imagine what a lousy childhood she probably had.
But that doesn't it make it any less fun to see her get her head bashed in with a typewriter!
Oh, sorry. Was that bad…?
I've never used a woman villain. You've given me food for thought, here. Yes, I was glad to see Annie Wilkes get her bashing, for sure. UGH. Enjoyed this post, Pete.
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