Villainous Viewpoints: On Writing (Jill)

A few weeks ago, I began fleshing out a villain from a work in progress (WIP) and learning about him and his backstory. I filled out a character sheet with vital statistics, flaws, strengths, goals, and obstacles. Then, I wrote a little about where he'd been and what he'd done from birth until the age he was now. Finally, I interviewed him. Grilled him, really, like Dr. Phil McGraw would. My villain was less than thrilled, but I got it all down.

But when I sat back to review his information, my villain suddenly seemed less villainous. I didn't hate him. After all, this guy had it rough. So, I posted to a Facebook group to share my struggle. This had never happened to me before. In the past, my bad guys stayed bad. All day, all the way. And they were never, ever pitied, or excused, or offered redemption. Did this happen to other writers? Was I weird or demented? Maybe my villain needed to be rewritten...

The responses came pouring in. Everyone had a comment, and the dialogue continued for four days. I wasn't alone. After reading the responses, I started thinking about some of my favorite villains. Only a few of them were completely evil, with no redeeming qualities -- Cruella de Vil, Voldemort, and  T-1000 (from Terminator 2).  The ones with complex backstories were the most interesting -- Darth Vader, Severus Snape, and Magneto, to name a few. One villain in particular, Levana (from Fairest in The Lunar Chronicles), was horrible, and her backstory was heartbreaking. I never warmed up to her and still consider her one of the worst villains I've read.

             "Villainy is but a matter of perspective." - Magneto

As authors, should we feel sympathetic for our baddies? Sure, but don't make things easy for him or excuse his actions. Evil is evil. A lousy childhood does not give anyone a free pass to become a psychopath. And chances are, he has some soft spots, things he cares about. The piece of advice that helped me the most was from (I think) David Farland. He said every villain believes he's a hero. He doesn't see himself as a bad guy. If we write our villains from that angle, it will add a layer of complexity to our characters.

I'm a bit embarrassed when I think back on my previous villains. Their backstory was weak and nebulous. Giving a villain a strong, complete backstory matters. It makes them the horrible character the hero must defeat to attain his goal and win. After all, the more villainous the villain, the more fantastic the victory.

Your Turn: One vs. Many (Laurie)

In her last Your Turn post, Lizzie raised the interesting question of which point of view readers prefer, and it led to some fun discussion (if you missed it, check it out here). Today, I want to ponder a related topic...

I'm in the midst of reading the second book in a series. The first novel was almost exclusively told from one character's POV, but while that character is still the primary POV in the sequel, quite a few chapters are told from another character's perspective. I understand the necessity for the shift based on the direction the events have taken, but I'm not enjoying this book as much as the first. There are certainly additional factors at work, but I think a big part of it is that I'm not as engrossed in the story because of all the jumps into this other character's mind, whose voice I don't enjoy nearly as much. Books written from multiple POVs can definitely be very well-done, but the change in this series has made me realize that I prefer stories told from one character's POV because it allows me to really experience the events and emotions fully connected with that one character.

So how about YOU? Do you have a preference between stories told from one character's POV versus multiple characters' perspectives? If you enjoy multiple POVs, is there a point at which too many characters' perspectives have been introduced? If you're a writer, which approach do you tend to use?


Thanks for reading!
Laurie

Your Turn: Favorite Point of View (Lizzie)

I read a lot of classics and inspirational historical romance, so when I started writing, I thought omniscient POV was the way to go. It was the only truly elegant writing style. Third person would do for modern books, and first person was decidedly lacking in elegance with all those I's (apparently, I'd forgotten that my beloved Jane Eyre and The Prisoner of Zenda were both written in first person).

When I started writing, there was no question that my short stories would be written in an omniscient POV. But, to my shock, when I sat down to write my first full-length novel (The Beast's Enchantress), it came out in first person! Some characters choose their own point of view, it seems, and Alexandria, strong heroine that she is, wanted first person.

I quickly realized first person is not so choppy and inelegant as I had labeled it in my prejudice. The high school English class injunction against using "I," "me," and "we" isn't fair or just. So far, I've written three novels in a POV I'd declared I didn't like and wouldn't write in! When I try to write a novel in third person now, I find myself slipping into first person. It's a good thing I changed my mind about liking it!

Do you have a preference for point of view? Why? What about tense? Do you like first person present, as for Storm Siren and The Hunger Games? I still find it choppy and prefer past tense, but will put up with it for a great story. Do you prefer a narrator as for The Hobbit? Or do you even care so long as it's a great story?

Concealment and Revelation through POV and Viewpoint

How do you choose which POV to write your story in? First, third, omniscient? Which character's viewpoint should a scene be in? These topics have doubtless been covered in depth here already, so I want to focus on one consideration and that's concealment and revelation. In other words, choosing a certain POV or viewpoint to hide information, delay a realization, or to uncover something hidden. To a character, the reader, or both.

This concealment and revelation, however, needn't be to the level of creating an unreliable narrator story, as with the recent stories Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train. The technique employed, though, can benefit any story. It can create humor, build suspense, reinforce contrast, and aid in character development. Not to mention allow for surprises.

(SPOILER ALERT: I don't mind spoilers, and since they are necessary to make my points here, I will give them. I'm sorry if this bothers you!)

Examples are often more helpful than explanations, so I'll give three.

Character Development and Reader Surprise

Patrick Carr's The Shock of Night is part a murder mystery and part fantasy save-the-kingdom-from-terrible-mysterious-danger. The prologue is from the POV of the murder victim (but the scene doesn't cover the attack, for which I'm grateful). Chapter One introduces, in first person, the main character, Willet Dura. Willet is the king's reeve and is a former soldier left scarred by his experiences. But Willet suffers from more than PTSD. He's insane. Because of something that happened to him in the mysterious Darkwater Forest at the end of the war. Yet the reader doesn't realize he's insane for some time. Oh we get that Willet has a few eccentricities, but, overall, he's a likable, smart, kind-hearted to the poor, sarcastic towards the elite kind of guy. We like and trust him as a narrator.

Through his eyes, we go with him to visit a priest to talk about his new, powerful gift and the murder case. Then, some chapters later, through the third person POV of Pellin, leader of the Vigil--a group that protects the kingdoms against the evils of the Darkwater Forest--we learn that there was no priest. Willet imagined the whole thing, something he'd done many times during previous visits to an abandoned church.

Did this ruin Willet's credibility on the whole? No. Pellin's other observations affirm that Willet is only insane in this one area. This revelation was a shock to me as a reader, but I didn't feel as if I had been tricked. Patrick Carr's goal was to reveal something important about Willet, something important to the overall conflict, which increased my interest. What was Willet hiding? Why couldn't he, or wouldn't he, remember?

By using the two POV characters, and by using first person POV for Willet, Carr was able to let us see something about Willet that Willet didn't know himself and that wouldn't have made sense if told in third person by him. A limited third person, because it's deeper into the character than regular third, might work, but first is better for this. Not only was Willet's visit to the priest informative and interesting when I read it unsuspecting of the truth, but also provided a pleasant shock when Pellin's viewpoint revealed it to be misleading.

Humor, Suspense, and Contrast
In Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, there is a scene in which Mrs. Jennings observes a private

conversation between Elinor Dashwood and Colonel Brandon and assumes it is a proposal. The reader knows this to be impossible and is busy both laughing at Mrs. Jennings's conjectures and forming conjectures of her own. The conversation Mrs. Jennings supposed to a proposal of marriage that would bring pleasure to Elinor was an announcement of a plan that would enable the man Elinor loves to marry a young woman he'd foolishly engaged himself to in his youth and felt honor-bound to marry.

Austen first conveys this scene through the distant Mrs. Jennings for the reader's amusement as well as for building curiosity, which Austen soon satisfies in a brilliant contrast between the assumed and the real.

Delayed Revelation for Heightened Reaction
In my novel The Beast's Enchantress, told in first person, the main character is a stunningly beautiful young woman, until her pride gets her in trouble with a magic mirror. Alexandria is sucked into the mirror and ends up in an unknown land. She initially thinks that's all that happened to her, that her punishment is a long walk home. Then she sees her reflection--she's an old hag. Her horror, and hopefully the reader's, is greater because of the delay, because she thought she'd gotten off the hook. This scene wouldn't have worked with a distant POV, one describing what happened to her from an outside viewpoint rather than through her senses. She's too focused on the unfamiliar forest around her, and on finding her way out of it, to notice her wrinkled, wart-spotted skin.


POV and viewpoint can be used for a number of effects (and, hopefully, not for the author to say, at the end of the book "Ha! I tricked you!"). Are there any stories that stand out to you for their use of POV and viewpoint? Any that would have worked better in a different POV or viewpoint?

Get in Your Character's Head (Laurie)

I had the pleasure of attending the Realm Makers conference for Christian writers of speculative fiction this past July. It's an amazing conference, but I'm not going to go into detail in this post. If you want to know more, check out Elizabeth's post comparing Realm Makers and the ACFW conference, my overview on my website, or this post from the Realm Makers website.

One of the speakers I was privileged to hear at Realm Makers was Thomas Locke. In one of his classes, he emphasized the importance of point of view, specifically that the POV character you choose for a particular scene should have a huge impact on how it's written.

I must admit, at first I wasn't too engrossed by what he was saying. In my current work-in-progress, the entire story is told from my main character's point of view in first-person narrative, so once that initial POV character was chosen, I was done.

But then he went on to say that the reader wants to make an emotional connection with the character, and thus the POV character's emotions should be infused into every aspect of a scene. Now I was listening. Especially when he went on to give a brilliant example, describing a woman entering a restaurant with one sentence from the POV of each member of a family. In those short sentences, I was already interested in and cared about the characters he had invented.

Unfortunately, I don't remember the specifics enough to recreate Thomas Locke's example. So I'll share my own--far less brilliant, but hopefully still illustrative. Imagine a bus full of people heading towards a city. They turn a corner, and an array of skyscrapers comes into view.

You could write a description of those skyscrapers that would paint a perfect portrait in your readers' eyes. But while such a visual may impress them, it's not likely to spark an emotional connection. What will really draw readers in is if they can see the buildings from your character's unique viewpoint. Every person on that bus sees the same skyscrapers, but no two will have the exact same reaction to them.

For one, the view may be mundane:
Skyscrapers dotted the horizon, their windows reflecting cold blue. This exact sight had passed before his eyes more times than he could count, the tall towers standing as sentinels for the bustling city. He straightened the newspaper in his lap and resumed reading.

For another, it may be stressful:
Skyscrapers in the distance drew her gaze. She jerked, nearly dotting her new jeans with spilled latte. What mountains of paperwork awaited her behind those lustrous exteriors? Her opportunity to "get away from it all" had been so short, and now "it all" was about to cast its long, lean shadow upon her once more.

Someone on the bus may have never seen skyscrapers before. They could be intimidating:
Were those buildings? He'd never seen anything half so tall. Every one was lined with window after window, climbing up to the sky. Someone sat behind each of those windows--someone with more experience, better connections, more knowledge of the world. What a joke, to think he could make it here, in this city already filled with thousands too many people. This city where the very architecture dwarfed his existence.

Or they might be exhilarating:
Skyscrapers, at last! How had she passed her entire life without seeing one? Now they stretched out across the horizon, enticing her with their sheer force, their new beginnings. The reflection of clear blue sky on each windowpane made them appear limitless. Just like her future, now that she'd finally made it out of that farm town and into the city. What wasn't possible in a place that could build such structures?

Integrate at least a hint of your POV character's reaction to what he or she sees, and suddenly you haven't just painted a picture, you've drawn a reader into a character's head and into your story.


So, what do you think? Do you enjoy experiencing sights, sounds, events, etc. as though you're right there in the character's head, or do you prefer some emotional distance from the story? What books stand out to you as doing an especially good job creating an emotional bond between the reader and a certain character?

Thanks for reading!
Laurie