NOTE: In the past few weeks I have posted several times about villains (here and here). I’ve gotten a lot of responses.
It is difficult to have a novel
without a villain, either in individual villain (a living, breathing human
being) or a villain of circumstance (like a tornado). Without a villain you
have no conflict, and with conflict you are dangerously close to having no
plot.
Here is a post from several months ago about the unwitting villain. This is the person who starts off with intentions that are not quite above board, like the man having an affair, and things go bad. In light of recent posts and the responses to them, this post might bear re-examination.
Several years ago I got into a random conversation with a criminal defense attorney. He told me something I have always remembered. “Many of my clients,” he said, “are not criminals. They are ordinary people caught in extraordinary circumstances. They get desperate and they make bad choices.”
This conversation came back to me a few days ago at a book signing when Diana Wagman, taking questions before she signed copies of her latest novel, The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets, described her villains.
“Most of my villains,” she said, “are people in over their head.”
Ordinary people caught in extraordinary circumstances.
There are plenty of examples.
I knew a woman who embezzled almost $100,000 dollars from her place of employment to cover for thefts committed by her drug-addicted son. Among other things, she was trying to hide his stealing from her husband because she knew he would call the police.
The everyday guy who is coming home one evening after a few beers and hits a bicyclist with no lights. The driver, afraid of what will happen, drives away.
A police officer friend of mine who got into an argument with his drunken, pregnant girlfriend. To control her, he handcuffed her to a post in the carport of their apartment. The police showed up and it went downhill from there.
These examples, and many more, are ordinary people trying to make a living, raise a family, and pay taxes. They are your neighbors, maybe even your relatives, maybe even you. The problem is that after that first bad decision, the next one is easier. They become increasingly desperate. As villains in a novel, though, you can sometimes empathize with them. They are in over their heads.
The recent brouhaha with David Petraeus was a good example. He was infatuated and he got sucked in. He even realized the error of his ways and broke off the relationship. By that time it was too late. A few emails were exchanged between his former mistress and another woman, the FBI got involved, another general was receiving emails and it got out of control. Every time I opened the newspaper the story got worse.
The best part is that if you developed this from your own imagination, as a plot to a novel, people would not have believed it. You almost felt sorry for Petraeus.
Head of the CIA, a four-star general, and he was in over his head. It can happen to anyone.
See ya’ later.
WhatIfYouCouldNotFail.com by Tim Sunderland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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