cornerofmadness

I'm getting stuck for topics so I'm back to one that's still bugging me because I don't think I do it anywhere near as well as I could. Villains. I just read this interesting article on it that my friend, E.S. pointed me to. Believable villains

I'm not so sure that believability is my issue. It's more their effectiveness. I'm not sure that mine are that effective. I'm going over Soldiers of Sun now and I'm not sure that they are good villains at all but this is where the problem comes in. A bunch of wealthy investor types are not really a match for trained soldiers. Nor at they the type to get their hands dirty. They're letting the demon they summoned to do the dirty work and they hire thugs to assist to that end. I'm not sure how to make them more interesting as a villain.

In Kept Tears, the villain, Morcant, has his motives, simple ones. Revenge and humiliation. He isn't a mustache-twirling villain, but neither is he particularly complex or sympathetic. I think Alberich might fit that better and I want to do more with him in the planned sequel (and the twins, god, if you have a subplot for the twins tell me because every reviewer wanted more of them).

I'm not sure why I struggle so much with the villains. I've seen so many of them. I do like the ones with shades of grey better than most, though a true sociopath like Hannibal Lecter is also interesting.

How do you handle your villains? What do you seek in a villain?

In other writing news I want to write something about Celebrate I'm planning to set it in Wales and make it yule (well Alban Arthur) which is harder to research than you might expect. Sigh.

yearly word count -

Splinters of Silver - haven't touched it because I have to get the edits out on Project Fierce and Love's Landscape

Soldiers of the Sun - up to ch 15, just enough to fill me with loathing for the story, par for the course at this stage of the game.