 Action/Adventure: September 09, 2020 Issue [#10358] |
This week: The Villain's Motivation Edited by: Annette  
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| Dear writers and readers of Action/Adventure. I am Annette and I will be your guest editor for today's issue. |
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The Villain's Motivation
There are so many action/adventure stories that tell the story from the good guy's point of view. The villain is kind of the second fiddle. Yes, the villain causes some trouble, but the one we're following around is the good guy as he tries to thwart the bad guy.
Have you ever considered to flip that script? Have you thought about telling an action/adventure story from the villain's point of view? It's hard because the reader wants to root for the main protagonist. It's how we have been trained by books and movies. Even so-called flawed heroes are the good guy. With the exception of The Punisher. He's not a good guy, yet he presents as the good guy. But he's not.
Now that we know a "hero" from the fiction world who behaves like a villain and is a villain, how can we put that villain into our plot as the main driving character?
For one, we will have to determine the villain's motivation. Money, riches, treasure and other worldly possessions can be driving motivation. They are boring though. To write a villain that won't get the reader to put down the book right away, you have to give the villain a good reason to be villainous.
Here are some suggestions:
The villain has a sick relative. Maybe his mother or other close relative. The mother needs some medicine that the villain can't easily get for her. In order to get that medicine, he decides to become criminal. Again, don't take this first motivation to get him to simply rob a bank. That leads us back to moeny as motivation = boring. This is where you have a lot of creative wiggle room. Is the medicine a rare plant that grows in a delicate ecosystem that the villain will have to disrupt or even destroy? Or is it so rare that it is usually reserved for children and the villain has to go steal it from a hospital, which will then lead to a child not getting that medicine?
The villain was thrust into a situation where he has to react. The action that will get him freed from his situation will cause harm to others. The peril he is in forces him into a "save myself or save others" situation. Maybe saving himself will not only put others in danger, but actively lead to their demise.
Just as a hero needs a villain to vanquish, a villain needs a hero to stand up to him.
Will your hero offer the villain an option to receive the medicine without harming others? Will the hero help the villain out of his predicament in a way that others can also be saved?
The finale, the end. Whose end is it? We wrote from the villain's point of view. Do we see him die when his dastardly plan was thwarted by the hero? Or do we see the villain stab the hero in the back after using his help?
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I got this reply to my last Action/Adventure newsletter "Actions Blow Up Louder Than Words"
Quick-Quill  wrote: Great newsletter. It’s always at the moment you’re writing these instructions are forgotten. It takes that next pair of eyes to tell you less talk/exposition and more action. I find as I’m reading an intense moment , the writer will cut away to describe the setting instead of moving the character through the setting. Pushing cob webs out of the way then getting stuck on their face. Falling over a branch just a the sword swings to cut off his head. I don’t need to be told there are cobwebs hanging from the doorway.
Yes. It definitely helps when a reviewer points those parts out. |
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