The Villain Redemption Story. Part 1: Why Redeem Villains?

22 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by Jessica Wood in Common Criticism, culture, fairy tale, fantasy, film, story, villain, writing, writing advice

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character, character development, drama, hero, plot, story, story arc, villain, villain redemption, writing, writing a villain, writing advice, writing tips

In classic storytelling there are two types of characters, good guys and bad guys. They both serve important purposes. The hero is intended as the person we should all strive to be and who’s story we want to follow and watch as they succeed. The villain is needed to provide a foil to them, give the hero somebody to fight, create conflict by keeping them from what they want, and show us what we shouldn’t try to be.

In recent years, writers are starting to deconstruct classic villain tropes and present different types of villain. There’s the anti-hero who fits in a morally grey area (Game of Throne’s Tyrion Lannister), the protagonist villain (Lolita’s Humbert Humbert), and the redeemed villain (Ebeneezer Scrooge, perhaps the most famous example). Not that there’s anything wrong with the classic baddie, there are many big bads who we all love to hate. But it’s reached the point where that character has become clichéd and boring and we like to see different types of villain and villain story arcs. These often form some of the most interesting and memorable stories of all. Changes to society mean that some people who were previously seen as villains are now the heroes, and vice-versa. Here are some reasons why I really love the villain redemption story and why you should consider it in your own stories:

It opens up the possibility for more types of story other than the standard good vs. evil. This post on Tumblr gives a whole list of villain redemption stories which have hardly ever been seen so far.
It asks some important questions, like can people ever be truly forgiven for an act of evil. A good example is a book I recently reviewed and haven’t stopped gushing about since, Before the Court of Heaven. It tells the story of the real life German assassin Ernst Techow. In the first half of the book I hated him because of his racism and lack of empathy for his Jewish victims. In the second half he goes through a surprisingly touching change of heart but no matter how much good he tries to do, he can never change the terrible things he did in his youth and never truly forgive himself.
There is some of the best potential for character development. Like the example above, the hero isn’t the only one who has to go through the hero’s journey. Character development is the key stone of all good stories and what could be better than the development from bad to good?
More potential for drama. I don’t think that story tropes should be thrown in purely for the sake of increased drama, but if a story is lagging then a villain redemption plot could be what it is lacking. It is unique, emotional, memorable, and opens up the doorway to many more future stories.
It can teach the protagonist an important lesson about themselves and have a great impact in their own story arc. Villains are supposed to be the opposite of the hero and keep them from what they want. One way for the hero to get what they want isn’t just to defeat the villain but change them for the better. It says a lot about a hero if they are willing to take a chance on the villain instead of taking the easy option of running their sword through them. Or perhaps the change in the villain inspires the hero to change in a way too or shows them what is truly important.

In my next post, I’ll talk about when to redeem a villain and when not to, and provide more examples of villain redemption stories done right.

Top Seven Signs of Good Writing

01 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by Jessica Wood in Common Criticism, culture, fairy tale, fantasy, film, musings, story, writing, writing advice

≈ 1 Comment

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backstory, creative writing, exposition, good storytelling, good writing, novel, novel writing, storytelling, the hobbit, villain, worldbuilding, writing, writing advice, writing tips

Last time I talked about the warning signs of bad writing, so I thought it only fair that I also talk about the signs of good writing. It’s much more difficult to define, as ‘good’ writing is subjective and it isn’t always possible to identify why we find something enjoyable. Years of Hollywood films and creepy book fads has also taught us that what is good isn’t necessarily the same as what is popular or financially successful. Still, these are the things I’ve discovered which set great novelists apart:

Exposition done right.

Exposition is one of the hardest things for writers to learn. It is far too easy to dump all of your worldbuilding into the novel all at once or forget about it completely. Writers who can figure out the right balance are amongst the most skilled.

Something unique.

No novel can be 100% original, unless you want an incomprehensible avant-garde mess, but all of the best novels contain something that is different from the rest. It doesn’t matter if it’s a relationship, a setting, or a little seen perspective. If the book can beat a reader’s expectations in a good way then it is doing something right.

Diverse cast.

Most authors and publishers are beginning to wake up to the issue of diversity in fiction (or lack thereof), but there is still a long way to go. For many writers it still means shoehorning in a black side character then not knowing what to do with them and killing them off about a third of the way through. This is why there is nothing more refreshing than an author who accurately and sympathetically portrays a diverse cast of characters fitting for the novel’s setting.

Villains with backstory.

And by backstory, I mean more than just ‘tragic past’ or ‘they were created evil’. I often think that a story is only as good as its villain and a good villain is more than just a guy sitting on his black throne laughing about how evil he is and how much he loves suffering. If we can find out why they are bad, why they genuinely think that what they are doing is right, and how they react when everything they’ve been working for is ruined then that alone makes for a great story.

Active characters.

For God’s sake Aurora, get off your lazy ass and do something!

I’ve talked before about characters who exist in a story only to have things happen to them and not actively take charge of their own story. One of Pixar’s rules of storytelling is ‘Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.’ Stories need characters who will use their own skills, experiences, and qualities to make something happen and cause their own happy ending, not sit around and wait for somebody to do it for them. These characters gain much more sympathy than characters who just drift from scene to scene barely doing anything.

Actions have consequences.

Everything that your characters do or experience in the story must have some kind of reaction or consequence, be it positive or negative. The reason The Hobbit has remained a beloved story for 60 years and made a killing in the box office is that it isn’t a standard ‘Go on quest, defeat dragon, get gold’ story. Thorin Oakenshield goes across Middle Earth pissing off just about every person he meets and has to meet the consequences of this later on when he almost dooms the kingdom he’s been working so hard to retake. Almost everything that Bilbo and company encounter on their journey comes together in the climactic battle.

The story leaves you with something.

This doesn’t have to mean a tacked on last minute lesson or moral. Whether it is an emotion, a memorable character, or just the feeling of a really good story, the novel should leave the reader with something other than just the thought ‘is that it?’

While I was putting together this list, I found out that what I have put here is actually just a small selection of what makes a good story. I wouldn’t be able to list all of them. Most bad novels use the same cut and paste formula as all the others. A great novel can be anything.

How to Write Love at First Sight

04 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by Jessica Wood in Common Criticism, culture, fairy tale, fantasy, film, musings, romance, story, writing, writing advice

≈ 3 Comments

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fairy tale, fantasy, fiction, historical fiction, love at first sight, romance fiction, story, storytelling, writing, writing advice, writing fairy tales, writing fiction, writing tips

Can you guess how this is going to work out?

People seem to be in one of two camps when it comes to love at first sight. Either it’s the ultimate epitome of romance and true love or it’s a creepy, unhealthy fixation that will never work out. This is why the fairy tale image of love at first sight leading to an instant happy ever after is going through a deconstruction in recent years and most modern readers are turned off by it.

There is a reason why it emerged as a literary trope and even why it still appears in some stories today. First meetings are emphasised in fiction because they are important in real life as well. Our first meeting and first impressions of someone will determine what our future relationship with them will be like. As much as we’d like to think we’re completely objective, scientists do say that it takes as little of one tenth of a second to decide if we like someone upon first seeing their face.

From a historical standpoint, it’s easy to see why this used to be a more acceptable form of storytelling. People used to die sooner and were expected to marry young so they had to latch onto the first piece of marriage material they came across and not let go. Divorce was also frowned upon so they were expected to be happy with their chosen partner for their whole lives, or at least pretend to be.

As society has changed, the idea of love at first sight has changed with it. Just as we aren’t expected to settle down with someone we’ve just met, so we don’t expect fictional characters to either.

Even so, there are still people who believe in love at first sight and it apparently does happen to some people. Some of these relationships do work out but others end horribly. So can it ever be pulled off in fiction? I’ve found that there are some cases when it can:

When to write love at first sight.

Short time frame. This is why love at first sight is so often associated with Disney films. The writers only have an hour and a half to make you buy into a relationship and love at first sight saves them a lot of time on development. This is why it rarely if ever works in a novel or long running television series because there is plenty of time to develop a relationship naturally.

A legitimate reason. To use Disney as an example again, Frozen did a very good job of establishing why Anna would fall instantly in love with Prince Hans – she’s spent most of her life isolated from her sister and only has one day to find a husband to keep her company throughout the rest of her lonely days. Of course it doesn’t work out but her reasons for falling instantly in love still make a lot more sense than the classic Disney Princesses.

Magical power. Maybe a character can predict what their true love’s first words to them will be or they were star crossed lovers in a previous life and have been sub-consciously drawn to each other. There is some room for creativity here. Magical powers can be a satisfactory explanation but if done badly they can come across as lazy writing, obvious plot devices and an excuse to skip out on the development of the relationship. In the worst cases they can also be downright creepy. Remember how appalled everyone was by the ‘imprinting’ scene in Twilight?

It’s not supposed to work out. Maybe the reasons why people are against this trope are the very things you are going for. It could be a villain with an unhealthy fixation on someone or a clueless romantic with no idea how true love really works. Even Romeo and Juliet, the most famous and glorified example of love at first sight was actually supposed to be a warning against hasty marriages.

Lust at first sight. This is a legitimate excuse because it does happen and lust is different than love. A crush at first sight is also understandable. I think all of us can say we’ve gotten a crush on someone just by looking at them, even if we later found out that their personalities weren’t as great as their looks.

Historical fiction. As I said, people’s attitudes to love at first sight have changed so you might be able to explain it in a historical context. But keep in mind that aside from different attitudes, people in the past were still the same as us in every other way and their hasty marriages didn’t always lead to happily ever after.

So there are some instances when you can write a character falling in love at first sight, but these are just starting points to the development of a relationship. In stories, build up is everything so you have to make your readers believe why somebody is worth going through a whole book’s worth of trials for.

I mentioned in a previous article that love triangles only work if they are written well. This is perhaps even truer for love at first sight. It’s not that writers can’t use it but it needs to be handled in a precise way to work effectively. Sometimes it can be done successfully but it is very rare and attempts to do so more often fail. If your character does fall in love at first sight and you want the readers to support their relationship then at least spend time developing it and the characters properly and have the characters decide if they want to make the relationship work in the long term.