Category Archives: Writing Bits and Pieces

Antagonists Need Love, Too

Posted on by

“You don’t really understand an antagonist until you understand why he’s a protagonist in his own version of the world.” 

~John Rogers

Why a Weak Antagonist Can Ruin Your Story

Artist: isabellaquintana (Pixabay)

I’ve always loved a good bad guy.

I mean, a goooooood bad guy (or gal). The characters in your favorite books – or movies – who were so insidiously, deliciously villainous that you loved to hate them. Who had you shouting at your book in disgust and anger, but secretly a tiny part of you empathized with a tiny part of them, and that made you hate them even more.

But for every Annie Wilkes (Misery), Kurtz (Heart of Darkness), Hannibal Lecter (the eponymous series by Thomas Harris), Heath Ledger’s Joker (cemented forever into the Halls of Depraved Genius), Erik Killmonger (in Black Panther, and arguably one of the most sympathetic movie villains of recent memory), or Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis Moriarty (my favorite manifestation is by far Andrew Scott’s portrayal in the BBC’s Sherlock series) – for every strong and complex antagonist in classic or contemporary literature and film – there is also at least one flat antagonist automaton whose only motivation is that he must drive the plot forward somehow. While it is every writer’s tendency to want to focus on developing the protagonist – and I am guilty of this, too, time and time again! – a well-rounded antagonist with a relatable backstory can only strengthen your narrative. An antagonist with a driving purpose for his/her actions is far more interesting.

Artist: linolombardi (Pixabay)

“I am evil because the story dictates I need to be evil!” or “I am doing this or that to your beloved MC because I love power for power’s sake!” are certainly character motivations that lean toward the one-dimensional. On the page, a one-dimensional bad guy is one character whose flawed nature readers will certainly notice (and not a good notice), and can really make or break your story. I tend to treat my antagonists as top priority characters, sometimes giving as much if not more attention to their development than the protagonist.

That’s NOT to say your protagonist should be relegated to the Mary Sue/Marty Stu archetype, who simply reacts to everything the antagonist throws in their faces, to whom everything happens yet overcomes adversity with flying colors… although there are times where that model works. (That’s a blog post for another day!) Long story short: I try to give equal attention to writing flawed MCs as I do to write complicated and interesting antagonists and villains.*

*NOTE: To avoid confusion, since we’re talking about both in this article… antagonists and villains are not necessarily the same. While a villain will almost always fall under the “antagonist” category, an antagonist can be a villain, sure, but does not have to be villainous or evil. An antagonist can be sympathetic, charismatic and even likable.

By giving your antagonists your due diligence – creating backstory, figuring out what motivates them, identifying sources of their internal conflict as well as possible sources of redemption, injecting humor (even dark humor works!) or quirks into their personalities – you end up with a person, instead of just Evil Personified For No Reason. I recommend using the same Character Development tools you used to get to know your protagonist on your antagonist. As mentioned in my previous post on Character Development, my favorite is the NaNoWriMo Character Questionnaire.

Artist: sik-life (Pixabay)

Bad guys are quite adaptable, and even the same antagonist can change exponentially between the covers of a single book, let alone in the cataclysmic transition between a book and its film adaptation. Ever get angry about the portrayal of your favorite book characters when they appear on the silver screen?

The list of my favorite literary antagonists of all time includes:

  • Long John Silver, Stevenson’s Treasure Island.
  • Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, Maguire’s Wicked (this one is controversial, because she is the villain in Baum’s Wizard of Oz, but in his prequel-of-sorts, Maguire gives us a fully-realized complicated person whose choices and motivations set her on a course we are all familiar with).
  • Moriarty (again! forever!), Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes.
  • Hot take: Mr. Rochester, Bronte’s Jane Eyre. (Yes he is a villian. Fight me!)
  • The Goblin King, Jae-Jones’ Wintersong/Shadowsong duology (please read these! Pleeeeease!).
  • Any villains or antagonists I missed who deserve to get their due? Let me know in the comments!

A few final notes:

Antagonists don’t necessarily have to be single characters. Here’s an article that outlines four types of antagonists.

Looking for more sage writing advice regarding antagonists, villainy and evil? Author Chuck Wendig wrote an article about how to do it. Trust me, this guy knows what he’s talking about, and articulates the many facets of writing antagonists far better than I ever could.

 

BLOG HOME

 

A brief update and miscellany

Posted on by

Hello, lovely people.

It has been a while, hasn’t it? I can tell you the last few months have been spectacularly busy at best, and tumultuous at… less than best. Between day job issues, exciting ongoing writing projects, personal health issues, and of course the juggernaut that is National Novel Writing Month, my blog has been (accidentally) abandoned to the dark corner of the internet where neglected blogs are tossed to collect dust.

Forgive me?

And because things show no signs of slowing down in the near future, I just wanted to reach out and answer a few questions.

  • 1. Yes, I’m alive and relatively healthy, the people I love are healthy, and things are more or less okay.
  • B. My major book-publishing projects are moving forward, behind the scenes, even though they’ve been out of the limelight for a little while… both my travel memoir and my YA novel Stormriders are in their respective editing phases (to clarify, Stormriders is in the Gonna-Pull-My-Hair-Out-This-Is-Horrid part of the editing phase).
  • And thirdly, I have some exciting updates to share with you!

Updates:

I started a new project last month, for this year’s National Novel Writing Month, and on this side of November I have a 45,000-word draft for a story I’m sorta in love with. Think high fantasy meets stranger-in-a-strange-land, throwing in a few dragons and featuring a version of the feisty heroine who always finds her way into my stories somehow, and here we go again! Stay tuned.

The local writers group in Waconia is producing an anthology of our work, hopefully in early 2019! I’ve signed on as primary editor and formatting/layout designer, and the book will feature a wide range of beautiful work from our group members. More information can be found at waconiawriters.wordpress.com.

My 4-part blog series is still in progress! I began writing the third entry in The Big Magical Process of Making Words Happen series a few months ago, and hope to finish the darn thing and post it live within the next few days.

Anything else?

Yes.

A note on overcoming adversity, and finding success in your writing, even when you (temporarily) physically cannot write.

Over the past week, I’ve been sidelined from all of my writing projects, due to a pinched nerve in my neck. Sidelined, meaning I’ve been forced to intermittently lie flat on my back on the floor, with an electric heating pad between my shoulder blades. For awhile, merely sitting upright was painful. Working on my laptop was excruciating. 

This has been my primary view for the past seven days straight. (Yes, that is A Christmas Prince, the finest Netflix Xmas movie ever made. Fight me.)

But in spite of my inability to use my computer, I’ve still been writing. How, you might ask? I used the time staring at my ceiling. I used every single one of those horizontal minutes to brainstorm, to think through some plot problems, and I even solved some plot holes that were previously and up to that point driving me bonkers.

My injury forced me to stop, to avoid the tempting social media distractions that are present every time I open my Chromebook, and think. I spent the better part of the past two months constantly on the go. Not saying a nerve injury is a boon, but it did present an opportunity. I had to press pause on most of my hectic daily life. Alone with my thoughts and the strange patterns on my popcorn ceiling, I had nothing to do but untangle and sift through those thoughts, prioritize the ideas I wanted to, and focus.

After a few days, I was pretty good at think-writing. I could visualize pieces of my story that I struggled to see through the blue glow of the computer screen. Fleeting ideas and concepts became tangible plot points. Characters developed true human flaws and traits; I got to spend some time with them and get to know them better. Even though I didn’t physically hold a pen or crack open my laptop, I was writing. I was creating. And those exercises were really the only things keeping me from going out of my mind.

Moral of the story: you can create, you can make progress and move forward in unconventional ways, even when life (and nerve pain) tries to blow up your process.

Fin.

BLOG HOME

Tasks (or, Un Résumé de la Vie)

Posted on by

My first task on this planet was to take a breath, and then another. And then, to fill my lungs with life and shout into the void my purpose for existing. I have not stopped since.

My second task on this planet was to obey. Mightily, I struggled with this task; heavy chains rattling a song of resistance as I fought tooth and nail against the oppressive directives of “Don’t Touch That” and “Eat Your Vegetables.” Mightily, I rebelled against the later executive orders of “Clean Your Room” and “Don’t Talk Back To Me” and “Be Back In This House One Minute Before Your Curfew.” And then, much later, from the distance of new adulthood and the separation of three hundred cell phone towers, “Be Safe And Make Good Choices.” This task has a limited shelf life, diminishing in value as the years pass, and attached is the critical conditional clause: “Unless When Confronted With Oppression Or Injustice.”

My third task on this planet was to be kind. To lift up the fallen and heal the wounded with words of strength and actions of support. The third task is the most difficult of all the tasks at times, when you are the one licking your own wounds, when you must pick yourself up after a tumble. But this task eventually takes a form much like the first. When you hold the hand of a bullied schoolmate, or sit next to the woman wearing a headscarf on the bus to shield her from verbal shrapnel, to perform this task carries the weight of indrawn oxygen.

My fourth task on this planet is to see. To open my eyes and keep them wide open. To witness the life experiences of others through a lens that does not belong to me. To stare at the bright glare of the truth, no matter how it burns through the safe protective shield of my own life experience. No matter how it hurts.

My fifth task on this planet is to listen. If you listen hard enough, you can hear music in the strangest of places. If you listen hard enough, you can hear the whispers of your childhood dreams in dark corners, revealing themselves to you again and again. If you listen hard enough, you can hear what people mean to say, even when they don’t speak out. Or even when they shout.

My sixth task on this planet is to be present. To pay attention to what is happening now, even while remembering what happened a long time ago, while imagining the happenings to come. To stand in one place, unafraid and undaunted, and be here, and belong.

My seventh task on this planet is to create. To fill the void with something other than my shouted purpose. To take beautiful things and ugly things and painful things, and forge the spark that lodges and burns recognition into someone else’s soul. To pull stories from the ether and scorch them into words onto the kindling of my notebooks. To obey the Muse. To lift up the voices, the stories, of the oppressed. To tell the truth. To hear the dreams of my own childhood whispering to me in echoes.   

This résumé will not land me a job; not in the traditional, societal sense. This particular curriculum vitae will not earn me tenure in the career field called Life; none of us live forever. But I have to wonder… in this cosmic karma machine of birth and death, work and play, waiting and doing, creating and destroying, seeking and finding, living and dying… I have to wonder if I’m hired.

 

Author’s Note: This piece originated from a writing prompt “My First Job” for the Waconia Writer’s Group, 2/12/17. (You can see how well I adhere to the concept of literalism.)

 

BLOG HOME

Poetry without judgement.

Posted on by
Reply

Of course, writers are their own worst critics.  To this effect, and perhaps as our own way to fight the inner critique, a few years ago (actually… quite a few years ago, now), the lovely Jennifer Rose, the witty Alex Maki and I decided to embark on a little experiment.

We thought,

“What if we could create a space where people, especially people who perhaps don’t normally write poetry, could try their hand at it?  Without feeling intimidated or judged?  Where all submissions would be welcome, and feedback/critique offered only if invited?  But let’s up the ante, and create this space in an online forum, to connect with others, strangers, who might be looking for the same thing.”

poetryThanks to Blogger, we were able to create this space.  We named it “Terrible Poetry from Terrible People” (and no, the implications of the name are not lost on us; we figured we might as well start at the bottom and work our way up to greatness).

Here’s the thing: ironically, the vast majority of the poems on this site are the opposite of what you’d expect.  They are incredibly GOOD.  Many of them are gorgeous feats of literary art, in all honesty to the point where people should be giving our contributing poets money to read the beautiful words they’ve written.

I went back to the site the other day and browsed through past contributions, and was simply in awe of how well that project worked for awhile.  It has been some time since we’ve had regular postings on it (sadly, we had events and obstacles in our lives that interfered, slowly weaning us away from it), but with all of my recent epiphanies about writing in general – and renewed resolve to hit some benchmarks with my own writing – I realized I’d love to see this blog shine again.

So click here and take a look.  Wander around the site awhile.  See if anything strikes a chord.  Let me know if you’d like to post something of your own.  As I said… write poetry without judgement.  And see what great things can happen.

BLOG HOME

“Arrival”

Posted on by
Reply

(otherwise known as the much-delayed excerpt from ‘The Red Earth Sings Beneath Our Feet’)As promised, and then promised again.

When I went to Tanzania in 2010, I knew, ahead of time and on some basic level, I would come away from the experience changed. I didn’t realize the extent of that change until 6 months after I returned. This is an excerpt from the journal I faithfully wrote in every day while in-country, which remains the heart of the story I wanted to tell.

Sunday, July 18.

This morning I woke up under my mosquito netting and remembered I am in Africa.

Please pinch me.

The neighbor’s rooster was making a racket a half-hour before my alarm went off. All the other roosters from within a half-mile radius—and from the sound of it, there are a swarm of them—joined in. It was raining lightly, and I could almost taste the damp soil essence wafting up to my window. All of it—the sounds, colors, the feel of the air on my skin—is very different. I don’t yet have the words to explain or describe it. I hope I will eventually.

Arriving in Kilimanjaro was rather anticlimactic. I saw nothing but a smattering of lights that [my German row-mate on the plane] Papa Pavel said was Arusha, Tanzania’s third-largest city and an hour’s drive from Moshi. We deboarded the plane in the balmy night. I have never walked out of the maw of a monster of a 747 into open air, breathing in the newness from the open door; never descended the open staircase onto the tarmac, still warm from the afternoon sun.

A young man with a Cross-Cultural Solutions sign met me and Rachel, another CCS-Karanga volunteer, at the arrivals gate. Daniel was entertaining and welcoming, and kept making us laugh (“Jenifa, welcome, hellooooo…”) which was good because it was distracting our attention from the crazy drivers. Apparently it is common practice to drive with your brights on at night, and flash them at oncoming cars in greeting (Daniel: “It’s like how we say ‘Jambo’ with our cars”). Apparently it is also practice to drive on whatever part of the road you feel like, although Tanzanians usually drive on the British side of the road. In any case, it was too dark to see much, and I was exhausted. Almost too exhausted to feel much of the washboard dirt road we turned onto to drive through Karanga village.

We were met at the door by Mary the housekeeper, Mama Lillian and Baba Fulgence. Mama Lillian is the Karanga program director, and is—as she puts it—”a new mother to you all.” Baba Fulgence is like your favorite grandfather. You know, the one who magically pulled coins from behind your ear and sang songs with you when you were a kid. After a glass of mango juice and an animated discussion about John Cena (WWE was on the TV when we arrived), Rachel and I were sent off to our beds, feeling extremely grateful and welcomed. And absolutely exhausted.

This morning, I stood on the second-floor veranda and noticed avocados swinging from branches not five feet from my face. We have an avocado tree! And the avocados are as large as my open hand.

It is much too overcast to see Mt. Kilimanjaro. Apparently we can catch glimpses of the largest peak, Uhuru, on very clear days, through my bedroom window in the early morning.

After breakfast, our new group met for orientation and paperwork. During which we discussed in great detail the CCS policy banning sexual fraternization. I’ve known Mama Lillian for all of 12 hours, and I’ve already gotten the Sex Talk from her. Such a mother!

Besides me, there are five others just starting out, all women. We’re very diverse in our life and work experiences, but have bonded already, merely from embarking on this adventure at the same time. We received more information today about our placements, and I received something of a surprise: my placement has changed. I will now be volunteering at Kiwodea, a women’s empowerment center and nursery school that is within walking distance of Karanga. This is incredibly exciting, as I will get to work with women in the community on economic sustainability issues and business creation. And will get to play with kids. I will find out much more tomorrow, when our site supervisors come to the Karanga house to share lunch.

After orientation, we went on a driving tour of Moshi Town. It was very fast and thus hard to see much of it, but we drove through the main market street where women in brightly patterned kangas (wrap skirts) were selling fruit and vegetables and shoes and belt buckles and anything else you could imagine. Most of it was a blur, and I am looking forward to going back to explore on foot, with my camera.

Home base is beautiful. Karanga, in all its simplicity, is beautiful. To get to and from home, we journey about a half mile over a dirt-packed washboard road that is determined to eat the axles off the van. It is a brain- and- backside-numbing experience, that half mile. Greeting us by our gate is Brenda, the three-year-old neighbor who fearlessly plants herself in the dirt in front of us, usually with a stick or an item she stole from another kid.

There are numerous quirks, living in a house in an African village, which I think are entirely unique to this experience. At night, you can hear bush babies jabbering and whispering to each other in the trees—they sound like small children laughing. During the day, right around lunchtime, the neighbor’s goat starts yelling; he sounds like an old man with a hernia and a bad case of indigestion. When the wind is particularly strong, it pulls the coconuts from the clutches of the palm trees and drops them directly onto the tin roof of the dining area, scaring the living daylights out of all of us. The laundry room is our backyard, and my “washing machine” is a hose, a bucket and my two hands. There are birds and bugs and other flying things I have no hope of ever identifying. And there is a fine red dust that clings to everything—leaves, tree trunks, walls, feet, goats… everything.

It is all still wavy around the edges, as though I’m walking through a dream I had a few years ago about how this experience might feel. I am having some difficulty connecting to the realities of this place, and that I am really here.

Yet, at the same time, it feels like I always have been here. Or was supposed to be. Odd.

BLOG HOME