Unapologetic, with Caroline Nadine Helsing

S1E23 Unapologetic, with Caroline Nadine Helsing

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Caroline Nadine Helsing is today’s guest.

www.carolinenadinehelsing.com

Instagram: @caroline_nadine_helsing_author

Find her on Facebook and Youtube to see supplemental material to the book.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarolineNadineHelsingAuthor

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaaUCsUd28AhZSVoOXq9p_A

 

Follow this link to get her book Unapologetic: Tales of the Original Party Crasher.

https://amzn.to/3BkQDSB

 

The following is a transcript of this episode. The full transcript is available on the show’s website.

 

Devin Davis:  If you ever choose to write a memoir about a loved one in your life, I recommend doing it the way Caroline Nadine Helsing did it when she wrote her book, Unapologetic: Tales of the Original Party Crasher. Caroline is our guest Today on Writing in the Tiny House.  Hello, hello, hello! And welcome to Writing in the Tiny House. I am Devin Davis. I am your host and I am the guy living in a tiny house in Northern Utah, who is here to show you that the novel idea that you have floating around in your brain, it is 100% possible for you to buckle down and write it. And today's guest is a perfect example of how that is done and why that is done. These don't have to always be big works of fiction. Sometimes they can be works of fiction inspired by actual events. So let's take a second. And let's meet our guest. She is a woman living in California who grew up in Hawaii. And let's see all of the different things that she did before she actually started writing a book. She has done all the things you could ever imagine, my friends.

[00:01:47] Caroline Helsing: My name is Caroline Nadine Helsing.  I can say I'm originally from Honolulu, Hawaii, and moved to California two days before my 23rd birthday.

[00:01:57] I feel like I've had multiple lifetimes. I almost feel like I reinvent myself every two years. So what brought me to the mainland was I was doing a bit of acting in Hawaii and the natural progression is to move to Los Angeles. So that's what I did. I came over with my little Lhasa Apso Bentley, and he used to jump on the bed and sleep with me. And I had gotten a new bed, a new mattress that was higher than my old one, and he couldn't jump up anymore. And so I made this dog step for him to get up onto the bed. And that essentially is what got me out of the acting business. It turned into a  company, a manufacturing company for pet products. So we made dog steps and clothing. Our first slogan was "Bitches love me."  I had that company for about 10 and a half years, and that's what brought me down to Orange County. And when I sold it-- gosh, I think I sold it in 2013-- I went back to one of my first loves, which is photography. And I started volunteering through the Rotary Program and started traveling with these mobile medical clinics. And we would go to Mexico, we went to the Amazon and the rainforests, the Peru, India. And I would document these trips and also volunteer where I could like in India was amazing.

[00:03:21] We were one of the last groups. Administer polio vaccinations via the droplets before they moved to injection. So it just was a very rewarding experience for me. And in documenting through my photography, I would also write and then I started writing and submitting stories to the local papers.

[00:03:41]And that evolved into just me realizing that I really loved writing. And in the back of my mind, I always had this seed of an idea to tell my mother's stories because she was unlike any mother I had ever grown up with.   She was kind of like a cross between a Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany's to like Moira from Schitt's Creek. She was, she was very unapologetically herself and she taught me the value of being authentic to yourself. She was one that just always followed her bliss.

[00:04:16]Devin Davis: So you can see that Caroline has done everything in her life. She's been a business owner, she has done photography. She has done writing. But I had to ask her, why now and why this book?

[00:04:34]Caroline Helsing:  But I always loved creative writing in school. That was like my, I loved English. I love. I love that aspect. I was always journaling, so I was always writing. And I think in the back of my mind, you know, I I'd always said, I, I knew, I didn't know how, I didn't know what I was going to write about, but I knew I was going to write a book and I didn't know that it was going to wind up being a book about my mother. But it was the perfect avenue for me. It was almost like she was channeling through me because I got it done in a little over a year and maybe I have COVID, you know, the pandemic to thank. I was just, you know, home and I, I literally treated it like a full-time job. 

[00:05:13] Devin Davis: But it was with her mother's passing that Caroline got started with her book.

[00:05:19]Caroline Helsing:  Well like I said, I'd always had this seed of an idea to tell her stories. And I think after she had passed, my mother had passed  in 2019 in January. Actually it was New Year's Day, which again, if you, know about my mother, I mean, it was the perfect day because she had to go with a big bang.

[00:05:35]In 2019 it was towards the middle end of the year, I started thinking maybe I'm going to kind of like start to jot down her stories. And I actually I took a memoir class just to kind of get my feet wet and the very first chapter I wrote was one of the ones that I put in the book.

[00:05:55]It was towards the end. It was basically my journey with her and her ashes. Before she passed, I had promised her that I would take her back to all of her favorite places in New York city. Cause she was from New York city and she was very much in New York and she loved New York, even though she wound up migrating west. When she met my father, they wound up settling in Hawaii and lived on an island for 36 years. But I promised her I would just take her back. She had said in passing, oh, when I die, I want my ashes spread across Bergdorf Goodman, which is this high-end, you know, department store in Manhattan. So that kind of gives you an idea of like her, her personality or character. And so, you know, when she died, we all were like, oh wait, she did.

[00:06:38] What did she want, like, what, you know, what do you think she would have wanted? And I said, well, she did say this. And I, you know, of course, I don't know what she kidding. I don't know, but in just sitting with it , it was the perfect thing for her to kind of like come full circle and, and bring her back to the city that she just adored.

[00:06:56] Seeing the city and going literally to all the places that I'd ever remembered her talking about to me truly enabled me to see that city through her eyes. It's like a gift that you give to your loved ones whom you leave behind. So that I think is what inspired me to write her story, once and for all to really do it. And so I I started November, December of 2019 is when I really started.

[00:07:26]Devin Davis: Sometimes when we start these big projects, it is really easy to feel isolated and alone, like many of us have experienced over the past 18 months. But it is also very beneficial when we are on these big endeavors where it's only us writing and nobody else helping us. It is very, very beneficial to form a writing group.

[00:07:53] To get a group of men or women or whomever else wants to listen to you, who is in the same boat as you and who will give good, honest feedback for the things that you are creating. And for Caroline, this kept her motivated and this brought her to the end to finish her book.

[00:08:19] Caroline Helsing: A few of the students and I decided to form a writer's group. I had to drive up there and I was fine to do it because it was just so nice to be able to bounce ideas off of another writer. And I consider them all so talented. We all had our backgrounds we added to the table, but  that I feel is what got me through, kind of kept me accountable having this reference group for me personally. We met weekly, and  for me, just in the back of my mind, knowing there was a group of people every Saturday morning waiting to read something from me, I had to at least write something. 

[00:08:57]Devin Davis: Like with so many different projects that I have spoken about, including my own, but also others that I have heard about in recent years, Caroline's story evolved from how she envisioned it when she started to what it ended up being in the end.

[00:09:19] Caroline Helsing: When I originally started, it was just all about my mother. All I wanted to do was write about my mother. I didn't want to be in the book. It's about my mother, right? And they were the ones that kept saying No, Caroline, we want to know more about you. It helps us to understand her through your eyes and you know, whatever it was, they were saying. So I would like sprinkle a little bit of me here. So weird and odd, you know, like I didn't want to, and then just getting that feedback really helped. I wanted to create scenes with dialogue. And of course I wasn't there obviously prior to my being born and my mother's life, and I write a lot about my mother's youth, and they had said, you know, you can write as if. You obviously know her essence, so write as if.  I had enough anecdotes, enough things, stories from different people from herself that  I was able to take that information and create a scene as if it happened. I mean, I don't know the complete details the things that happened to her in her youth, but I feel like the point and the purpose was to give you an idea of  what it could have looked like in the context of what actually happened. She was too much of a fun character to write. I couldn't not have fun with her. 

[00:10:32]Devin Davis: But because so much of her mother's life happened before Caroline was even around, Caroline had to set out on an adventure of sorts to gather some of these other stories that she had only heard of before; these other stories of when her mother was young.

[00:10:50] Caroline Helsing: Other than the stories that I remember firsthand from my mother or firsthand from my own experience I talked to relatives, friends. I mean I write about the fact that I actually was getting to know the man behind my father, because he was someone that I called on Mother's Day because there was no one else to call, you know, and then we started talking about her and I was so impressed.  My father is 94 years old and his memory is incredible. He remembered the fact that she was wearing a pink knit dress the day they met, and what song was playing in the background when he realized he was in love with her.

[00:11:33] So it connected me and my father. It connected me and her best friend, Marilyn.  And it just kind of brought me closer to not only my own family, but the friends that were dear to her. And what was really cool is that it felt like my mother still is around me.  This was such a therapeutic experience for me to not only digest and relive things, but make sense of who she was.  When the book was done, I was worried that I would feel like I was losing her. Like I would lose her again because what would happen when I stopped writing about her? She was the thing that I thought about every single day.  When I was done, what was that going to be like? And it, I have to say, I am probably more busy now than I was when I was writing, because I'm promoting it; I'm still talking about her. And this is probably exactly how she would've wanted it because she loved when people were interested in finding out about her. So she probably has had a hand in this too. 

[00:12:36] 

[00:12:36]Devin Davis: As she started writing her book, there were moments that were easy and there were moments that were challenging. And these are things that I can completely relate to as I write fantasy works of complete fiction. And as I have spoken to other authors who have been through the similar process of starting and completing a book, there are moments that are so easy to write, and there are other moments that are a struggle to get through.

[00:13:06] Caroline Helsing: I loved writing about the Catskills days. I loved writing about my experience with her towards the end, where I was traveling with her with the ashes. I mean, half the time I'm sobbing as I write it. So it's not like it was easy in that extent, but it flowed through me. I would say what was harder was  the first chapter, for example, where it's just like, okay, I just have to set this foundation. She was born here  I had to get to some extent that out of the way, the foundation of her mother and father. What was the most fun and enjoyable parts for me to write was the dialogue. And that's where I had my creative license. I was worried about writing about my father because my father is still alive and I didn't want to write anything to have made him take pause or sad in any way.  He is a very private person so that was my biggest thing. Especially when I had the story finished I was just worried about what he would think about, you know, anything I might have written, you know, he really helped me and set my fears at ease when he said," Listen, this is your memories of your mother. Yes, I'm private, but I'll just have to take that into consideration when I read it. You've worked so hard on this book." It was almost like he gave me the permission to release her story. Cause there was a part of his that I don't know, maybe I just wrote it for me, you know, I want him to be okay with it. 

[00:14:38]Devin Davis: One of the things that touched me, the very, very most in reading this book was Caroline's sensitivity toward her brothers schizophrenia. I have read many books with schizophrenia in them, either as part of the story or as part of the memoir. And I actually have close friends who deal with things that are similar to that.

[00:15:07] And the way that I had previously been exposed to schizophrenia in literature was that it was something to be feared, even though my personal own experience of it was not that way. It didn't always match that. And I loved that Caroline chose to make her brother's schizophrenia completely real. At the same time, it was just a part of him.

[00:15:34] It was just him.  It was simply a way of explaining some of his quirkiness and the way that he viewed the world. And she said that when they arrived at a diagnosis, things became so much easier and it was such a blessing to be able to work with him, finally, understanding how he operated.

[00:15:58] Caroline Helsing: Nothing like the movies, you know, it's not like he hears voices, but he is a little different. Other people don't have to deal with the struggles that he's had to. And I write about the earlier days before we had this diagnosis.  He would do things that we just kind of made you scratch your head, you know? And they were funny. They were funny. One of the scenes I write about was when he had stayed with  my father's ex-wife.  So he's staying with her and our half-brother for the summer. And anyway, he wanted to do something nice for them to say thank you. So he decides, "I'm going to paint the house and not just with one color, but with three." And it's just a simple white house, but he buys a can of yellow paint, a can of blue paint, you know, and he goes to town, just painting the trims.

[00:16:49] And I mean, so yes, he was quirky and funny. But he wanted to do something nice. He wanted the house to look really nice for my father when he came there to pick him up. But I think I wrote it with humor and love, and that was my intention. That was definitely my intention throughout. I wanted to tell the truth, but with love.

[00:17:06] Devin Davis: Not only did it help Caroline better understand her brother, but it also helped her mother too. And she shared that the relationship between her brother and her mother improved quite a bit after arriving at this diagnosis.

[00:17:22] Caroline Helsing: It really did kind of open up and connect deeper with my mother and they started traveling together. So it was nice that he was able to live a happy life. 

[00:17:33]Devin Davis:  So Caroline wrote the book, she published the book, but she had the entire work be only the story. There were no pictures. There were no maps. There were no visual representations of anything about the life of her mother or herself. And she did that on purpose. And I really liked the reason why she did it.

[00:17:56]Caroline Helsing:  Sometimes your imagination is a lot stronger. And it doesn't really matter exactly what she looked like. But sometimes like you just imagining something, it's more powerful. So I made the decision not to have pictures in the book.

[00:18:09]Devin Davis: When I first got this book, I absolutely devoured it. I was dubious at first about reading a memoir or reading a biography of sorts, but this was such a wonderful way to do it. She describes that she included dialogue and she made scenes and it was as if she took her mother's personality and reenacted some of these important things that her mother did when her mother was younger. And I loved the spirit that it brought to my impression of who her mother was and still is. And it brought me a more important impression on the love that she has for her mother and the wonderful  family dynamic that they all share.

[00:18:59] Choosing to take a fictitious spin on some of the things in this book was wonderful and it brought personality and it brought light and it brought interest and just a wonderful experience too, with a story of Caroline's mother. And it is something that I will consider doing when I write my own story about my life.

[00:19:21]I'm such a storyteller anyway. And so to take those experiences and to turn them into scenes with dialogue and action and create an actual story based on real memories and based on actual events is something that I love and is something that really, really speaks to me. This book was such a wonderful reading experience.

[00:19:45] Again, it is called Unapologetic: Tales of the Original Party Crasher, and it is available on Amazon. I got my copy on the Kindle. And if you wish to connect with Caroline, she has a website that I will include in the notes of this episode called www.CarolineNadineH elsing.com. And she is on social media with her full name on all of the places.

[00:20:16] Again, I will include links to that in the show notes of this episode. And otherwise that is it for today. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening to Caroline's story. A big thanks to all of my patrons. With our Patreon program, you can gain early access, an additional episode or exclusive time with me and other top tier patrons. Just go to patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse if you wish to support me on this podcast. The social media that I have for my writing and for this podcast is at@authordevindavis if you're going for Instagram and @authordevind for Twitter. And please take a second to leave a review on whatever you are listening to this podcast through. Thank you so much, guys, have fun writing. We will see you next time.

Check out this episode!

Villains and Plot!

S1E22 Villains and Plot

 

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The following is a transcript of this episode. The complete transcript can be viewed from the podcast website.

 

[00:00:00] Devin Davis: Have you ever read a novel where the main character should lose like a lot, but because the story needed them to win and survive at the end, they just never did lose? Well, on the other hand, have you ever read a story where the villain was so awesome that he probably should have won, but didn't? Well, then let's talk about villains and plot today on Writing in the Tiny House.  Hello, hello, hello! Welcome back to Writing in the Tiny House. Welcome to the show. I am Devin Davis. I am your host and I am the guy living in a tiny house who is here to show you that writing that work of fiction that you have in your brain is completely possible, and you should do it. Today we are discussing villains and plot.

[00:01:13] Last week, I told you that we would be discussing villains in action. This is kind of that. I was thinking about what action actually meant and all of the points that I had written down fed more into plot rather than just action, because villains can do just about anything you want them to do. But in the overall scheme of things, they play a very important role in the plot.

[00:01:38] Don't you think? So today I don't actually have a lot of announcements because things have been going pretty smoothly and there is nothing new to speak about. So let's dive right in to villains and plot. I have a list of four pitfalls to avoid when structuring your villain and your plot when you go to do the rough draft of your book or the outline of your book. The first thing to avoid is the hierarchy structure of the villain and his henchman. The reason why this is kind of hard to avoid is because we like it. We like the idea that once a bad guy is defeated that there is another bad guy who is stronger, who is more talented, who has more magical powers. And then once that guy is defeated, perhaps there's a third bad guy who is the villain's right-hand man, until we finally get to the bad guy himself. The reason why this is so popular is because it's easy to see, and it's easy to structure a series around. You have book one of the little bad guy and then it just gets a little bit bigger until book three or book five or book seven or however many books are in your series. You finally get to nail the main villain who is behind this entire problem the whole time. It is also a popular way to structure video games. You have the bad guys and you have the henchman and the little fodder guys that are easy to pick off and are not a very big threat.

[00:03:29] And in doing those things, the main character, which is you, gains experience points and gets a little stronger and learns some new things. And onward, the story progresses. However,  this is becoming cliche. This is certainly a trope that has been done time and time again. And it is more common to see villains more like people.

[00:03:58] It is more common to see heroes more like people. Like I mentioned in the previous episode, it is more common to see a flawed, main character and to see a main character make some dark decisions. At the same time, it is becoming more common to see a villain with redeemable qualities, or to see a villain who is completely justified in what they are doing.

[00:04:23] And so this structure, this hierarchy structure that you have to beat down the fodder before getting to level two before getting to level three on up to the main big boss at the end, isn't new. It's not fresh. And so find another way to structure the bad guys in your story, especially in your trilogy or in the number of books that you're going to be writing that are related to each other. There are a lot of ways to do it. And at the end of this episode, I'm going to share with you one of the most delightful ways that I found in all of the fantasy fiction that I've read in presenting to you actually a group of five books.

[00:05:10] It is a quintet. So stay tuned until the very end to get that little tidbit. So the second pitfall to avoid ,and granted, you should be avoiding this anyway, it's a thing called plot devices. A plot device, and the reason why I bring this up, this is actually kind of bigger, fundamental writing, but a plot device is a thing that happens only because the writer needs it to happen because something else needs to happen later.

[00:05:48] A plot device is usually pretty contrived. It sometimes can come out of nowhere and all that it serves is for the plot to move forward or to save the main character or whatever. It's these little unbelievable things that happen in order for bigger things to happen later, but that is all the good that they serve.

[00:06:16]One of the most popular plot devices that I can think of is actually in the Chronicles of Narnia in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The children are there in this barren wasteland of frozen ice, and suddenly Santa Claus appears and Santa comes bearing gifts of lethal weapons.

[00:06:39] If you think about it, Santa does not belong in Narnia. There are not other people like Santa Claus that populate Narnia.  There are granted a lot of other fantastical creatures and a lot of fun other characters, but Santa Claus himself does not belong there. And the fact that he appears at the very best time and comes bringing gifts that all of these children are going to need to save the day at the end is the biggest plot convenience I have read in a long time.

[00:07:14] Granted it's in a children's story and. We can have more plot conveniences in children's stories if we want to. That's fine. But in the more grownup stuff you get to pay attention to your plot conveniences. Some people call this plot armor. It's when the main character simply has to live because otherwise the book will end too soon.

[00:07:36] And so against all odds, they always win. Or against all odds, they and their central group of friends will win or will come out unscathed and you simply know that just because you know the story. And so it makes things predictable and it makes things unbelievable to a certain degree. 

[00:07:59] The reason why I bring this up on a villain's episode is because not only do you get to think of your main character when you are mapping out your plot, but you also get to think about your villain. When your plot is filled with these conveniences and these devices that make the main character always win, you get to see on the other side of that coin or the other edge of that sword, what it does to your villain, or how it paints your villain with these plot devices. Sometimes it can make your villain come across as pretty dumb or come across as way too complicated, way too overthinking things and not realistic in that way. Or it can cheapen such a better deeper experience with that villain if those plot conveniences were not included.

[00:09:03] One of these favorites that I like to call out in fantasy fiction specifically, I like to refer to as the wild card. It's when the forces of evil are upon us. And it looks like the forces of evil are going to win. And we are all in dire straights, but something out of nowhere happens. And it's big and it was not foreshadowed to begin with and it's unexpected and it's a surprise. And to an inexperienced reader, it's probably super awesome. But to the rest of us, it earns kind of,, an eye roll. I read a book once, I don't necessarily want to call it out on the podcast, but there was a situation similar to what I described. The forces of evil were about to conquer this special, magical place. And from out of nowhere, there came a spell that transformed one of the types of magical creatures living in this place into these big warriors. And so these little rinky-dink fairies were transformed into this army of warriors. And the spell happened, and it lasted just long enough for the forces of evil to be abated and for the day to be saved. And then the fairies shrank back down to their normal little fairy selves. The reason why I bring up these things is because  you have thought all of these wonderful things through with the villain, you have thought about the awesome ways that the villain is going to come in and threaten the safety of this or that magical place.

[00:10:52] And to throw in a wild card ending really cheapens all of the effort and all of the believability and all of the energy that you have spent trying to build up a believable villain. And instead the reader sits back and realizes that regardless, the villain will not win and it can take them out of the story and it can convince them not to carry on with the series or even to finish the book.

[00:11:24]The fourth pit fall that you get to pay attention to is the villain's backstory. Backstories are wonderful. I love a good backstory. However, it has been used a million times that every bad guy was once an abused little boy or girl. Every bad guy, every bad girl, every bad woman was abused when they were little. And while psychologically all of that makes sense, it is also something that is commonly found in all of literature. And what it can do is make excuses for the villain. If you want the villain to simply be bad and to simply be awful, there are other ways to develop backstory to that. There can be something amiss when they were little and they were involved in things that simply fostered that thing that was amiss. There can be interests that they were exposed to when they were little that carried with them as they learned magic or as they learned business, if it's modern contemporary fiction, or it can be a lot of different things like that.

[00:12:35] If you want them to be abused when they're little, that is fine. It is something that happens all the time in fiction, though, when we do get a good backstory to a villain. And I have read enough and read a wide enough variety of fiction to tell you that not every vicious villain and awful person and person who is threatening to destroy worlds or whatever, not all of them were abused by their dads. There are other ways to do it and to find those ways is fascinating and it makes the writing so much better and so much easier to follow along. And it really catches your interest and holds it there when it is new and it is fresh.

[00:13:24] So let me take a moment with this book review. I'm going to be reviewing the Cleric Quintet by R.A. Salvatore. R.A. Salvatore was one of my very favorite authors when I was in high school. I have since, now that I've gained  some more experience in reading and in writing, I've come to find that sometimes his magic systems are a little bit convenient, but I'm going to talk about this particular series of five books. They're five short-ish books, I believe, or five average sized books. It's not a monstrous series, but the Cleric Quintet is about this young man named Cadderly who studies at a library and comes to learn the big mysteries of magic. And over the course of five books, you see it happen and you really come to understand just how powerful this young man becomes.

[00:14:25] And it was a really cool progression to see it over five books and to see actual power happen and to see the learning of spells or the manipulation of matter, or whatever, was really delightful to me. At the same time though, and this is the type of villain that I love to see the very, very most, this villain starts out with Cadderly studying at the same library. This structure didn't have a school. It didn't have classes, it didn't have teachers. It didn't have that type of structure. It just had this library of knowledge. And everybody from everywhere came to this library to learn and to gain more knowledge that way.

[00:15:10]There was another young man studying alongside Cadderly, they weren't friends. And this young man is kind of an awful person. He wasn't talented. He was clumsy. Granted Cadderly was also clumsy. But over the progression of these five books, you watch this untalented jealous, horrible man, young man gradually become the darkest, most threatening monster that comes about in book five. And it is delightful to see, and it was so fun to read. And that is the type of villain that I appreciate the very most, where you see perhaps an amount of foreshadowing, you see character traits and you see people in the very beginning of the story and you think maybe this guy is going to end up being something bad or doing something awful.

[00:16:10] And over the course of it all, you see all of the you see the background, you see the story unfold, you see the reason why this person chooses to be where they are. And you understand their attitudes toward this or that. It makes the villain so much more believable and so much more awesome.

[00:16:33] It is this type of villain that I am choosing to write in my current work in progress, or at least as part of it. Right now I have two half finished books. In one of them, that's totally how the villain is going to be unfolded. And the other one it's going to be different.

[00:16:49] But that is how it is in this book. So if you are interested in checking out the Cleric Quintet, please follow the affiliate links in the description of this podcast episode. And yeah, I give this, I give this entire work of five books. R.A. Salvatore has written a lot of books. And like I said, he was one of my favorites in high school.

[00:17:13]He was one of the Forgotten Realms authors. Did wonderful stuff. One of his characters Drizzt Do'Urden, who was a dark elf, is considered to be one of the most liked in all of fantasy fiction. And this is written by him. So go ahead and follow those links.

[00:17:30] I give these five books, easily, four out of five stars. They were so much fun. But I reflect on some of the things in there and there was an amount of convenience to them, but it was a great read. It was fast paced and the magic and the fighting in RA Salvatore's writing is so much fun. It is so easy to get caught up in all of those wonderful moments.

[00:17:53] And that is it for today. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode .Thank you so much for my patrons, for the generous donations that they give every month. If you are interested in becoming a patron to this podcast, there are perks such as early access to these episodes an additional episode every month or exclusive time with me and other top tier patrons that you can have access to. Just go to patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse and sign up for one of the tiers today.

[00:18:23]Follow me on social media. My Instagram handle is @authordevindavis. My Twitter handle is @authordevind. And please take just a moment to leave a review on whatever software you are listening to podcasts through. Thank you so much for your time, and we will see you next time.

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Villains and Dialogue!

Today’s episode is all about the baddies and what they say!

Become a patron at patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to get early access, an additional monthly episode, and even spend time collaborating with me!

Today’s book is The Cabinet of Curiosities, by Preston and Child. Please follow this affiliate link to purchase it for yourself: 

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The following is the transcript for this episode. If you are viewing this through a podcast app, only the first part is available to you. But the full transcript can be read on the show’s website.

Transcript:

Devin Davis: Does your modern fantasy novel take place in 2021, but your modern villain sounds like he came from 1921. Then, my friend, we need to talk about villains and dialogue today on Writing in the Tiny House.  Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to the show. Welcome to Writing in the Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis, and today we are going to be talking about villains and how they should be talking. Again, I am a father of boys living in a tiny house in Northern Utah. And I am here to show you that the novel idea that you have bubbling around in the back of your head, it is 100% possible to write that no matter how busy you think you are.

[00:01:17] I know that a lot of my listeners are family people. I know that a lot of my listeners have full-time jobs. They have a lot of hobbies when they get home, they have kids, they have all the things. And so there are a million reasons not to write a book, but I am here to show you with this podcast that is entirely possible to write at least that one book. 

[00:01:40]With today's episode, I actually don't have a lot of announcements. I have been doing a lot of prep for the upcoming weeks with this podcast. Like I said in the previous episode, I've been interviewing my head off and it hasn't changed. And I'm excited about that. Interviews are awesome.

[00:01:58] Interviews are very well supported on this podcast and they bring such wonderful value to everyone, to  the listeners, to myself. It's fun to build those relationships. Additionally, it helps the podcast grow and it helps the guests grow, whatever it is that they're growing, whether or not they just finished writing a book, whether or not they are an editor, whether or not all the things, it's a way that we help each other achieve our goals.

[00:02:29] And I'm all about that. I think that's really good.  There is an African proverb that says, "If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together." And I just like that. It just the idea of linking elbows and everybody going across the finish line together and achieving our goals by helping each other out.

[00:02:53] I think it's a wonderful idea. Today, however, we do not have a guest. We have me and I am here to bring you the second episode of this series on villains. Like I said in the previous episode, villains are actually near and dear to my heart. I love a good villain. I love a convincing villain. There is so much value that a good villain brings to a story.

[00:03:20] And I am all about that. It's important to have a good, main character. It's important to have a good hero, but I would dare say it is equally important if you are writing the type of story that has a prominent villain to have that villain be amazing. So with today's episode, we're going to be talking about dialogue and I'm going to bring up four pitfalls to avoid if you want to write a convincing villain.

[00:03:54] This is not a comprehensive list. This is just what I think is important. For me, dialogue is a big part of any type of a story. I love dialogue. I love seeing the exchange between two or more people especially when they have different ideas and they help each other come to conclusions and help each other out that way.

[00:04:15] I love seeing an author conveying these different personalities, meshing together through dialogue. It's one of my favorite parts of any story. And my own work tends to be pretty dialogue heavy, just because I love that. I love establishing relationships through words like that, so the first item  on writing a convincing villain.

[00:04:39] So let's take a step back and let's think about your work in progress, or think about a really good book that you read recently, or even a good movie. What type of story was being shared? Was there a villain at all? And if there was a villain, was he or she prominent throughout the entire story and what type of cool things did they do?

[00:05:04] What type of cool things did they say?  If I bring up those subjects and they make you giggle, usually means those things weren't done effectively. And I'm sorry, but a bad villain is something to laugh at. Seeing bad dialogue and seeing a horrible cliche villain is actually one of my favorite things to laugh at. I'm kind of weird like that. I love a bad villain, almost as much as I love a good villain, just because they are a perfect example of what not to do.  

[00:05:33] The first pitfall that I have on my list is witty banter. If you are writing scenes where the villain comes into contact with the main character a lot it depends on the atmosphere that you are building in your story. If your story is witty, if it's funny, if it's making fun of a cliche, then witty banter is fine. However, an exchange between a villain and a main character, you need to really pay attention to what their relationship actually is. If they knew each other beforehand, it's possible that they would say more to each other during these encounters while the main character is trying to foil the villain. For instance, if the villain is the dad or if the villain is the neighbor or a teacher or something like that, it's entirely possible with that pre-established relationship that they would talk to each other or that they would have more to say, or the tone of the conversation would be more desperate, more pleading rather than more demanding, or there would be more of an attempt to find common ground. That means that if this prior relationship exists already, it needs to be established in a really good way before these other encounters, when this character has stepped into the role of the villain. Otherwise,  the witty banter, the back and forth smart crack of the whip things, if that is the tone of your story, then go for it. Otherwise I say, don't do it. For me, it makes a lot more sense to have a villain say nothing if the villain and the main character encounter each other, but don't know each other. It makes a lot more sense to me if under the pressure of whatever this big master plan is going on, that there would be a lack of words and there would be a lot more emotion without the words. And that's something that I personally would avoid. Again, pay attention to the overall tone of your story though. 

[00:07:56] The second pitfall is wordy or unnatural insults. That kind of goes hand in hand with witty banter, but it seems like the old school cartoon villain always had something stupid to say to the main character, to our hero. Sometimes it rhymed. Sometimes it made fun of their outfit. Sometimes it made fun of their special ability.

[00:08:24]I don't know. I remember a lot of recent superhero movies though, where the insults were pretty on the nose and pretty bad. And I personally don't like that. To have that type of really bad crappy insult really puts me out of the story. And I personally wouldn't do it. I like things to be more believable than that.

[00:08:50] And that is usually the tone of my book anyway. I tried to make it as realistic as I can, even if it is a fantasy story filled with magic. I like the relationships to be authentic. And so insulting someone? Well, first of all, if your superhero is wearing underwear over their tights, and then they're in a cape, I think that can be done away with, and I think that you already realize what type of a problem that would be. But make sure that the insults are believable and make sure they're not wordy. Wordiness isn't okay, guys. When we try to create emotion around a person or around a situation or around an event that's happening, sometimes we think the best way to build that emotion is to say a lot of words and to say like five words when we could say only one instead. I was recently critiquing for one of my critique partners.

[00:09:46] And she was so excited about this chapter that she sent to me. And it was kind of a wild chapter. It was a dream sequence, a nightmare sequence where like every other page was a different scene in this dream sequence. And the main character was super confused. And then a few paragraphs later, she would be in a different place and she felt really unsafe and didn't understand what was happening.

[00:10:15] And then at the end there was the really big villain. And the big villain was saying stuff that a real person wouldn't say unless they had a prior relationship. And I was sure to note that in my critiques for this critique partner. I said, make sure that your villain is a person before they are a villain.

[00:10:38]We are not writing Power Ranger episodes, and we're not writing 1950s superhero comics anymore. Unless you are. If you are, that's fine, then you can disregard this entire episode. But make sure that they are a person before they are a villain. And the same can be said with your hero. Make sure your hero is a person before they are a hero.

[00:11:01] And so with some of the dialogue in this critique that I did for this critique partner, I went through and just made little notes out in the margin saying if you can follow what your villain is saying with that evil maniacal laugh, I mean, I, I don't really want to do it into the microphone, but if you can follow what they said with that evil maniacal laugh, then you need to change what they said, because that evil, maniacal laugh has no place in your book. Or at least it shouldn't, it doesn't have a place in my book. So avoiding wordy and complicated and unnatural insults and other just language as well, also weak language.

[00:11:50] So this is the third pitfall that I have on my list. Weak language. A lot of us think that all language needs to be flowery and that all villains need to speak properly. Especially if it is a villain who is doing the master plan type of thing. If he's a big, strong brute, sometimes we naturally tend to give him different dialogue and to say things differently. But if he's the secret elaborate plan maker, if he's the guy who is taking over the world because he is smart and he has this intricate plan to do so, we tend to sometimes think that that guy would speak with proper English. And with kind of older English, I have been reading a book recently that is fantasy. It takes place in kind of that typical medieval Europe fantasy world, where a lot of fantasy novels take place. And the dialogue between the hero and the king and the King's evil advisor, those stock characters, is not natural because they're making it old. And the thing is they don't need to make it old.

[00:13:18] They can have it be more natural than that. I'm not saying that they need to modernize their dialogue much, but the thing is, the world is made up already. And this place, even though it resembles medieval Europe, it is not medieval Europe. And so the dialogue can be whatever you want it to be.

[00:13:40] And so it doesn't need to necessarily have the references to pop culture and it doesn't need to have the slang and whatever else, but when they start referring to things in a really old fashioned way, when we start talking about well, when we start whipping out the insults that my grandmother would use, I don't think that is as convincing as just better natural language conversation, to be perfectly honest. And this is another thing. One of the things that we come up against as a writer is we find that our writing tends to be really revealing of ourselves.

[00:14:20] I read a meme the other day, that writing is supposed to be embarrassing in the way that it makes us feel naked. And that suggests that as a writer, we get to be brave. And for many of us, sometimes that gets to involve our relationship with language, and sometimes our relationship with swear words.

[00:14:45] If you don't want to use foul language in your book, you certainly don't have to. It is 100% possible to write a convincing villain and a good hero and a wonderful world without having foul language if you don't want it there. If you want to appeal to a younger audience and have it be cleaner than that, that is 100% up to you.

[00:15:04] However, I'm going to paint a picture on purpose to demonstrate a point. If you have a villain, and she grew up on the wrong side of town, and she has a drug problem and she beats her kids. And at the end of the book, it finishes with her killing her husband. And yet the F-word tends to make her clutch her pearls, I don't buy it. I'm not saying that you need to incorporate the F-word into your book, but that was a big obstacle for me to face. And I have a villain kind of similar to the situation I just described. And I don't know, growing up on the wrong side of town and a drug problem and whatever, whatever else, just painting that picture of a rough bad guy. And then thinking of the language that they would use, I got to kind of get over my apprehension of using strong language, just because I don't use strong language like that. I don't use strong language towards my kids, but it made sense that he would. And so it was one of those things where I could either have clean language or I could have the proper effect. And I couldn't choose both. I didn't want to choose both. And so I got to kind of swallow my apprehension with the foul language and I got to include it in my manuscript. I'm not saying that I'm going to keep everything that's there just because I'm on my first draft, but you may encounter a similar problem.

[00:16:49] If you are a more proper person who uses more proper language, or if you would never dabble in some of the things that you want to include in your book. Like if you have always been straight laced and you've never done drugs, or if you never had premarital sex or whatever, if those things are not a part of your life, you may not want to include them in your book.

[00:17:16] But like I said, Sometimes you get to either choose between the content you leave out or the effect that you want to have, or that you want to convey to your reader. And it's just something to consider. I'm not saying that every scene needs to have the F word or that every scene needs to have sex or that every scene needs to be some grownup harsh thing.

[00:17:41] I would never say that; it's your story. You get to write it the way that you want. However, if we sit back and we consider these things to be more like tools that convey a specific emotion and reaction to our reader, then suddenly they're not so scary. And language is one of those tools. I understand that strong language offends many of my readers, or at least it's not something that many of my readers would use all the time or whatever, especially towards their kids or towards their loved ones. And so I very consciously get to pick and choose the type of language that the bad guys or bad women, whatever, in my manuscript get to use, because I know that that type of language conveys and inspires a very specific reaction to many readers.

[00:18:34] So kind of a long rant there. The final thing on my list is the closing monologue. And this is a cliche that has been made fun of a lot in many superhero movies, specifically the Incredibles from Pixar. The first movie, we know that at the end Syndrome has the family kind of arrested and detained and he starts monologuing and it buys the family some time to do something. And then Syndrome catches himself in the monologue. The thing is, the pull towards the final monologue is actually very appealing if you have not structured your story to not need the closing monologue. The reason why we want a closing monologue is because we want to show the reader just how clever we have written this villain.

[00:19:31] We want to reveal his backstory perhaps, or we want to reveal every step of this elaborate plan that just got foiled or is on the cusp of being revealed to us on the cusp of being accomplished. We as the writer, we want to convey to the reader just how genius this guy actually was. And a closing monologue seems like the good way to do it.

[00:19:58] However, my friends, there are ways to avoid the closing monologue. You can have clues along the way. You can have an investigator or another person reveal this or that. You can have the bad guy's right hand man abandon that side of the conflict and join the other side and then share secrets.

[00:20:18] There are a million different ways to do it, but the closing monologue is something that we have read enough of and it has been made fun of enough that you don't get to include the closing monologue in your fantasy novel with your villain unless you want to. If you do choose to include it, prepare to have snobs like myself call you out on it.

[00:20:44]And that brings us to today's book review, just very quickly wrapping this up. The book that I want to bring some attention to is The Cabinet of Curiosities by Preston and Child. This book is a mystery whodunnit thriller. And so the nature of books like these is the actual villain of the story is in the shadows and not revealed until the very end.

[00:21:16] So why would I mention this book in this episode specifically? The reason why is because there are so many subplots in this book that tend to bring conflict and to clash up against one another. And as those subplots figure themselves out and get resolved and move the story forward, there are so many conversations between people who are antagonizing each other.

[00:21:51] So there's the investigator. And then there is the institution getting in the way of the investigation, or the people trying to shut down the museum, or the person working at the museum trying to keep their job. There are a lot of different examples like this. And so, in a way it's like there's a handful of mini villains running around throughout this book.

[00:22:13] This has very good examples of dialogue between people who are causing trouble for each other. People who have separate agendas and want to achieve those agendas and are trying to stop each other and are trying to get ahead and get away and whatever else. And so it, it has wonderful, believable, fun dialogue throughout the book that's not just insults and awkward accusations.  There are a lot of wonderful things in this book, but this has a very good example of dialogue between people who hate each other and are getting in the way of each other. And it's good. This book is wonderful.

[00:22:59] This is a part of a collection of books. Preston and Child are two authors who wrote many books with this common FBI investigator as this common thread throughout the books. There are a lot of them and this one is possibly the most successful of them all. It's hard to say. But the collection is called the Pendergast novels.

[00:23:29] Pendergast is the gentleman who is the common investigator throughout all of these books. And like I said, they, they are all whodunnit mystery thrillers. So that is what I recommend. I definitely give this book five out of five stars. It is wonderful. And check it out today.

[00:23:48] That is it for today. Thank you so much for joining me with this episode of Writing in the Tiny House where we discussed villains and dialogue. The next episode is going to be on villains and action. We're going to talk about the entire secret elaborate plan and how that gets to look, or at least the things to avoid when developing your own secret elaborate plan for your villain.

[00:24:11] So thank you for joining me again. If you want to support this podcast, feel free to sign up with our Patreon. Go to patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse and sign up for one of the tiers today that comes with its own perks. Again, thank you for the patrons that I already have. And for the generous donations  that you are sending to this podcast every month. Be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram handle is @authordevindavis. My Twitter handle is @authordevind, and we will see you next time. Thank you so much, guys. Have fun writing.

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All About Villains!

 

A complete transcript of this episode can be found in on the show’s website.

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Devin Davis: Because we all know that in so many stories, the good guys wouldn't be as awesome if they didn't have an equally awesome bad guy. We are talking about villains today on Writing in the Tiny House.  Hello, hello, hello! And welcome back to the show Writing in the Tiny House. I am Devin Davis. I am your host and I am the guy living in a tiny house in Northern Utah, who is here to show you that despite how busy you think you are, that one book idea that you have bubbling in the back of your brain is completely possible to do.

[00:00:59]Over the next few episodes where it is just you and me, I am going to put together a series on villains. We're going to talk about why villains are awesome.

[00:01:11] We're going to talk about believable villain dialogue. Backstory actions, all the good things, because villains are awesome. But first let's do some announcements with the podcast. We actually have a brand new patron who signed up to support this podcast. His name is Sam. Sam, welcome aboard. Thank you so much for your generous donation.

[00:01:36]Sam and I actually go way back. I know Sam, we have been friends for a long time and I was just so excited when he said that he was going to be signing up to become a patron through Patreon with Writing in the Tiny House's program with Patreon. So welcome aboard. Thank you so much for your donation.

[00:01:58]Also a quick shout out to another podcast. I just want to mention the podcast called Finding the Magic, with Trisha Copeland. This is a podcast dedicated entirely to interviewing authors and talking about their books.

[00:02:14] It can be found on, I think this one is exclusively on Anchor. But go ahead and see if it's found everywhere else too. And it's a good one, guys. It is definitely one worth checking out. 

[00:02:27] So this episode will be coming out the Wednesday after Independence Day. I hope that you guys had a good federal holiday. I certainly did. It has been spent putting together a lot of content for this podcast. I've been doing my darndest to get all the interviews lined up and done and interviews are really good.

[00:02:50] Interviews are special. I love the interview episodes. They bring so much value to this podcast and they are actually the episodes that are the most supported. I have been interviewing my head off over these past two weeks to get more of that content here, just because it's something that I enjoy and it is something that has proven to be valuable for all of you as well.

[00:03:17] In the meantime, though, there are still plenty of episodes where it's just going to be you and me and over the next few, it's going to be me and you. And we're going to be talking about villains. So let's go ahead and get into the main body of this episode.

[00:03:32] So let me tell you my story when it comes to villains, what made the villain such a unique part of my enjoyment of fiction? This actually goes back to high school. Yes. I am going to tell you about the magical time that I was in high school. And the Broadway musical Wicked just came out. And of course I bought the soundtrack.

[00:04:01] I knew all the words I went and saw Wicked here in Utah, the instant that it was here playing. And the reason why I bring up Wicked is because of the unique take that that story has on who the villain is. So for those of you who are unfamiliar with the musical Wicked or unfamiliar with the book that the musical is based on, the book is called The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.

[00:04:32] The book was hard for me to read, but the musical was wonderful and I would take anybody to see the musical, including all of my kids. The reason why this carved a wonderful, beautiful little space in my heart for villains is because the main character Elphaba is treated like a villain. She is actually the main character.

[00:04:53] She's the person that we are cheering for, but she is misunderstood. She is a victim of circumstance and the entire city notices that she is different and because she is different and because she is powerful, she is treated poorly. She is treated with violence. She is treated with bias and with fear and with all of the horrible things that you could treat a person.

[00:05:22] And so towards the end of the story, or at least I guess the second act, she says "Fine! If this is what you think I am, then this is what I shall be!" And I love that. I love a good villain and my love for villains grew from my experience that I had with this story of Elphaba. And it was from there that I came to really appreciate everything that a good villain brings to the table in a good work of fiction.

[00:05:56] Now, granted, there are plenty of works of fiction that don't have a villain just because the story may revolve around some other form of conflict. It could be disease, it could be a competition. It could be other forms of trials in a person's life. Or it could be that unseen villain, like going up against an institution or something like that.

[00:06:22] So not every work of fiction has a villain, but when it has a villain, I feel that it gets to be a good villain. And that matters.

[00:06:32]With more and more people coming out with fiction with fantasy fiction, with these more epic battles, there gets to be good villains and the classic space opera-- I'm talking to you, Star Wars-- this space opera is where there is an obvious good side and an obvious bad side. And the heroes are pure good heroes and the bad guys are pure bad guys. And there is never confusion about that. With the more recent movies of Star Wars that have come out, they're starting to become more nuanced than that. With the original many episodes and original many movies, it was that classic space opera of the good guys are the good guys. And they're always the good guys.

[00:07:25] And then the bad guys are the bad guys. And now that so many people are writing these epic genre-specific stories, we are beginning to get more nuanced characters and especially more nuanced main characters and better villains. It's becoming more common to see a main character that has a dark side, or that sometimes chooses darkness or chooses a bad thing or chooses to hurt someone. But they're still the good guy. And they're still the person that you're following in the story and kind of rooting for. At the same time you get to see them make these dark decisions. Also it is becoming more common and I'm so grateful for this because of the color that it adds to the storyline. It is becoming more common to see villains that have redeemable qualities, even though their role in the story is not redeemable. Or a villain in their secret identity, they're a family man and they're a good dad and a good spouse, but behind the scenes, they're like ruining the world or you can see a villain who is doing what they're doing, but they have a completely legitimate reason for it. And that adds such wonderful flavor and wonderful complexity to the storyline itself. When you have this guy who is not so obviously evil, it becomes so fun to kind of feel out what do I really want to get out of this story? Or where do I find myself in this conflict? Am I really siding with this main character who's kind of a jerk sometimes? And he was written that way on purpose. Or am I siding with this villain who has a completely legitimate reason to do the things that she is doing? And I get it. Under the same circumstances I would hope that I would be courageous enough to do this too. And so it can be this big, moral dilemma that can kind of rip you apart.

[00:09:42] And I love that and I love the excitement and the confusion, and just the wild ride of being taken on this emotional roller coaster. I love the dichotomy and I love having to choose or to do some soul searching, to see if this was a real circumstance, where would I be? Which team would I be batting for?

[00:10:08]So for today's book review, I am going to talk about a book that is near and dear to me that was released very recently called The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, by VE Schwab. This was released just a few months ago and it was one of the first books that I read in 2021. And I knew after I finished it, that it would be one of the best books that I would be reading in 2021. The writing style of this novel is incredible. VE Schwab has definitely built for herself a name in fiction, and she has built it from the ground up. She has done an amazing job and this book, I'm not going to pretend that this book is perfect or complete in all aspects, because it is not. But there is profound beauty found within this book. And the most beautiful parts, I believe, are the exchanges between the main character Addie LaRue and the bad guy, Luc. So I'm not going to give away all of the premise of this book, just because it is something that I want you to go out and read. But the entire premise of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is it is a deal with the devil trope. The devil comes in every other chapter and has a thought-provoking and meaningful conversation with Addie LaRue, where they discuss life and they discuss morality. And it is the most wonderful thought-out villain that I have read in such a long time.

[00:12:03] So add The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue to your To Be Read list today. And I hope that when you read it or if you've already read it, you can share with me your thoughts of the bad guy, Luc, just because I want to hear what you think. It was one of the most impressive things about the story for me, but I want to know what you think, and I want to know what you thought about him as a villain. So be sure to join the Facebook group of Writing in the Tiny House and share with me your thoughts. I give that book and easy five stars. Like I said, the book is not flawless in all respects, but it is definitely a five-star book.

[00:12:49] So go ahead and check that out today. And that is it for today. Thank you so much for joining me with this episode of Writing in the Tiny House. Again, I am Devin Davis and thank you for listening. A big thank you to my new patron, Sam. Welcome aboard.

[00:13:05]If you want to join the Patreon program, go to patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse. Go ahead and sign up for that today. Also that special shout out to the podcast, Finding the Magic, with Trisha Copeland. You can catch me on Instagram. My handle is @authordevindavis. And the social media things, the links are all in the description of this episode. So thank you for joining and we will see you next time. Have a good one guys.

Check out this episode!