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:
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment