There’s an adage that everyone is the hero of their own story, and I think the key to writing interesting villains is to embrace that idea.<\/p>\n
Take Thorn of Dentonhill<\/strong><\/em> for example.\u00a0 (Sorry, it’s a book I know really well.)\u00a0 Willem Fenmere, the crime boss of the Dentonhill neighborhood, is definitively the villain.\u00a0 But at the same time, one could easily write the same events as a book that’s embedded in his sympathies.\u00a0 Here he is, a successful underworld boss who’s built an empire, and some mysterious upstart, outside of the system, starts chipping away at it.\u00a0 At first it’s just a nuisance, but it quickly escalates.\u00a0 How and why is this happening to him?\u00a0 Is it an old score being settled, or just the inevitable result of being the old man at the top of the ladder?<\/p>\n I actually like writing my antagonist POVs, unless something in the story structure takes it off the table.\u00a0 (A Murder of Mages<\/strong><\/em>, for example, wouldn’t be much of a mystery if I just showed you the killer’s POV, right?)\u00a0 I think it goes back to my theatre and acting background. \u00a0\u00a0 Villains are the most fun, after all.\u00a0 Heck, some of my favorite scenes in Thorn<\/strong><\/em> are where Fenmere is dealing with the Blue Hand Circle.<\/p>\n The best advice I can give for writing villain POV is to write them like you want the villain to win.\u00a0 At least for that moment. Don’t give them stupid mistakes for the sake of propping up the hero.\u00a0 When you’re in there, writing that scene…. root for them.\u00a0 And that’ll come through in the writing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n —<\/p>\n Just a reminder, I’m at Boskone<\/a> this weekend.\u00a0 Check out my schedule<\/a>, and come say hi!\u00a0 I don’t have a signing period scheduled, but I’ll gladly sign any copy of Thorn<\/strong><\/em> shoved into my hand at any reasonable moment. Though I do stress: reasonable moment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There’s an adage that everyone is the hero of their own story, and I think the key to writing interesting villains is to embrace that idea. Take Thorn of Dentonhill […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":667,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666\/revisions\/667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrmaresca.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}