Why?

I'm a people-watcher at airports. I buy magazines to flip through, but more often than not, I give up on the magazines and watch people--eavesdropping on occasion. As a novelist, I consider it my job, I guess, to figure out what makes people tick. People fascinate me.

But sometimes . . . I encounter people I can't figure out at all. Recently, I edited a book on psychopathy. One of the great things about editing is you know a little bit about an awful lot of stuff, hence I would make a good Jeopardy contestant, and chances are you don't want to play against me in Trivial Pursuit. As I was reading, one of the facts the author explored was that psychopathy is more widespread than most people assume. And then he gave some examples of psychopathic behavior. As I was reading, all the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I hadn't been able to QUITE put my finger on what troubled me so much about someone I know, and now . . . I KNOW. It was clear as day. This person is a psychopath.

And therein, for me as writer, is sometimes where I struggle with character. I have no problem creating my good guys. It's the bad guys I have problems with. There are those who commit crimes or behave badly, and they have a back story that you understand--abusive childhood, say, or victim themselves at one point. Doesn't excuse it. But at least you can sort of understand the roots of it. And then there are those you meet and you can ask "WHY" they are a certain way until the cows come home and you are never going to get an answer. Those are the people who scare me. And those are the villains in books who scare me. And those are the ones I have such a hard time identifying with that writing them is difficult for me.

Maybe it's just that I don't want to "go there." I am never going to be able to write certain kinds of books. I just don't want to. I like the motivations of my characters to make sense to me. I want the good guys to win. I want to understand their actions. But there are BAD people out there whom we will never understand. And they're the ones I want to steer clear of. In writing and in life. They are bad just BECAUSE.

What about you? Do you write about the dark side? Does it scare you? Fascinate you? Do you have to know WHY?

How Do You Like Your Bad Guys?

I just finished reading Ken Follett's The Hammer of Eden. Interestingly, for such a best-selling author, this one was pretty badly reviewed both by critics and readers. And I can see why. I had some SERIOUS plausibility issues with this one.


BUT . . . the first 50 pages, just about, are the bad guy--his motives, his story, his childhood, everything. And he is one darn sympathetic bad guy. I felt sorry for him. Really.

And it got me thinking. There is the boogey-man bad guy. The one mostly off-stage except for his handiwork. That kind of bad guy is frightening from a God-like complex standpoint. Powerful and unseen, maybe even unstoppable. He can seem super-human.

Then there is the bad guy like Priest in The Hammer of Eden . . . who is misguided but has a twisted idealism at heart. He is horrifying in his insanity--but there's an element of brilliance to his insanity, a piece of it that is relatable. You see him up close, and it's hard to avert your eyes. There is a charisma about him.

So how do you like YOUR bad guys??

Creating Villains

One of my children today, out of the blue, guessed the identity of someone whose duplicitous behavior I had intended to shield from them. I was kind of stunned that my child brought it up, since it's a person who is outwardly quite friendly. Which shows me that (a) my kid is both intuitive/smart, and (b) people can expend a lot of energy pretending they have pure motives or that they are something they are not (or any of a variety of public/private masks elements), and chances are, they're not fooling everyone.

Which got me thinking about villains. I am toying with a YA proposal with an obvious villain, but I will likely have a betrayal in the book--in other words, NOT an obvious villain, and of all the things I have to pull off in writing, this is one of the ones I struggle with the MOST.

Since I know who the bad guy is, I have a hard time not tipping my hand. But if I try to write it as if I DON'T know who it is, then it can feel false--not enough of a hint. And I have to admire the authors who REALLY pull this off. It's a true talent for the plot twist. Me? Not so good at that.

Not only that, if an author (or movie) pulls it off for ME, then they are generally really, really good since I spend a good portion of any thriller movie, book, or even cop show (hello, Law & Order), trying to figure out the bad guy!

So who does this well? Have a book or movie that really "gotcha"? Anyone else struggle with how to clue people in to the bad guy? Or even the maybe-bad guy who is actually the good guy?

And, while I'm on that topic, one thing I loved about Severus Snape is that complexity--and I thought Alan Rickman was brilliant in every movie. He didn't quite fool me (I assumed he was deep-down good), but the complexity was wonderful.

What I Learned from Vietnamese Soap Operas

You haven't lived until you've watched Vietnamese soap operas on tape--and you don't speak Vietnamese.

I have taught ESL at different points in my life as a volunteer. As I get ready to open an ESL school one night a week, I think back on all the things my students over the years have taught me. I've taught Vietnamese immigrants, Cambodian refugees, a smattering of Brazilians, one man from Korea, and now hopefully a class of Mexican and El Salvadorean immigrants. My students have cooked for me. They have made me laugh and made me cry. A lot of both. I know a smattering of words in all the languages, but not much. Somehow we communicate in a universal language of love and patience. But Vietnemese soap operas are in a class by themselves.

I used to sit with my students in their house--a family of ten--and have tea and we would watch. The beautiful young bride forced into an arranged marriage to an evil and ruthless businessman many years her senior. And then . . . the evil woman. I remember the matriarch of the family tell me, "She very bad. VERY bad." And I had to laugh because the evil lady didn't have mere fingernails. She had long, red, laquered TALONS. And she wore a skin tight dress, and had a heavily made-up face. And she glared at everyone while causing trouble. And of course, she pulled the hair of the beautiful young bride and made her cry.

What made me laugh is the family I taught was very intent on explaining who was good and who was bad, as if I couldn't figure it out on my own. And how, even not understanding a single word of the soap opera, I knew. Heck, they are just like our soap operas, from what I can tell. We might not costume up the evil ladies, but we see their arched brows and conniving expressions. So I have spent many an hour watching Vietnamese soap operas and realizing . . . we're all the same. And what does it teach about writing?

Our themes are universal. Good is good and evil is evil.

Another thing I learned? You have to have someone to root for. I can honestly say, bemused though I was, I wanted that sweet bride to take down the evil lady. I wanted the bad businessman to fall from grace, or better yet, drop dead, freeing the sweet bride to marry her love back in her village. I rooted for characters--and all 11 of us couldn't wait for the next episode (which were bought on the bootleg black market of videotapes found in a Vietnamese section of D.C., where, believe it or not, you could also buy T.B. medicine to ship home to Vietnam). Without someone to root for, do we really care?

Another thing? It's a cycle of conflict . . . glimmer of hope . . . conflict . . . glimmer of hope. You watched, virtually exhausted by the storyline--but then, there is that glimmer of hope. The village love getting a message in a simple flower left on her bed to the bride.

And those bad guys . . . watch out.

So . . . the question for the day . . . is how are you depicting the bad guys in your book? Long laquered nails and evil smiles?

My bad "guy" is a virus. But it's a virulent one that shows no mercy.

Motivating the Bad Guys

I can't finish the David Baldacci book. Can't. Do. It.

Maybe it's because the book was written in 1999, but the bad guy . . . I just have seen him before. For all I know it's because OTHER writers have copied Baldacci and I am just late to the party. But the ruthless CIA director who wants to hide his secret funding for the war on terror, who does it because he loathes the FBI . . . I just ain't feeling it. What I actually liked about the CIA guy in this movie was how off-kilter Phillip Seymour Hoffman was (and face it, the guy could act out my grocery list and be brilliant). I know it was based on a true story, but his oddity made him real (and obviously, in that movie, the CIA were the "good" guys).

I like oddity. I AM oddity. But I digress.

Not finishing the book? This started me thinking about the motivations for the bad guys. And how cliched they can get if you're not careful.

My best friend Pammie was trying to read a thriller about a guy who was kept captive on an island because all the covert stuff in his head was too dangerous if we were somehow caught by the other side. Her reaction? They'd just double-tap him and kill him. I mean, come ON! (And I have a SNEAKING suspicion my best friend leads a double life as an assassin, because man . . . ruthless about believing in the double tap).

Bad guys do not give soliloquies and stand there for fifteen minutes telling you their motivation so the hero can rush in and KILL said bad guy. I hate when that happens.

So what motivates bad guys? And what makes for DIFFERENT motivation?

There's bad for the sake of being bad. Generally, what makes these bad guys different is their creativity. I mean, who will ever have chianti and fava beans ever again?

There's bad for a cause. What is imperative here is that the writer make you absolutely believe, 100% that someone would do very bad things for the cause.

There's bad for delusion. Same thing. It falls to believability.

There's bad for personal gain. I believe this motivation quite often.

And in all these cases, either the bad guy must feel personally torn--and that must be shown effectively. Or the bad guy feels NO guilt, in which case, you damn well better make them EFFICIENT. No soliloquies. Efficient killers are quick and ruthless.

Thoughts? Had a bad guy recently been very well-portrayed for you? Or hopelessly cliched?

And I bet you're jealous that YOUR best friend isn't a secret assassin.

The Perfect Villain

Oh, what the heck . . . continuing with this series of posts, what makes the perfect villain?

My answer to this has changed over the years. A lot. I think my answer has changed in direct proportion to life experiences, to things I've witnessed, maybe, to how I have changed as a person. Call it my Villain Journey.

You see, I used to, when I was about 25, 26, 27, 28 . . . read exclusively--and I mean exclusively--serial killer thrillers. Thomas Harris . . . Derek Van Armen (I don't believe he ever wrote another book after his first, brilliant Just Killing Time book), a couple of John Sandford's tossed in. Then, one night, I was reading Just Killing Time and I got the medical condition known as The Creeps. I couldn't shake 'em. The Creeps took over and soon, I was an insane woman, checking under my bed, in my closet, locking and re-locking all my doors and windows. I even checked under my couch, which, for the record, was TWO INCHES of space, but I thought perhaps a serial killer could have taken out some of the stuffing and secreted himself away in there. I checked in my washing machine. In my dishwasher. I knew, for me, there was one cure for The Creeps. STOP READING TORTURE PORN. Because that, to me, was what it amounted to. It seemed, again to me, that most of these books were evolving as ever more creative ways to torture people, to prolong their anguish. And I was "done." I haven't read one since and don't ever intend to. Serial killers may be the "perfect villain"--just not for me.

So I moved on. I became enamoured of this series by Robert K. Tannenbaum--until eventually his ghostwriter left it and the books, frankly, started to suck. Nonetheless, I like the D.A. character in this book, and there wasn't one villain but many. So it became more about the hero matching wits with various villains. However, in a couple of them, conspiracy and politics were woven so my new villain was the Zealot.

Zealots scare me. Look at this story from CNN today. People like this terrify me. I don't want religion in my kids' classrooms. If I did, I would pay to send them to a private religious school. But there are Zealots of every religious stripe, and every cultish belief. And I consider it a form of insanity. So . . . they became my new Perfect Villain.

Finally, I am working on my newest work in progress, which I have not even announced the sale of yet, mostly because I've been so busy. And the tagline is that it's a tale of obsession. In it, at one point, a jealous man destroys the ONE thing a woman loves. My new villain model is the lover or friend who betrays. The husbands who kill their wives, the wives who put arsenic in their husband's oatmeal. Somehow that idea of the "perfect" facade hiding sinister secrets (like the Scott Peterson case) intrigues me.

So that's my Villain Journey. What's yours? Who is your Perfect Villain and why?

Intimate Evil

No, I am not talking about Demon Baby. I'm talking about villains.

I realize, right now, as I am more stressed than I have been in a long, long time, that what is worst about my stress is how it presses up against me. When I lie down at night and say my prayers, it presses against my chest. Because some of my stress has to do with something happening with one of my kids, it suffocates me. It's there, constant, and though I pray and "give it up" to the Universe, it's all around me sometimes. That's how it is when you love people fiercely.

And that pressing against me, almost physical, is what I am striving for in one of my works in progress. My hero is up against a conspiracy, and it threatens him. And it presses in, closes in, suffocates, raises the stakes at every corner. Can't breathe, can't think, can't run, can't escape it.

I think the scariest evil is that. It invades your space. It's intimate. It's not "out there" but coming closer to hearth and home. It's the stuff of nightmares, isn't it? When I think of some of my recurrent nightmares, they are consistently that I am hiding from evil (usually in the form of a serial killer in my dreams, occasionally wandering post-apocalyptic bands of evil people--such are dreams). And I must hide in small, claustrophobic places. Waiting to be found. In tiny places. Heart pounding. And then weighing my situation. Do I make a run for it? Go out in the open? Risk coming out of hiding to find a BETTER hiding spot?

Okay, sure, I can page Dr. Freud regarding my dreams. But really . . . as I step back and look at what I am trying to accomplish in my writing, that's it. Intimate evil.

So how do you raise the stakes in your writing?

Bad to the Bone

None of us likes being around mean people. One of my kids is saddled with a bully for a teacher--it's only every other day, only for one period (well, actually a double-block period). But it wrecks my kid's day. Which sucks. I wish I could tell him people like that are a rarity, but I know they're not. He's an Everday Villain. In my little world, I have the Mean Mom in the neighborhood. I actually have come to the conclusion--call it a hunch--that she is Mean Morning Drunk Mom. Which is sad. But she's not the first Mean Mom I have met--not by a long shot. Nor will she be the last. And Mean Morning Drunk is a "type." So is "bully." As writers, we are probably better than some at analyzing traits. Pull together a series of traits, and voila . . . you have a character. So when I see Mean Morning Drunk Mom and she has her coffee cup, I secretly, as writer, wonder what's in it? Is it vodka? Is it a shot of Bailey's in her coffee? Baileys AND vodka? Then I wonder . . . does she go back to the house and sit and watch soap operas all day in a sleazy negligee? (Yup, writer's imagination!) Actually, I know she is in sales, so THEN I wonder what she is like to her customers. Maybe she stores a fifth of vodka in her top desk drawer and slurs while making calls. And suddenly, I have a character. I can't help but think all sorts of things about Bully Teacher, NONE of which is appropriate for a PG-13 blog. But . . . that's the writer in me. I invent stories about bad guys and Everyday Villains . . . and invent stories about the good guys, too. But . . . all of this got me thinking this a.m. about bad guys and types. The Bully. The Nasty Drunk. Snippets of "bad" that get to go into books. But there are as many different bad guys as there are people, and we color them with nuances and their own particualr brand of crazy. However, I started trying to compile a little list.

TREACHEROUS TYPE. In the dictionary, this one is characterized by faithlessness or readiness to betray trust; traitorous, or deceptive, untrustworthy, or unreliable. Now, in romantic comedies, I would say you use this type one a lot if you have a nemesis for your heroine. The treacherous friend who betrays the main character and sleeps with her boyfriend. In darker work, it's the person on the team who's ready to double-cross. They have their reasons, sometimes for money, sometimes for jealousy, maybe for fame or for ego. This type of bad guy is less overt, usually.

EVIL. Actually, in the dictionary, this one is wicked or immoral. WICKED . . . makes me think of Dorothy's nemesis. It can also mean arising from the NATURE of evil, specifically, "the force in nature that gives rise to wickedness or sin." That's the devil, folks. Or the belief in a force of good versus a force of evil. To me, this category includes the Hitlers of the world. It strikes me as more of a force. In BLOOD SON, the leader of the vampires had actually survived the genocide in Hungary, witnessed mass slaughter, and it colored his world. The force of evil gave rise to genocide then created this monster who then became a force unto himself.

SOCIOPATH. Here we go with Hannibal Lector. "Someone whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience." These are the bad guys who can do extreme wrong and feel no guilt. They are NOT conflicted. So if you have a conflicted bad guy, he's not a sociopath.

NARCISSIST. Oh, I know one of these. Unfortunately. "A psychological condition characterized by self-preoccupation, lack of empathy, and unconscious deficits in self-esteem." Self-preoccupied, yes, most of us know that part of the definition. BUT see that lack of self-esteem thing? That drives it. God, these people are difficult to be involved with. They make interesting characters--again, paying attention to the second part. The unconcious that throws a curveball of self-loathing.

GANGSTER. Guess what? In the dictionary, this is just a "member of a gang" or a member of organized crime. So the reason in many of my books that these guys are family men and have a gentle side as well as a dark side is gangster is more of a profession. Now, what leads a person into this line of work varies, but it does not have to be one of the categories above it.

Okay, so you get the idea. Right now, in my current work in progress, I have EVIL as my bad guy. He split the clan, and he is motivated by an almost animalistic hatred. He is a force.

However, I am doing a proposal with a narcissist in it--a mother who never was able to love her child because that would have interfered with her life's work. And am playing with a romantic comedy in which there is a treacherous enemy who wants to undermine my heroine's business by any method.

What about you? Got any other bad guy types? There are plenty. Plus there are some that pick and choose from different types. And add to that there's an entire host of psychological disorders that form the basis for bad behavior--everything from borderline personality disorder, to alcoholism, to drug addiction, to . . .

So? How do you serve up your bad guys this morning?

Gollum

There is an incredible lesson to be learned, I think, from the character of Gollum/Smeagol, created by J.R.R. Tolkien.

He, at first, seems hopelessly vile and evil . . . but then, he has a truly pathetic, tragic, deeply sad back story. So much as you hate him and mistrust him, there is a part of you that feels compassion. You feel torn.

I think any author or moviemaker that plays that gray middle--neither black nor white, but some middle ground where the morality is far more complex and muddled, has created something deeper, more reflective of the real world. To be able to play on emotions like that takes skill. But real life is so much like that. Someone you love profoundly wounds you, and much as the simpler path might be to cut them from your life completely, that is the path for cowards--sometimes. The more complicated path, the one that DEMANDS more of you as a human being, often is the one in which you feel for their mistake and try to save them, or try to forgive and move on. Or make yourself vulnerable again because of unconditional love.

In my current work in progress, one of the main characters has done the most awful thing I think a human being can do. She has murdered. But . . . there is a complicated, and I hope Gollum-esque journey, that brought her to the precise and broken place where the choice she made seemed sane to her. Thought afterward, like Gollum, she became a pathetic version of her former self.

Anyway, that's what I am hoping for. And Gollum is the example I am keeping in mind, though my book is not fantasy at all.

Thoughts?

The Allure of Evil

I watched The Departed last night, and some of the funniest lines were spouted by the bad guys.

How's your mother?
She's on her way out.
We all are. Act accordingly.

F*ck yourself, you piece of sh*t.
And I need the identities of your undercovers.
Blow me. Not literally, though, unfortunately there's no promotion involved.

I laughed out loud. And that, is the allure of evil.

I had more than one reader tell me that they were bothered by how much they liked Uncle Two in The Roofer. Or even Frank. They're murderers. No questions asked, no guilty consciences. But they're loyal guys with totally sick, dark senses of humor--senses of humor that I share.

But does that mean I am glorifying violence? It's a question asked every time Scorsese makes a film. It was a question asked about The Godfather trilogy. It's asked about The Sopranos. And as I work on The Devil's Agents, it's something people COULD ask. But I don't. I never wonder whether I am glorifying violence. Because I'm not. I'm merely depicting it in full, round detail.

Evil is alluring. It's that simple. If it wasn't, people wouldn't sin, if you want to get all Biblical about it. Having an affair--easier than working on a marriage. Taking drugs--easier than facing your problems. Killing your estranged wife--easier than getting a divorce. At first. That's how evil sucks you in. Then it gets hard and twisted and difficult. But first . . . it has to be alluring.

Bad guys can be funny. They can be daddies. Not fathers, but dear, sweet, wonderful daddies who pick their little girls up and twirl them in an "airplane." They make sacrfices for their families sometimes--families they adore. They kiss their wives. They make love. They sit down and say grace around the dinner table. And they also kill without much thought. THAT is the reality of some gangsters. And if you play it that they don't have the humor and the allure, then you miss out on their charm, and then you miss out on that particular nuance of the story.

If some adolescent kid decides the violence is something beyond cool . . . and does something about it? That points to that particular child's upbringing, genetic makeup and so on. But the artist--filmmaker, author--was right to depict evil as it IS, not as people want it to be. People want their bad guys wrapped up in an evil bow. Like a sign pointing--EVIL HERE. But more often than not, bad men are alluring.

That's how they entice you. That's how little girls believe their daddies are all heroes even when they're out at night shooting other bookies for invading their turf. That's how they get new recruits. That's how they operate.

Thoughts?