Hello, writers. Sorry I didn’t get to participate much last week—last week was crazy. Anyway, things are calmer now.
The last couple days I’ve been working on my villain.
I enjoy him immensely. He’s polite, cultured, a thoughtful host (at least if he decides not to kill you), and not, in his humble opinion, evil.
Ooh, he’s so evil.
But if someone asked him why he was doing what he does, he wouldn’t say “Because I’m evil! Because I must RULE THE WORLD!” He would say “Because it’s the right thing to do, of course.”
As we’ve discussed before, your really worthwhile villain thinks he’s the hero. Ideally, the story could be rewritten from his point of view and he could be the hero. (Or at least a convincing protagonist.)
Nobody’s going to ask my villain why he does what he does, fortunately. He’ll just have to live his point of view instead of ranting it. The evil-villain-reveals-all scene is, as he himself would say, passé .
You know the scene I mean. Before the villain dumps our hero into a vat of acid/allows him to be bitten to death by his giant snake/drops him into the pit where demons will devour his soul, he rants out a long rant in which he obligingly ties up any dangling plot threads. He does this even though it would be in his best interest to off the hero now and rant later.
Nowadays we have to work a little harder.
But in tonight’s challenge, let’s go retro. Write that rant.
Our hero(ine) is dangling over a vat of blupping chocolate laced with deadly high fructose corn syrup. The evil Lord Twinge is explaining why, for the greater good, our hero(ine) must become a giant bonbon.
It can be a one-sided rant or a two-sided dialogue, but Lord Twinge’s explanation can’t be “because I’m evil” (even though he is). Lord Twinge thinks he’s doing the right thing.
Oh, and try to engage at least three senses.
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