How To Build A Better Villainess

The female hero can be tough, brainy, powerful, plain, pretty, big, or small. She can be a female Dresden where love never quite works out, or make her man prove himself worthy before she accepts his love. Female heroes have substance and kick all kinds of ass. On the other hand we have the female villains that are so clichéd that most authors won't touch them. So how do we build a better villainess? First, we strip her down to the bare bones. If we remove all the specific details and focus on what motivates the female villain then, there are three traditional types:

1. The Covetous Type

Now, there are covetous male villains, but when it's one of only three types then it is way more noticeable in the female villains. And it is almost always about the superficial: a certain "perfect" guy, another female's physical appearance, or social position. These villains aren't gold diggers, they genuinely think life would be perfect if only they had what they want. Money rarely enters into their thinking. They are usually very shallow and vain individuals. Oh, and stupid but this is a giant problem with all most female characters.

The Fix
Coveting is all about hating your life. Show why the villainess covets, a Cinderella style life but instead of Cinderella being a sweet girl hero, have her be the villain and the hero or heroine be people who never notice how hard her life is. They don't have to be mean to her, but just have a perfect life and be oblivious to her suffering.

2. The Mean Girl/Vengeful Female

The mean girl likes to put people down for fun. While the vengeful villainess wants to get back at people for some petty slight. He loved you more than me; I'm going to make your life hell. You didn't give me the proper respect so, I curse you. My biggest pet peeve about these villains is how unsympathetic they are. Guys get to be vengeful for anything under the sun: illness, criminal behavior, being slighted, being tormented, or simply being replaced. And honestly, vengeance is motivation for both hero and villain in the male arena. Is the need for vengeance unfeminine? Is that the reason the motivation has to be ultra feminized--i.e. being attractive to a man; getting a man. Vengence is great motivation for a villain no matter the sex.

The Fix
There are horrible things that happen to only women, and they are never touched as part of a traditional narrative. What if the Frog Prince isn't cursed over something petty, what if the witch was righteous in her vengeance--how does that change the narrative. Female heroes and villains both need to run with the vengeance is mine. Anger, hate, rage are forces that can pull down empires and fuel heinous acts. Whys should the guys have all the fun?

3. The Crazy Woman

No rhyme or reason for what she does, she can eat children or just steal them as payment. She usually has a break down and no motivation behind her actions at all. She can obsessive, self-destructive, manipulative, cunning, but she is always crazy. Female hysteria has had its day. Mental illness is a good motivation for a villain, but it has to be researched and follow the guidelines of that illness.

The Fix
She can't just be crazy. And this is true for any mentally ill villain, there is no crazy any more. Does she hear voices? What kind and who? Mental illness has a rhythm. Bipolar, PTSD, and Schizophrenia all can have temporary breaks with reality, but they have different triggers and symptoms. Don't be lazy. One of my favorite shows, Law and Order: SVU has actually done a couple of really great female villains, the child psychopath and the Muchausen by proxy mother are particularly memorable.

So that's all the villain choices we have traditionally, but it is a new era and time for the story to change. So I propose a few more categories that are traditionally male but women could really rock.

The Zealot

• The female freedom fighter who does terrible things in the name of freeing her country.
• The eco-terrorist who targets farms in the Amazon and manipulates the media.
• The politician who manipulates the fear of the public to keep them safely under her rule.
• The ring leader of a group who cannot stand non-conformity and tell about the lengths she goes to keep everyone in line and how she punishes those who break the rules.
• The hacker that will expose the tainted underbelly of the government, only to be shown that modern society doesn't want to know, and what she does after she escapes from prison.
• The religious/cult leader who is utterly convincing in theology but ruthless and insane in practice

The Sympathetic villain

• The female who would do anything to keep her family safe.
• The witch who really is justified in her revenge.
• The sellsword who hates everyone and is justified in that hatred.
• The mercenary female that takes a building hostage just to rob state secrets.
• The ugly woman who loves being ugly, and finally snaps on the hero that can't abide her ugliness.
• The gorgeous woman who knows she's gorgeous and takes revenge on a world that tells her she's ugly.
• The female mobster that is both kick ass and smart.

The Ruthless One

• The information broker that knows all and will sell all for a price.
• The anarchist who wants the world to burn.
• The female judge who is a complete and utter hard ass because people think she'll be soft because she's a woman.
• The female doctor that manipulates the criminally insane to plague the hero.
• The female sociopath who manipulates and kills because people are mindless dolls for her to play with.
• The animal torturer who just wants to hear bones break.

Building a better villainess is all about building a character that just happens to be a villain. No one acts without motivation, and the best thing to keep in mind is anyone at any time can be a villain to another person. Imagine the devil/angel scenario, the villain can make the devil choice on most of her decisions, or just on really important one. While the hero is on the sides of the angel most of the time or just once. In Deadpool, Colossus says a person has 3 or 4 chances to be a hero. So, too can a villain or villainess.

I love villains, but I'm always disappointed in villainesses. The narrative is slowly changing with television and movies, but books have got to get with it. Women need to move out from the sidekick and tag-along role especially on the antagonistic side. It's time for the curtain to be pulled back to reveal a fully fleshed out woman in the driver's seat with her own journey and story that is determined to make this trip to OZ Dorothy's last.

My top 10 advice for Writers

I'm very proud to be a beta reader, and I would love to tell you about my fabulous authors who I love dearly if you had a couple of hours. Instead, I'll share some advice I've given them that I think all writers can benefit from.

  

1. Be Brave. In your novel, you're God. Don't hesitate to hurt your hero: make her miserable, make her crawl, make her fail, and make her bleed.

    Writing Prompt
Think of the worst possible scenerio, the hero alienates her allies or gets separated from them, the love of her life is killed, and then she dies. Now write it. Kill her over and over again until you no longer feel bad about hurting her.

 

2. Focus on plot.Write out your plot using the establishment of character, inciting incident, advancing action, climax, declining action and denouement graph format. One scene at each point, then fill in the rest of the scenes. If it doesn't fit in the graph or your graph looks lopsided then something needs to be deleted. This is important even if you are going to do multiple books. Each book must contain all the elements of plot, and the series is tied together by loose ends and subplots. Subplots follow the same pattern but must be stretched over multiple books.

Writing Prompt
Create a story using a single five word sentence. This will teach you brevity.

 

3. Research is your friend. Research doesn't have to be all boring statistics, or reading history books. Try to learn new things just so you can be accurate, like sword fighting or horseback riding. Read books that relate to your subject, not just genre fiction.

 

Writing Prompt
Part One: Write a descriptive scene of something you are already familiar with: cooking, writing, art, playing a sport, etc. Be sure to include all the five senses as well as feelings you have. Part Two: Read a book about the thing you experienced first hand. The book could be a biography of a famous chef, a history of football, or a philosophical discussion on the importance of art. Part Three: Brainstorm all the ways you can possibly use the research.

 

4. Follow your heart not trends. You don't have to write in a certain genre just because it is popular. E.L. James started writing with fan fiction. J.D. Robb was a best selling romance author. Their hearts guided them to new places, and they found success.

  Writing Prompt
Many story ideas can be taken in different directions. Take a classic fairy tale break it down and spin it in a new direction. An example: A cursed girl awakens with the arrival of a boy, but he doesn't know she was cursed with good reason.

 

5. Know your characters and world. Not just their physical characteristics, but what makes them tick. And yes, I'm including the world in the previous statement. It's not just enough to know where everything is at. You have to know what makes Winterfell differ from King's Landing.
No place is generic, what Tokyo and Western North Carolina look like, sound like, and feel like in the dark when no one is around are what make those places live in the readers memory. Even the rural Appalachian areas of West Virginia and Georgia have their own characteristics, their own cultures, and we know if you know them.

Writing Prompt
Your main character has landed in a new world, and a character from that world has taken her place. Write a world you know. I was thinking a swap with Eugene from the Walking Dead, Shaggy from Scooby-Doo, or Regina from Once upon a time could be interesting. Take a character totally opposite of yours. How do they survive in your world, interact with your other characters, and then flip it and make their world and characters react to your lead. If there are no conflicts weaving these other characters into the story or adapting them to the world then you need more definition. Regina is awesome but she'd scare the living daylights out of Peta. The touching berry scene would be her forcing him to eat the berries, so she could go home. Katniss would blend in easily in the Enchanted Forrest, but she would have problems adapting to the rest of Regina's life.

Characters, relationships, and worlds are cogs in a story, replace one cog with a different one and you could bring the machine grinding to a halt.

 

6. Action, action, read all about it. What is pivotal to the story and what is unnecessary? Vonnegut said "A sentence must do one of two things--reveal character or advance the action." An example: He didn't want to be a wizard, tells the reader nothing. Versus: Wizards were charlatans and thieves who preyed on the weak minded. This sentence sets up the world and the main character's viewpoint. Be definitive. Don't say a character is cursed, show me that she can't even form a lasting relationship with a half-dead, blind, three legged mutt without it being stolen in the night by her enemies. Make me cry over that dog.

Writing Prompt
Write a love story that has no dialogue--internal or otherwise. Chance Meeting, First Date, First Kiss, First Moment they fell in love, Being in Love, and Living Happily Ever After. How does one convey emotion without saying a word or having a voice over? Up did it perfectly and Wall-E could only say his name.

7. Why are you repeating yourself? Forget restating anything from emotional landscape to qualifications. Readers get tired of repetition quicker than anything else, whether it's a word, an emotional conflict, or the same sequence of solving the main problems in the series. This happens to seasoned authors as well as novices. Next time, the repeat seems to be on try this exercise.

Writing Prompt
The repeated sentence: John is a dog. Describe John's life without saying he's a dog. Use the thesaurus to describe the brindled lethargic canine. Write John's internal dialogue: how does he view his human? does he have a human? does he have pack mates? Are they dogs too or is it an assortment of animals? Play with John's point of view and narrative voice: have him be dumb and lovable, sarcastic and witty, submissive/dominant, gullible/curious or absolutely apathetic. Explore John and all the ways you can describe and expound on his mongrel ways. Now do this with whatever you are repeating, something will shake loose the repeat button.

8. Be Realistic Your story could be about cat people from the planet Zoobe, and you would still have to be a realist. There are always rules. Gravity, government, religion, physics, or culture we are surrounded by rules. This goes hand and hand with world building, but it also brings in causality. How A affects B is just as important as customs. Which animal are they like: Tiger, Lion, Cheetah, Lynx or house cat. Each cat is different in social structure, hunting technique, mating rituals, and habitat. This also ties in to research, but you must go beyond that to come up with the rules, and you must never break them. If the cat people are like Lynx, they can't magically survive in a harsh dessert environment. That is what creates conflict and conflict are what makes stories great. Hey, gravity is a rule, but the stories of the people who dare to defy it and the consequences to themselves and our world make for great watching--Apollo 11, Gravity, and The Martian.

Writing Prompt
Write the rules. Option 1: Have another person write a story following all of your rules, and showing the consequences of following them or trying to break them.
Option 2: Write a story with multiple characters breaking a cardinal rule, and show the consequences. You could have a pair be punished as severely as possible, have another think they have escaped the consequences only to have their decision come back to haunt them, and have one bend the rules in a way that has lasting effects.

9. Be critical or at least listen to your critics. There are haters, and then there are critics--do not confuse the two. Haters have nothing to say, while critics have taken the time to dissect your writing. Just because you don't want to listen to your critics doesn't mean you wouldn't benefit from allowing them to rip your writing to shreds. Is your female lead a good role model? Was she supposed to be? If so, here's where she failed utterly, and maybe she should seek counseling rather than a boyfriend or husband. And that's not really being a hater. I can think of several authors who are world famous who need this advice. I'm not naming names but, they are publicly known for disliking any sort of criticism on their books. All criticism is "haters" to them and their books suffer because of it.

Writing Exercise
Write down every criticism you can. Post anonymously to a writing forum, ask a reader's opinion, and send off that story you have been keeping close to your vest. Ask for honest feedback. Anything from: it just didn't hold my interest to the main character has no redeeming qualities can make your writing better. Remember the five keys: Pacing, Plot, World, Character, and Writing. Any of these can be fixed if you can see that there is a problem in the first place.

10. Everyone who writes should have a text to speech program.This is priceless advice that my college professor said I would benefit from, and I've shared it with several of my authors. Being able to hear what you have written helps with sentence flow, missing words, and sentence agreement. Spellcheck doesn't fix what it doesn't know is broken. He and the are both words, but they are not anywhere close to the same word.

Writing Exercise
This needs to be done on a document at least 5 pages in length to be really noticeable. First read the document aloud, fix anything you notice. Then feed it into a text to speech program, I've used several free programs over the years. The program must have adjustable setting so you can control the speed of the speech, an area where you can copy and paste to, and must hold its place in the document if you have to pause the recital. Most will be able to handle a chapter, but not a book. You don't want to listen to your whole book, anyway. You'll follow along reading as the program is speaking, that's why the variable speed is important. You want to be able to hear and read the word at the same pace--trust me. As you listen to the machine, you'll notice hesitations some will be the machine, but some will be awkward wording. This is especially good to catch non-agreement. You may correct the word in your head, but the machine reads what is on the paper.

Did my advice help? Did you notice anything that I missed? Drop me a line or comment below.