Author Archive: jsomers

Villains are fun. Every story needs an antagonist, but not every antagonist qualifies as a villain, of course; villainy requires a certain amount of malice aforethought and purposeful evil. Simply resisting the desires of the protagonist doesn’t make you evil, after all.

Villains are fun, especially in a sci-fi or fantasy setting, because you can go all 1966 Batman on them and give them wonderful costumes, gadgets, powers, and evil genius. The same goes for monsters, which aren’t always villains and aren’t always your antagonist—but they’re just as fun. It’s great to make them scary, to imply apocalyptic doom walks behind them.

The problem then is that urge we all have to explain our villains and monsters. To give them backstory and psychological underpinning, to explore potential sympathy your readers might have for them. And while this can yield rich literary fruit, it also opens you up to Villain Decay.

The Slipper Slope

Villain Decay is when you overexpose your Big Bad and thus reduce their effectiveness. Put simply, the more we know about your villain or monster, the less effective they are. In horror movies the best monsters are the ones we only catch glimpses of. Hannibal Lecter was a much better villain before endless sequels gave him all kinds of history and justification for his cannibalistic psychosis.

The more you know, the less interesting they are.

In the recent films Guardians of the Galaxy, the character of Nebula played by Karen Gillan isn’t a major character or villain, but you can see Villain Decay in full effect. In the first film, she was a psychotic, merciless enemy. In the second, she suddenly pines for her sister, and shows far too many flashes of humanity to be a real villain. Part of it is the urge to put conflicting characters together in order to see the sparks fly; the problem is that once you have your villain team up with your heroes for mutual goals, you can never go back. You’ve reduced your villain and they will never be as scary again.

This isn’t a rule or anything, just something to think about. Villain Decay isn’t inevitable, but if you’re thinking of humanizing or deepening the back story of your villain, you should be prepared for the fall out—and be prepared to find a new villain.

Language can be pretty simple stuff, as when you ask someone what they do and they respond “lawyer” or “carpenter” or “rodeo clown.” But language can also be complicated stuff, like when someone asks me what I do and I say “writer” and they cock their head like a bewildered puppy and very clearly wonder what that means, exactly.

The occupation of “writer” is as much a lifestyle affiliation as a profession, sometimes; people just like to call themselves writers because of the implied intellectual and artistic acumen. What’s the qualification, though? When do you get to call yourself a writer? Obviously, when you write something. Whether it’s a haiku or short story or a 1,000,000-word novel about tiny superintelligent kittens in top hats who spend their time being exceedingly polite to each other in exponentially increasingly complicated ways, the moment you have begun and finished a written thing you, sir or madam, are a writer.

Unless you don’t let anyone read your stuff. Then you’re some sort of Schrödinger’s Writer.

Show Us the Words

We all know that so-called writer, the one who shows up for the writing meetups, talks endlessly about their novel, and describes themselves as a writer—but never allows anyone to read anything, much less tries to publish it. That’s their prerogative, of course; there are any number of reasons why you might not want to share your work. But if you don’t share your work, what’s the point? If you write a novel and nobody reads it, does it actually exist?

In a sense, no, it doesn’t. I’ve never understood not showing work around, or trying to sell it, or, hell, giving it away if you can’t find a buyer. If you don’t let anyone read it, then it dies with you, and in a sense never existed in the first place.

I don’t care if you make money from it. I don’t care if you sell a million books or you manage to give away three copies. For me, the only way to be a writer is to allow people the chance to read your work. Otherwise you’re something else entirely.

This topic was suggested by Jon Gawne.

There’s a prevalent theory among some folks that typos—those tiny mistakes you make while typing your genius fictions or your skillful cover letters and queries—are dealbreakers, in the sense that any self-respecting agent or publisher will immediately direct your work to the trash if they note a single instance. The general idea being that a level of superhuman competence is required if you want to be a writer.

This is not true. I know it’s not true because I am one of the least competent people in the world, and my work tends to be riddled with mistakes and typos.

The Riddler (See What I Did There)

The first novel I technically sold (though there was no money and it never actually published, but contracts were signed) was sent out lacking a half dozen pages, and yet still managed to gain someone’s interest. Even today, when I am a Titan of the literary world, my agent mocks me on a regular basis for the typos in my manuscripts, letters, emails, and social media. And yet it hasn’t slowed me down a bit, because there are these wonderful people called Copy Editors. And yes, you need one.

What it boils down to is simple: You as the writer don’t need to be perfect. You need to have a manuscript and communications that don’t look like a drunk illiterate wrote them—but they don’t have to be perfect. Using “its” when you mean “it’s” once in a 500-page manuscript isn’t going to disqualify you. Heck, having dozens of typos won’t disqualify you, as long as they’re clearly oversights and not representative of a writer whose language skills are theoretical at best.

The Humorless

Will you possibly run into an editor, agent, or other literary personage who will reject you for a typo? Sure, and fuck ?em. While everyone has a right to run their shop along any standards they wish—and while I will stipulate that there’s a difference between the occasional typo and a manuscript that’s obviously not worth reading because of the lack of care or understanding involved in its writing—if you’re going to reject my work because of a misplaced comma, or a misspelled word, or that time I passed out while revising and didn’t notice I’d pasted in 6,000 words of a non-fiction article I was working on, then I probably don’t want to work with you anyway. Because I will have typos, and make mistakes, and accidentally send you a version of the story that’s 3 years old.

I want partners. Publishing a novel or a short story isn’t like accepting a minimum-wage job or something, it’s a collaboration. Part of that is copy-editing and proofreading to clean up my rough edges, and I want to work with people who have a sense of humor—and perspective.

Friends, I am not a young man any more. Some might argue I have never been a young man, that I was born with a tumbler of whiskey in one hand a complaint about the Designated Hitter Rule cued up. Let it drift: However young I once was, I am no longer, and it almost doesn’t matter because I’ve never been much of a Youth Culture guy.

When I was a young’n my sainted Mother once got very annoyed with me when I went through a phase of ending every sentence with the word “man.” As in, hey, is dinner ready, man? or why do I have to do homework when people are starving somewhere on this planet, man? Like, she got really annoyed and launched a campaign to stop me. Which was devastatingly successful, because you did not mess with my Mom on the rare occasions she felt strongly about things.

Anyway, that might explain why I’ve always been slow to pick up on slang and the hot new speak of the kids, even when I was a kid. Which of course complicates things with the writing.

Things With the Writing

Slang is tough when you’re writing fiction. On the one hand, if handled well it adds oodles of what literary scientists call verisimilitude. Not to mention flavor and a naturalistic rhythm to your work. But, if handled poorly it all backfires and you are Steve Buscemi in a meme.

<MEME>

The hardest part for writers is the fact that we’re writers, which means we’re linguistically curious by nature. So when we hear some bit of slang, we’re intrigued, and sort of naturally pick it up and start playing with it, because words and the evolution of language is fucking fascinating. This does run the risk of appearing ridiculous, say by being a middle-aged white man who suddenly starts referring to his wife as bae or fam all the time.

You have to keep this in mind while writing, especially if you’re trying to make a young character feel hip and contemporary (ed. note: if this is your goal do not use the word “hip”). Using some slang you’ve gleaned from overheard conversations and Internet forums might seem like a great idea, unless you use them incorrectly—or if you stumble over cultural lines and wind up in Appropriation Land, or pick up slang without the necessary context and get into serious trouble.

So, your best practice with slang is to resist. Resist until you absolutely can’t resist any more, until the temptation is too powerful, then give in just enough to scratch that itch. Then back away rapidly and go back to using language the way it was intended, you filthy animal.