Hot damn, I’ve been busier than a cat on a hot tin roof. Normally, Your Humble Author here likes to move at a stately pace, a princely sort of slow motion that affords plenty of time for dignity, breath-catching, and refreshment. As a young lad playing Little League Baseball in Jersey City, I learned a valuable lesson: When I try to move fast, I look awkward, and sweat copiously. So I always try to keep my pace steady. Otherwise you might spill your drink.

Recently, though, that’s been hard to do. I’ve just had a lot of physical-labor type work to do recently (the joys of home ownership) leaving me with a lot less time to do my usual. As some of you know, I try to write a short story every month (well, try is a bad word for what is really a compulsion). Forcing yourself to write stories means you grab onto any piece of inspiration that floats by, and you worry about how good it is later. Usually years later, because fresh prose is pretty vitriolic and might explode in your face while you’re handling it. You also can’t think too hard about the provenance of ideas: In other words, write the damn story and worry about how original it is later.

First off, just because someone else had an idea first doesn’t mean you can’t do it better. And second: There is nothing new under the sun, only things we didn’t know about before. Trust me: The chances that the central idea in your latest story has been done somewhere, some time before are pretty goddamn good. People have been writing, in all languages and cultures, for thousands of years. You’re simply not smart enough to outsmart the rest of the world. The flip side of that is when you have a story you really like and think it’s got that certain something to become a great story, a sold story, and then … someone else beats you to the idea.

My best example of this is actually a novel I wrote some years ago. I like this novel; not sure it ever would have sold, but I like it nonetheless. It involves a force of human marines securing an alien planet in order to extract vital resources from it, while fighting and subduing the indigenous race, and eventually everyone realizes that the planet itself has a  consciousness.

Right: Basically Avatar. Except in mine, the aliens are horrible, screaming demon-like creatures who tear the marines to pieces. Still, if I tried to market this book now a lot of folks would likely think I was just copying James Cameron, and I would die of shame.

The only way to handle shit like this is to shrug it off and take your base: There is simply no way to avoid occasionally sharing your ideas with other folks in the universe. As a matter of fact, a lot of books and movies out there are just riffs on old ideas anyway – there’s nothing weird about that. And since there’s some question about just how great the plot of Avatar is, anyway, maybe I should be happy that my novel remains in my desk drawer, unseen. Thanks, universe!

I’ve been hard at work writing the fifth Avery Cates novel, which is the last in this series, which means I’m wrapping things up and settling scores. Which also means I’m going to have significant page-time with the main villain. So I’m pondering villains in stories – especially SFnal stories – these days, exacerbated by the fact that the TV show Lost is also wrapping itself up, and also dealing with villain issues in the form of Ben Linus’ character. For those of you who watch the show, you know what I mean; the last episode “Dr. Linus” dealt with Ben and his descent from power on Craphole Island.

Villains are tricky. They’re like monsters in horror movies: Usually the less you see them, the less you know about them, the better it is. The more familiar we become with villains the less scary they are, either because their supposedly awesome powers are revealed to be not so awesome after all (because the hero usually defeats the villain, thus putting into question just how tough the villain was to begin with), or because we learn something about the villain that humanizes them (awww, they have a child! awww, they love kittens! awww, he could have let the hero die horribly but he saved him!).  Villains usually do have backstories, but it’s generally best to keep those backstories vague and mainly for the use of the Writer. I mean, if I’m writing a story, it’s good that I have some idea why my villain behaves the way he does. It’s usually not useful that the reader knows, however.

Part of this is the simple fact that your reader’s imagination will always have better special effects and more meaning to them than your own. If I give you a vague, menacing villain with some pithy dialog and dark hints about their abilities and backstory, you will come up with something on your own that is better – for you – than anything I’d come up with. Because your imagination is tailored precisely to your own likes and your own squicks. The moment I start filling in blanks, I’ll invariably select things you don’t think are so cool, and thus my villain decays.

Part of it, though, is simple familiarity. In a serial fiction, either a series of books or a TV show, or even a movie series if it goes on long enough, the villain has to have screen/page time, even if you put off the final encounter with the hero. Take Ben on Lost: This is season six, and Ben’s been around a lot, and he’s been one of the more popular characters. As a result he’s had a nice arc, and we’ve learned a lot about him, and recently he seems to be inching closer and closer to redemption, which kind of sucks. While I admire the way the show’s writers have maneuvered him into being a sympathetic character, I mourn the loss of the villain. He was much more fun as a character when he appeared to be a cold, ruthless manipulator rather than a tortured, unhappy soul.

The ultimate problem, though, is that readers/viewers want it both ways. They like their villains to be badass and unbeatable, they want the hero to beat the villain, and they want to know about the villain. The longer your series goes on, the more you have to reveal about the villain (otherwise you risk them becoming a humorous caricature of evilevilevil) and as a direct result the less impressive your villain becomes. If this goes on long enough, your villain often has to switch sides and go hero, like, transforming from Vader to Skywalker. This can be a dramatic moment, of course, but it does leave you with Villain Vacuum. You can then come up with a new villain, even More Awesoma than the previous one – but that trick only works once, maybe twice, and then you start to have a rather comical collection of ex-villains puddling about, looking less than impressive. This wears out your audience sooner rather than later, trust me.

The solution: Well, there is none. If you’re presenting a standalone story, of course, it’s not a problem at all, because your villain is going to get it in the end anyway; by the time your audience starts to get to know the villain, you destroy him. In a series, however, you will suffer Villain Decay, unless you’re okay with your protagonists being useless little pricks who always get beaten. Which you might be. The hero winning all the time is so predictable, after all.

Something Nick Mamatas says in a post at his journal about vanity publishing and the Harlequin debacle in general resonated with me:

“What is great about writing is that an ordinary working-class person can do it without substantial investment. Other art forms such as painting, photography, music, etc. require sometimes significant outlay and purchasing paintings and instruments and such also requires a pocketful of money. With writing, you can do it on the cheap.”

For me, this also means that it’s one of the few art forms where I don’t have to collaborate. I hate collaborating, and writing was instantly the way I could create something without having to deal with anyone else’s input. Writing is one of the few artistic venues where it’s just you. You don’t need any special training (really, you don’t), you don’t need any special tools (like an instrument), and you don’t need anyone’s help. I think most writers start out as kids, just sitting in their rooms or something and realizing they can tell an entire story, with special effects and trick shots, with just a stub of pencil and a piece of paper. That’s fucking amazing, if you think about it.

I’ve tried collaborating, and sometimes it even works. My friend Jeof Vita and I co-wrote a comic book and it went really well; we then co-wrote a TV script that didn’t sell, and started to co-write a movie treatment before we sort of drifted away from the project. Despite our success – and the fact that we had fun working together – I doubt I’d ever collaborate again. I just prefer to have complete control over the work, to be honest. I don’t like having to weigh other people’s opinions.

Of course, this may explain why I spend most of my waking moments with cats instead of people.