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143 - Including an antagonist POV · Story Magic

2:27
Emily: Hey, writers.
2:28
Emily: Welcome back to Story Magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're damn proud of.
2:32
Rachel: I'm Rachel.
2:33
Emily: And I'm Emily.
2:34
Rachel: And today we're talking about antagonist points of view, chapters, scenes in your book from the antagonist point of view.
2:45
Rachel: We're not talking about books written from the antagonist's point of view.
2:52
Rachel: I'm.
2:53
Rachel: I'm bringing this today because I will often have questions or see authors who will insert scenes from their antagonist or their villains.
3:07
Rachel: And then we go back to, like, the main character's point of view again later, like the protagonist.
3:14
Rachel: So that's what I want to talk about today because I have thoughts on this.
3:19
Rachel: I have.
3:20
Emily: We've learned that we have more thoughts and feelings than we thought we did on this.
3:24
Rachel: We have hot takes.
3:25
Rachel: Yeah. We were like, oh, can that be a full podcast episode?
3:28
Rachel: And then we kind of talked like a full podcast episode, the two of us, and we were like, yeah, we have enough to talk about here.
3:37
Rachel: So this one, this was like a question that we have recently gotten.
3:41
Rachel: And then it stood out to me as something we should talk about on the podcast because personally, in my coaching journey, I have had multiple one on one clients who, let's say they bring to me a completed draft and I read the draft, and there are scenes in the draft that are from the villain points of view that we end up choosing to cut up.
4:01
Rachel: And we're like, no, we don't.
4:02
Rachel: We don't need that.
4:03
Rachel: So I wanted to talk a little bit about what makes you feel like you need a villain point of view and then deciding, do you really need one or don't you?
4:11
Rachel: Because my hot take soapbox opinion is, no, you don't.
4:19
Rachel: And then the situations where, yes, you might.
4:22
Rachel: You might use one effectively or, and like, why they might work in some genres, and in other genres, they don't work very well.
4:31
Rachel: So to start, I feel like my biggest complaint about this and the.
4:35
Rachel: The way that I use.
4:36
Rachel: See it used incorrectly most often is when writers feel like they need to essentially tell the reader information about what's going on behind the scenes.
4:49
Rachel: What is the villain doing?
4:49
Rachel: The reader needs to know.
4:52
Emily: Yeah.
4:53
Rachel: And so then they insert like these point of views of the villain up to nefarious deeds, and then we go back to the main protagonist, and then the protagonist is kind of like still fighting them, but they're not really connected.
5:09
Rachel: So when I read them, I'm usually like, the only reason that this is here is information.
5:16
Emily: Yeah.
5:17
Rachel: And then I'm like, purposeless.
5:18
Rachel: Cut it Not a good enough reason.
5:22
Rachel: So I do feel like when authors include it for the sole reason of I need the reader to know information, it's not good enough to me.
5:29
Rachel: I. I am like, no, it's telling me, in that case, put your villain and your protagonist in conflict more often.
5:39
Rachel: It kills the tension.
5:40
Rachel: It, like, makes me.
5:44
Rachel: I also, sometimes it, like, kind of makes me want to root for the villain, but I can't quite tell.
5:48
Rachel: Am I supposed to root for the villain?
5:50
Rachel: Is this supposed to be just like a video camera behind their back, following them around so that I can see that, yes, they are up to no good, even if my protagonist doesn it yet?
6:01
Rachel: Like, those are the situations where I really feel like they bogged down the story rather than, like, actually add something meaningful.
6:10
Rachel: And in those cases with my clients, we chose to cut it because we didn't either.
6:15
Rachel: A different character could have showed us that information, which is what I ended up choosing in, in one of my clients situations where, like, there was still another character there that had the point of view.
6:31
Rachel: So then we didn't need the villain's point of view because there was another character that we were already seeing next to the villain.
6:37
Rachel: So we just cut the villains and then gave that third character, like that other character some more information.
6:44
Rachel: Or we just got rid of it entirely.
6:45
Rachel: Like, it didn't add anything.
6:47
Rachel: It didn't inhibit the protagonist's journey.
6:49
Rachel: It didn't make them harder.
6:51
Rachel: It didn't make it harder for them to fight the villain.
6:55
Rachel: So it ended up just feeling like, oh, okay, cool.
6:57
Rachel: Information that I have to remember for later that isn't valuable or purposeful.
7:04
Emily: I think the biggest risk of this is your villain, especially in, like, fantasy and adventure type genres, right?
7:15
Emily: Your villain is this entity that your main characters are fighting against.
7:21
Emily: And it can feel like, oh, I'm gonna make it more tense by giving you a hint, giving the reader a hint as to what the villain is up to, but the protagonist doesn't know.
7:30
Emily: And that's going to make it super tense.
7:32
Emily: But what that actually does is if you put us in the villain's head most of the time we're not dealing with psychopaths in those types of stories.
7:41
Emily: We're dealing with flawed human beings.
7:43
Emily: Right?
7:43
Emily: They might be extremely morally gray, but if you put us in their heads and they are a good villain, right, in the sense that they are a three dimensional human being, you're going to humanize them for us, which, like you said earlier, can make us almost want to root for them, which, like, is that what you want us to do.
8:01
Emily: But it also just makes them less scary because a huge part of the power of a villain is the unpredictability of them.
8:10
Emily: Oftentimes we're learning things about them.
8:11
Emily: We're learning what their motivations are from the outside.
8:17
Emily: Hate to use Harry Potter as an example because screw J.K. rowling.
8:20
Emily: But I do think she does this well with Voldemort, where we're never put in Voldemort's head, but we're learning things about him, right?
8:27
Emily: Like Harry goes on these adventures to watch his memories.
8:30
Emily: And he's living in the memories, but he's not in his head, right?
8:33
Emily: And the idea is to get information about him because we're trying to become.
8:37
Emily: We're trying to predict what he might do, we're trying to understand what his motivations are.
8:41
Emily: And that's a huge part of the puzzle, right, in these fantasy and adventure type stories is learning what the villain wants, learning what threat they actually pose.
8:49
Emily: And the moment that you let us into their head and actually show us that, you lose all that tension, you lose all that intrigue, all that mystery, and you actually risk us wanting to root for them or wanting more of them, which I think is right.
9:04
Emily: That's going to slow down your protagonist pages.
9:06
Emily: It's going to kill the narrative drive in those.
9:09
Emily: So I would just be careful with those circumstances.
9:13
Emily: And I think part of this is that we as writers love our antagonists, right?
9:21
Emily: We're creating them for a reason.
9:23
Emily: They're standing in our protagonist's way for a reason.
9:26
Emily: They probably represent something about the protagonist.
9:28
Emily: And there's like all these parallels we're trying to draw, and we're doing something really cool with them.
9:33
Emily: And if you have done backstory work on them, right, you find them fascinating.
9:39
Emily: I wrote like 25k of backstory for the villain behind the Crimson Curtain because I needed to get into his head.
9:46
Emily: I needed to understand him.
9:47
Emily: I love those chapters.
9:49
Emily: They might be some of my favorite chapters that I've ever written.
9:52
Emily: No one's ever read them because I didn't put them in the book because it would have killed all the tension for him to be made human in the way that I made him in those scenes because I needed to understand his motivations.
10:03
Emily: And it can be really frustrating.
10:05
Emily: And, like, you want to share that stuff with the world and you want to show the world that you understand them in a way that the reader never will be able to because you're never in their head.
10:13
Emily: But that kills the tension for the rest of the story.
10:16
Emily: And so you just have to be really careful that if you're going to do that, you have a very, very, very good reason too.
10:23
Emily: And I think there are very limited reasons why you might.
10:27
Rachel: Yeah, well, I think some of this goes back to me of, like, what is the.
10:35
Rachel: What is the purpose of having the scene there?
10:39
Rachel: And I think we've covered, like, if it's information.
10:42
Rachel: No, it's not.
10:43
Rachel: That's not good enough.
10:45
Rachel: If you want us to humanize with the villain, why.
10:51
Rachel: But if you truly want us to, like, feel this.
10:55
Rachel: This dissonance and this moral question of who should we root for?
11:00
Rachel: Like, that's what the book is about.
11:01
Rachel: The book is about, like, there is no good and evil.
11:03
Rachel: It's all gray.
11:05
Rachel: Then. Yeah, include that villain point of view and let me feel the conflict of, like, these two people that are fighting for very believable reasons, but that are in opposition.
11:16
Emily: Cool.
11:16
Rachel: Like, but if that's your purpose, that's your purpose.
11:19
Rachel: And if that's not your purpose, maybe I don't need it.
11:22
Rachel: I don't need to feel the moral conflict between the villains righteous motivations and then the protagonist righteous motivations and then wondering, like, whose side am I on?
11:33
Rachel: Yeah, if that's not what you're trying to make me feel, don't make me feel that.
11:37
Rachel: It's just gonna confuse me.
11:41
Rachel: Yeah, I think, like, the purpose of what you're doing, the point of the actual, like, point of the story, what the villain's role in the story is, are all reasons and factors to consider.
11:57
Rachel: And I think, like, sometimes the need.
12:00
Rachel: Like, if you're feeling the need to insert a villain point of view, my question is, what is that telling you about your story?
12:06
Rachel: And is there a hole?
12:09
Rachel: Is there a problem?
12:11
Rachel: Because in some of the books that I've read, the villain literally doesn't show up until Act 3.
12:18
Rachel: So then the writer is like, well, I need a villain point of view so that you know that there's a villain.
12:24
Rachel: And I'm like, okay, the solution here is not a villain point of view.
12:29
Rachel: The solution here is that your plot needs more conflict.
12:32
Rachel: The villain needs to be more present.
12:34
Rachel: Like, your plot is not putting your character in opposition to their antagonist ever.
12:42
Rachel: So something is wrong with that.
12:44
Rachel: You know, like, that is the problem to solve, not that you need to insert a villain point of view.
12:51
Rachel: I think that sometimes we feel like our intuition is saying something and the easiest response is, oh, well, I'll just show you what the villain's doing and that will scratch that Itch.
13:01
Rachel: It's like, no, the intuition is telling you that like maybe the story structure is off or maybe the character is not facing enough conflicts or maybe we're not bringing the greater plot premise to the forefront soon enough.
13:14
Rachel: Right.
13:15
Rachel: And we need to be doing more of that to be putting the character and the villain in opposition faster.
13:22
Rachel: Right.
13:22
Rachel: Like how could they run into each other so that you're still seeing like there are places where having a looming antagonist threat are powerful and then there are times where having an unmentioned antagonist in the background that we eventually run into is not powerful, you know?
13:43
Emily: Yeah.
13:44
Rachel: So I, I think, you know, with, with fantasy for example, we're building towards facing the big bad.
13:51
Rachel: Like maybe it doesn't make sense to run into the big bad sooner, but.
13:56
Rachel: Okay, I still need to be feeling the presence of that villain everywhere, right.
14:02
Rachel: Like if they are the big bad, how is the big bad being bad?
14:06
Rachel: Right?
14:06
Rachel: Like am I seeing a burned over town?
14:10
Rachel: And we have to deal with the repercussions of the villain just attacked here and we just missed them.
14:16
Rachel: Right.
14:16
Rachel: And then I have to like fix whatever that, whatever conflict happened there.
14:21
Emily: But like facing his second in command or.
14:25
Rachel: Exactly, his second in command is here, his third in command.
14:29
Rachel: I actually feel like the Kate Daniels series does this pretty well.
14:34
Rachel: The.
14:34
Rachel: This is one of my favorite series.
14:36
Rachel: It's an urban fantasy slash paranormal fantasy and it is a 10 book series which now has more books than that in like kind of spin offs or half novellas.
14:46
Rachel: It is a long, long series is my point.
14:49
Rachel: And there is a big bad and the big bad we build to in this kind of serial, like periodic or whatever episodic, Episodic book after book.
15:02
Rachel: Like we solve problems in the book but we know there's a looming threat.
15:05
Rachel: And as we get deeper in the series, the villain becomes like more and more present.
15:10
Rachel: But even in the first book we feel the pressure, right?
15:15
Rachel: And like I don't even, I can't remember.
15:17
Rachel: It's been a long time since I've read these books, but I don't think we even get a villain's name until like maybe book two or three.
15:25
Rachel: I don't even know if we understand exactly who the villain is until later.
15:29
Rachel: And like all of what's wrong surrounding it, like it's, it's revealed slowly and then we end up facing the villain's army and we face the villain second in command and then we face like all of his generals before we can finally get to like facing him.
15:47
Rachel: And that is really compelling.
15:50
Rachel: But it's never like, who's the villain?
15:53
Rachel: You know, it's never like, the villain's not here.
15:56
Rachel: I've never seen him before.
15:57
Rachel: Like, we know.
15:58
Rachel: We feel the pressure.
16:00
Rachel: We have the tension.
16:01
Rachel: We have the conflict.
16:03
Rachel: I'm even trying to remember.
16:04
Rachel: I don't want to, like, misspeak, but I don't even.
16:07
Rachel: I think he's even in slumber for, like, the first two or three books.
16:10
Rachel: Like, he's not even awake, and we're still like, oh, no, this big bad guy is coming.
16:15
Rachel: Eventually he's going to find me.
16:17
Rachel: Like, that's.
16:18
Rachel: That's the tension of, like, I'm in hiding and one day he'll catch me.
16:22
Rachel: Yeah.
16:22
Emily: You know, a lot of adventure fantasies do that.
16:25
Emily: I feel like Lord of the Rings does that, right?
16:27
Emily: Where there's, like, all these levels of.
16:29
Emily: Of the.
16:30
Emily: Of the people underneath the big antagonist.
16:34
Emily: And you have to kind of work your way through those levels to get to the big bad, especially in those, like, good versus evil type adventure stories.
16:43
Emily: As we're talking, I feel like my brain wants to categorize.
16:47
Emily: There's, like, three types of.
16:49
Emily: Of these stories or, like, three.
16:51
Emily: Three ways to show your antagonist or, like, to have antagonists that would necessitate thinking differently about this.
17:00
Emily: I feel like if your book is about a protagonist, right?
17:06
Emily: Like, your book is about the protagonist, it's about their journey of change.
17:10
Emily: Like, they are the central core of the story.
17:13
Emily: There really is no reason for you to put us in their antagonist head because the antagonist is just serving their story.
17:20
Emily: Right?
17:20
Emily: The antagonist is a conflict that's going to force that protagonist to change.
17:25
Emily: Right.
17:25
Emily: And so in those types of stories, which I think is what we're talking about with these fantasy stories, you.
17:31
Emily: You lose something by letting us into the antagonist's head.
17:34
Emily: Because the story is supposed to be about the protagonist and what the protagonist is going to do in the face of what the antagonist presents them.
17:42
Emily: Versus there are stories where everybody is everybody's protagonist and antagonist, right?
17:48
Emily: So, like Game of Thrones, Jade City, Vicious.
17:52
Emily: Like these stories where everybody is terrible.
17:55
Emily: Most everybody is terrible.
17:56
Emily: At least half the characters are terrible.
17:58
Emily: Right?
17:58
Emily: And so it's not like there's one.
18:00
Emily: One big bad that we are fighting.
18:03
Emily: It's that there's, like, a lot of.
18:05
Emily: There's a lot of morally gray bad stuff going on.
18:08
Emily: And the point is being in the heads of people who are morally gray.
18:12
Emily: To see how Cersei Lannister justifies her decisions, to see how Jaime Lannister justifies his decisions and how you know, like even Ned Stark is a villain in some people's eyes.
18:24
Emily: Right?
18:24
Emily: Like they're all.
18:26
Emily: They are all different versions of the story point.
18:29
Emily: They're all serving a purpose and showing us the messiness of humanity.
18:34
Emily: Same thing with Vicious, where both main characters are terrible people.
18:36
Emily: Like they're both villains, everybody's a villain except maybe the little girl.
18:42
Emily: And so we're getting lots of points of view, right?
18:44
Emily: We have 5, 6, 7, 8 points of view that we're juggling of all of these very complicated human characters.
18:51
Emily: So that would be one circumstance or like one instance where I don't think it quite applies because like every.
18:57
Emily: Like they're all antagonists of each other's stories.
19:00
Emily: And then the third option, and this is where I think we have the biggest exceptions, is where the story is really about the antagonist.
19:11
Emily: So a lot of.
19:12
Emily: So I have had some.
19:13
Emily: I'm working with a client on a thriller right now and it's kind of a psychological thriller where we were having this conversation because she had watched this class with another thriller writer.
19:24
Emily: And the thriller was like, your antagonist is your main character.
19:27
Emily: Like the book is about them.
19:28
Emily: It's not about the cop trying to catch them really.
19:30
Emily: Like they.
19:31
Emily: The cop's throwing main character, but the mystery is who is the antagonist?
19:34
Emily: What is the messed up stuff that's driving them?
19:37
Emily: Like, how did they become so messed up?
19:37
Emily: How did they become someone who could commit such horrible serial killer crimes and things like that?
19:44
Emily: Yeah, and I think that's an instance where we really do need to go, or we can.
19:48
Emily: You don't have to.
19:49
Emily: But I think it can be very powerful to have chapters from the antagonist perspective.
19:53
Emily: One, to show us how messed up they are and how and why they're that way in a way that the cop is going to learn but can't.
20:01
Emily: Like they're not going to live through it by being in that person's head.
20:04
Emily: And two, it builds a ton of tension.
20:05
Emily: You can use those scenes to show that the antagonist is two steps ahead of the cop.
20:11
Emily: And so that.
20:12
Emily: But that's a very specific and isolated reason why you would want to do that.
20:16
Emily: And it's because the book is about the antagonist.
20:18
Emily: It's about how they became the way that they became and how the cop is going to stop them.
20:22
Emily: And like who is going to, you know, this cat and mouse of who's going to get to the end first.
20:29
Emily: And so I think that's like that third.
20:31
Emily: So it's kind of like what's your story about?
20:32
Emily: Is your Story about your protagonist, Is it about your antagonist?
20:35
Emily: Or is it about everybody?
20:37
Rachel: Yeah. I mean, and in that thriller, one where, like, if you're including a villain's antagonist.
20:45
Rachel: Not in a thriller, if you're including a villain's antagonist.
20:48
Rachel: No, if you're including an antagonist point of view.
20:52
Rachel: A villain's point of view.
20:55
Emily: Oops.
20:56
Rachel: In order to give us information.
20:58
Rachel: Kills the tension.
20:59
Emily: Yeah.
21:00
Rachel: In a thriller, if you're including an antagonist, a villain's point of view to show us how far ahead they are compared to the cop that.
21:11
Rachel: And how we're going to be putting the cop in terrible situations, that increases tension.
21:17
Rachel: So I think, like, earlier when we were talking about how it can kill tension, again, it goes back to, what is the purpose?
21:22
Rachel: What are you doing with this character in that scene?
21:28
Rachel: And why are we seeing this specific moment from their point of view?
21:33
Rachel: What are we looking at through their eyes?
21:33
Rachel: Why is it there?
21:36
Rachel: Because it can be very powerful to see something that the villain is doing that the main character doesn't know.
21:42
Rachel: But in that case, that is specifically put at specific moments throughout the story to make us feel, as the reader, tension, to make us feel like, oh, no, what happens when the cop finds this out?
21:56
Rachel: Or is the cop walking into a trap and we know it's a trap?
22:02
Rachel: You know, like, that.
22:04
Rachel: That is effective, definitely.
22:06
Rachel: And then I'll.
22:07
Rachel: I'll add one more where this is like a.
22:12
Rachel: I think toeing the line between are they really a villain or are they not a villain?
22:16
Rachel: And that would be an Enemies to Lovers story.
22:19
Emily: Yeah.
22:20
Rachel: Where we have two characters that are, to me, enemies to the Enemies to Lovers trope is very debated and also, I think has been diluted a lot, which we could have a whole other podcast about.
22:34
Rachel: But I think in a true Enemies to Lovers story, you have two characters that have rivaling goals, like, opposite goals.
22:44
Rachel: And that's.
22:45
Rachel: That's what makes them enemies, is that their goals are conflicting, so they can't.
22:49
Rachel: They are each other's antagonist.
22:51
Rachel: So if you show us an antagonist point of view, in that case, the point there is that we are trying to humanize them.
22:58
Rachel: We are trying to show us what these characters are thinking about each other because we're leading them towards a path of falling in love.
23:06
Rachel: And, like, we need to see.
23:08
Rachel: See how their different point of views lead towards the conflict, how they interact and how they process their growing feelings for one another.
23:19
Rachel: And then eventually, like, how they change.
23:22
Rachel: And there are romance books where this will include an equal point of view.
23:26
Rachel: And then I'm like, okay, you've just got two.
23:28
Rachel: You've got two protagonists that happen to
23:31
Emily: be enemy, each other's antagonist.
23:34
Rachel: That happens to be each other's antagonist.
23:36
Rachel: But there are some romance books that will focus on one character primarily and then throw in the other point of view sparingly.
23:46
Rachel: And that has worked for me very.
23:48
Rachel: Not me writing it, but as a reader, worked for me really well before, because I am able to see, like, I clearly root for one of you, but when I see that other person's point of view, then I'm like, ooh, there's more to them.
24:03
Rachel: And I can't wait to find out how much more.
24:06
Rachel: Um, so I think that that can be effective too.
24:08
Rachel: In an Enemy's Lovers, it doesn't even have to be, like, an equal point of view split, and it might be more exciting than it's not.
24:16
Emily: And oftentimes I feel like in Enemies to Lovers, especially in Romantasy, there ends up being another antagonist that they both have to fight together.
24:24
Rachel: Exactly.
24:24
Emily: And I would not include big chapters from that antagonist point of view.
24:28
Rachel: Right.
24:28
Emily: That person is just serving to push them along, push the.
24:32
Emily: The two points of view along their.
24:34
Emily: Their arcs of change.
24:35
Emily: And so in that sense, they are the protagonists of the story.
24:39
Emily: And then you get back into that.
24:41
Emily: That everybody's terrible circumstance.
24:44
Emily: If you start adding a lot more in there, which is fine, you can do that, but that becomes like a.
24:49
Emily: That becomes more of an epic than it does a romance.
24:53
Rachel: That's what I ended up doing this with Max's Point of View in the Shadows, where books one and two, the villain is very clearly like, Leona's antagonist is Max, our villain is Max.
25:05
Rachel: And then in book three, we throw in a little bit of forced proximity where Max and Leona have to team up.
25:13
Rachel: They are in a situation, the two of them, in a circumstance where they have to team up.
25:18
Rachel: And in that book, I already knew at this point.
25:22
Rachel: Okay, little bit of spoilers.
25:24
Rachel: Book four is Enemies to Lovers, so Max and Leona do fall in love.
25:29
Rachel: But I knew, like, I. I needed to get the reader in a accepting place of Max.
25:36
Rachel: I needed them to be open to his potential change, but I didn't need him to be fully present, point of view wise.
25:44
Rachel: So in book three, I think he has four or five chapters, and that's it.
25:48
Rachel: And then in book four, backstory, three of them, three or four of them are backstory, one of them is not.
25:56
Rachel: So it's setting up, like, his past and his history, and it's contextualizing a lot of the decisions that he makes in the main plot, and it's giving us a different view of him.
26:05
Rachel: But then the finale, like the.
26:07
Rachel: Or the last chapter that he has is in story present, and we're seeing him, like, through his eyes, making choices on behalf of Leona.
26:18
Rachel: And then in book four, we have way more points of view from him as he's wrestling with, like, his mistakes.
26:24
Rachel: And he's speaking of sad man.
26:26
Rachel: He's a sad man.
26:27
Rachel: We just, we just got off a class where we talked about sad men.
26:32
Emily: But I think the point there is, like, where you wanted the tension to be and where.
26:36
Emily: When you wanted us to empathize with him.
26:37
Emily: The reason we don't have backstory from Max in book one is because we need him to feel like an unpredictable.
26:43
Emily: We don't know what he's going to do.
26:45
Emily: Scary bad guy.
26:46
Emily: Right.
26:46
Emily: And so for two books, you maintain that without giving us any information in his head or in his past.
26:51
Emily: And then as Leona starts to warm up to him and as they're forced to work together, and as you want the reader to start empathizing, that's when you give us that information about him, put us in his head so that we can start to understand where his heart lies, where his, you know, why he has the goals that he has.
27:06
Emily: And we couldn't get that without being in his head.
27:08
Emily: And then by the time where, towards the end of the story, now he's just another protagonist.
27:12
Emily: Right.
27:13
Emily: He's no longer an antagonist.
27:14
Emily: He's not in her way.
27:16
Emily: And so at that point he gets his own pov.
27:18
Rachel: Exactly.
27:19
Rachel: And they face us a third enemy.
27:21
Emily: Right, Like a new antagonist.
27:23
Rachel: Uh huh. Like, I. I do think that is the simplest solution to any, any enemies to lovers scenario, is that the enemy of my enemy and my friend, like, we end up having to team up to fight to take down like a third entity.
27:39
Rachel: And that's very common.
27:40
Rachel: I mean, like, not that it's undoable, but if you have two people that are truly enemies, if you remove the enemies, the plot's done right.
27:51
Rachel: So you have to give like, a third entity in order for us to face it, to sustain the plot and like, continue like, you know, the conflict against the relationship or whatever.
28:04
Rachel: But yeah, I think with Max, like, if you knew, if you had his point of view in book one, he would not have been a villain.
28:13
Emily: No.
28:14
Rachel: Leona would have seen him as one and the reader would not.
28:18
Rachel: And that would have.
28:19
Rachel: That would have killed the tension.
28:21
Rachel: So I, like, chose to hold on to that until later in the series when it was time to start humanizing him and then bring him into the group.
28:33
Rachel: But at the beginning, his point of view would have destroyed really the, the conflict, which is that this is about revenge.
28:43
Emily: Yeah. So we needed the second that you started to humanize him for us, he started to become a protagonist.
28:49
Emily: Right.
28:50
Emily: Because we start to root for him.
28:53
Emily: And the second that you did that, you had to give us another antagonist.
28:57
Emily: And so that was when that third person came in and, um, or the, you know, the other groups started to come in.
29:02
Emily: And so it became that we didn't lose the tension.
29:04
Emily: Right.
29:05
Emily: Of like, oh, all of a sudden we're in Max's head and everybody's friendly.
29:08
Emily: It's like, no, that's not going to work.
29:10
Emily: We need, like, more attention.
29:11
Emily: And so then you get the tension of, oh, Max is actually not as terrible as I thought, but Leona can't see it.
29:17
Emily: But they have this third enemy.
29:18
Emily: They need to work together.
29:20
Emily: Like, they have to get over it.
29:21
Emily: Max Teller, tell her, tell her.
29:23
Emily: So that's like a whole new kind of tension, you know what I mean?
29:26
Emily: And so just think about, as you're making these decisions, think about the role of the scene in the tension.
29:32
Emily: And ask yourself, by humanizing this person, by putting them me in, by putting readers in their head, am I increasing tension because they're complete serial killer psychopath, or am I decreasing tension because they are a human who's making flawed decisions.
29:48
Rachel: Right.
29:48
Emily: That have, you know, maybe morally gray decisions, but they're still human decisions.
29:53
Emily: Not that serial killers aren't humans, but you know what I'm trying to say.
29:55
Emily: Yes.
29:56
Emily: Like, where's the tension?
29:57
Emily: Like, how are you going?
29:57
Emily: Where's the tension going to go the second you give that, that deeper emotional information to the reader?
30:04
Rachel: Yeah. And like, what.
30:05
Emily: And if.
30:05
Rachel: What's our goal?
30:05
Rachel: Sorry, go ahead.
30:08
Emily: And then I was going to say, and if you do have information that you need to reveal, I feel like sometimes in fantasy, like, you'll get like a prologue from someone who's giving information about what the villain's up to, it's so much more powerful to do that from a point of view that's not the villain.
30:22
Rachel: Right.
30:23
Emily: So, like, if you can have a character who's observing the villain and giving the reader information that way, that's so much more powerful because it keeps the villain a mystery and it keeps them sort of this.
30:33
Emily: This entity that we have to fight against versus, like a three dimensional human being that we want to empathize with.
30:40
Rachel: Yes.
30:41
Rachel: I Think the last example that I have to add to this is Zuko, because Zuko is always like, you know, my favorite antagonist turned hero.
30:51
Rachel: So in his arc, I think is very clear from the start that not to us, to the reader, to the author.
31:00
Rachel: I think intentionally the creators of Avatar the last Airbender intended for Zuko to undergo a redemption arc.
31:10
Rachel: So that meant that in book one, which is this, it's called book one.
31:14
Rachel: It's the first series of the show.
31:15
Rachel: This is a TV show.
31:17
Rachel: It's called book one.
31:19
Rachel: Understand that's confusing, but in the first season of the TV show, we get points of view from Zuko and Zuko is clearly the main antagonist against Aang the Avatar.
31:35
Rachel: But we need to understand Zuko so.
31:38
Rachel: So that we can see his eventual redemption.
31:41
Emily: It's. I mean, I think that's applicable to like the romance.
31:44
Emily: It's not a romance because he doesn't fall in love with Aang, but it's the.
31:48
Emily: He's going to be.
31:49
Emily: They're going to become friends, right?
31:50
Emily: They're going to team up.
31:51
Emily: And so we have to understand him.
31:53
Emily: We have to humanize him.
31:54
Emily: It's the same function.
31:55
Emily: Sorry to interrupt you, but.
31:56
Rachel: No, but that's.
31:57
Rachel: I mean, that's exactly correct.
31:58
Rachel: And then fire Lord Ozai is the big bad who is also present for.
32:04
Rachel: From book, from the first series.
32:06
Rachel: But we don't ever get his.
32:08
Rachel: Through his head point of view, right?
32:08
Rachel: Like, we get Zuko's point of view, we get Azula's point of view, we get Ira's point of view that are all observing fire lord Ozai because he's the villain.
32:18
Rachel: But we don't.
32:19
Rachel: We're not like in fire lord Ozai's head trying to rationalize his conquest of the world, right?
32:27
Rachel: We are in Azula's head who feels the pressures and burden of being the daughter of the fire Lord and.
32:33
Rachel: And the sister of the.
32:35
Rachel: The failure prince.
32:37
Rachel: Then we get Zuvo and she's crazy, right?
32:37
Rachel: Like, don't.
32:40
Rachel: Don't get me wrong, but Azula, her scenes in the final season are so compelling because she is such an interesting villain who is just 14, right?
32:54
Rachel: Like, I think like, without having like Firelord Ozai is a dick through and through always.
33:02
Rachel: But like, Azula is insane, but she's a child.
33:06
Rachel: So like I do think having those point of views from her in the third season, in the second and the third season show her descent into madness and her fracture as a child, which is.
33:19
Rachel: Which is terribly sad.
33:21
Rachel: Like, it's.
33:21
Rachel: It's very Sad.
33:23
Rachel: But I think that makes us also like her way more than we like Ozai.
33:27
Rachel: Like, she is way more complicated of a character than Fire Lord Ozai, who's just a dick.
33:32
Rachel: Azula is like this terrible child who's been manipulated and broken and used.
33:39
Rachel: And like, by the end of it, when you have the Agni Kai between Zuko and between Azula, which is one of the most moving pieces of TV ever.
33:48
Rachel: And, like, none of us feel good about that fight.
33:53
Rachel: Do you know what I mean?
33:54
Rachel: Like, we're cheering on Zuko, but this
33:56
Emily: is not like a technologist, because that's.
33:58
Emily: Because Ozai is the real antagonist, right?
34:01
Emily: Like, they are protagonists in their own.
34:03
Emily: They're antagonists to some of the other characters, but they're protagonists of their own stories.
34:09
Emily: And that's.
34:09
Emily: That's the why they're being shown.
34:11
Emily: That's why we're.
34:12
Emily: We're in their heads.
34:13
Emily: That's why we're understanding them.
34:14
Emily: If Ozai, if we were in, you know, got perspectives from Ozai that humanized him, that would kill the tension of the story.
34:21
Emily: The only reason we can.
34:23
Emily: We can afford to really get to know Zuko and Azula is because there is a bigger bad guy that, like, by getting to know them, we actually fear him more.
34:32
Emily: Right.
34:33
Emily: Because we're getting more context about the impact of his evils.
34:38
Rachel: Yes.
34:39
Emily: And so there's not killing the tension.
34:42
Rachel: There's also, like, I would never try to, like, let's say if you make that.
34:49
Rachel: If you make an author choice to give us a point of view of someone like Ozai to try to humanize his goals.
34:59
Rachel: How are you supposed to humanize the goal of world domination and oppression and tyranny and genocide?
35:08
Rachel: You can't.
35:09
Rachel: Like, as an author, I would never want.
35:12
Rachel: I would never want to try to attempt to humanize that because it's morally reprehensible.
35:16
Rachel: Right.
35:17
Rachel: Like, and that.
35:18
Rachel: That's also a different situation where I, in a thriller, I'm not trying to humanize the psychopath, right?
35:23
Rachel: Like, I'm trying to increase attention.
35:27
Rachel: But, like, I do think if I.
35:28
Rachel: If you're giving me a point of view of Ozai, what are you asking me as the viewer to do?
35:34
Rachel: Right?
35:34
Rachel: Because I think it's.
35:35
Rachel: I don't want to be in his head.
35:36
Rachel: I don't want to try to.
35:37
Rachel: Yeah, I don't want to try to, like, empathize with his goals of taking over the world.
35:42
Rachel: Like, and as an author, I wouldn't want my readers to do that.
35:45
Rachel: I want him to be Unarguably bad.
35:50
Emily: I, I think that's a genre question.
35:53
Emily: I had to do that with Houlay.
35:55
Emily: I had to do like, because he, I mean, he has goals like that.
35:59
Emily: And I had to.
36:00
Rachel: You did that as the author.
36:02
Emily: Weren't making the reader do 100.
36:04
Emily: So I just want to draw a distinction between like, I do think it's important to understand and maybe not in like a kid's show where like, you just need like, you know, an emperor or whatever who's doing terrible things.
36:16
Emily: Like, I don't know, maybe they did have, you know, sit down sessions where they're like, why is ozai the way he is?
36:21
Emily: Or maybe they didn't.
36:22
Emily: But I do think if you're.
36:24
Rachel: Because he has all this backstory with his father and his father to the prior Fire Lord, like, yes, he has, he has motivations.
36:33
Rachel: He's not cardboard.
36:34
Rachel: But they don't ask the reader to try and reconcile those motivations.
36:38
Emily: There's a difference between humanizing and empathizing, I think, right.
36:41
Emily: A thriller is asking you to, to understand why this human is the way that they are.
36:46
Emily: They're still a human, but they are messed up.
36:48
Emily: And the point of the story, the message of the story is in why they are so messed up.
36:52
Emily: Right.
36:52
Emily: In a psychological thriller, we are asking ourselves, why is this person this way and what are they going to do as a result of the, the reasons that they are this way.
37:01
Emily: And I think that that's very important.
37:03
Emily: Right?
37:03
Emily: You are humanizing them, but you're not asking the reader to empathize with them.
37:07
Emily: That's very, very different.
37:10
Emily: And I think the.
37:12
Emily: But as an author, it can be important for you to be able to empathize.
37:17
Emily: Like, I had such a hard time with Hulay because I was just like, well, he's just a bad guy doing all this bad guy stuff.
37:22
Emily: And I was like, no, but it has to be cohesive, it has to be consistent.
37:26
Emily: It has to come from somewhere.
37:27
Emily: Like, why is he like this?
37:29
Emily: And so that's why I had to write 25,000 words of backstory to like figure that out because he was so complicated.
37:35
Emily: I was like, well, you were once a child.
37:38
Rachel: Yeah.
37:39
Emily: And I don't think you're a psychopath.
37:40
Emily: So like, how did you end up being this evil?
37:43
Emily: And so I had to follow that thread.
37:46
Emily: But I can't give that to the reader, right?
37:48
Emily: Because A, I'm like asking them to empathize with someone who's doing these awful, awful, awful things.
37:56
Emily: And B, I don't want them to empathize with him.
37:59
Emily: I want them to hate him fully.
38:01
Emily: Yes.
38:01
Emily: No empathy at all.
38:03
Emily: And so I. I did.
38:04
Emily: I couldn't include them.
38:06
Emily: Um, so, yeah, I think it's.
38:08
Emily: Again, we're coming back to this question of, like, where do you want the tension to be and how do you want your reader to feel about your antagonist?
38:15
Emily: Because the only reason to start to include their points of view is if you, you know, it's a psychological thriller.
38:21
Emily: We're trying to understand why they are the way they are.
38:23
Emily: Or you're trying to get us to empathize with them so they can become a protagonist in the future.
38:29
Emily: Like, that's really the only reasons I would do it.
38:32
Rachel: Yeah, I think just make these choices thoughtfully.
38:37
Rachel: Yeah, it does very much bother me when I read a story and I'm like, oh, here's the villain again.
38:43
Rachel: And then like, nothing ever comes of it.
38:45
Rachel: I'm like this, okay, like, waste of space.
38:49
Rachel: So. But as we've talked about extensively, just make your choices thoughtfully.
38:53
Rachel: There are effective use cases and there are non effective use cases.
38:59
Rachel: And it may be something that you include in an early draft as you're trying to figure all this out and then you take out later.
39:06
Rachel: Like, there, like you've just said, there's always value in exploring and, like, trying to figure out, like, experimenting, trying to figure out what do I want to do with this person?
39:15
Rachel: What do I want to make my reader feel?
39:19
Rachel: So if.
39:20
Rachel: If you need to explore it, explore it and then evaluate later, is this accomplishing what I want it to accomplish or what I want my readers to feel?
39:29
Emily: Yeah. Cool.
39:31
Rachel: Cool.
39:32
Emily: Well, that's that.
39:33
Emily: We had a lot to say, as always.
39:36
Emily: Yeah, we appreciate you being here.
39:38
Emily: If you want to build a successful, fulfilling and sustainable writing life that works for you, you've got to get on our email list.
39:44
Rachel: Sign up now to get our free email course, the Magic of Character Arcs.
39:48
Rachel: After seven days of email magic, you'll have the power to keep your readers flipping pages all through the night.
39:52
Emily: Link in the show notes.
39:53
Emily: We'll see you there.
39:54
Rachel: Bye.
39:55
Emily: Bye. Bye.