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A writer's meetup in Denver had everyone using the same villain trick
Last Saturday I went to a small critique circle at a coffee shop off Colfax. Out of 8 people, 6 of them had written the villain as a corporate CEO who wants to destroy the world for profit. No backstory, no motive, just evil for the sake of evil. I called it out and one guy said 'it's efficient' but it reads lazy. Has anyone else noticed this trend at local writing groups, or is it just this city?
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patriciap687d ago
The "it's efficient" line kills me because that's exactly the problem, efficiency is not the same as good. What nobody at that table probably said is that corporate CEO villains are a get out of jail free card for the writer. If the bad guy is just greedy, you never have to sit down and ask yourself why he's like that or what he tells himself when he looks in the mirror. Real people who do bad stuff almost always have a story going in their head that makes it okay. Drop the suit and the boardroom and you'd be forced to write that story.
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