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  The Value of The Comic Villain

by: Pamela Ravenwood

A good story is only a good story if there is a hero and to have a hero, there must be villain. While the Hero is the person the reader identifies with, it is the villain who drives the plot.

So what makes a good villain in a comic book setting? To start, the best villains are typically unconventional, unpredictable, and morally ambiguous. To just create a villain who is evil and predictable will leave your readers bored. Readers tend to enjoy villains who are rebellious, intelligent, and capable. Creating believable, complex, and impressive villains with a sharp sense of cunning, tact, intelligence, takes practice and forethought. So here are a few tips when creating your villain:

1. Intimidating but Not Too Intimidating - What does this mean? You of course want a villain that can intimidate your characters, but don't make a villain that intimidates you. It will be difficult for you to write about the villain if you find yourself intimidated.

2. Make Your Villain Complex - Remember your villain shouldn't just be purely evil, give him/her a bit of a good side and in this, the villain will feel more believable to your reader. Just as most humans are complex in real life, so should your villain be.

3. Give Your Villain Motive - What are your villain's motives in being who or what they are. What happened to make them evil or hateful? Even if your villain is just crazy or a sociopath, providing motive helps move the plot around.

4. Flesh Out Your Villain's Character - Give your villain some background, an identity, such as - where are they from, small town, large city, a particular planet? How do they speak, carry themselves or behave do to their past. How do they dress and why?

5. Don't Overdo It - While creating a complex and quirky villain, don't get too quirky or over do it. Make your villains as evil as they need to be for the storyline, but no more than that; otherwise, they will either ring untrue or they will take over the story, distracting from the hero, heroine, and original plot

6. Don't Forget About Setting - You can enhance your villain's bad behaviour through setting. At the same time, setting can help you determine what kind of villain you want to write about. Is your villain from the past, future, present, another place, another time?

7. A Villain's Demise - Every good story ends with the villain getting their punishment in the end. You have choices here, your villain could disappear, have their power taken away or killed off. Each carries its own weight. For the villain to just disappear, you may leave your reader hanging and take power from the Hero and give too much to the villain. Readers want the satisfaction of a villain conquered, if even for the moment.

Last, do your homework before creating your villain. And remember, you can have more than one villain; you can create what is called an Obstacle Character. The difference between the two is that the Obstacle Character will represent a point of view opposite that of the Hero. While the Obstacle Character can seem quite antagonizing, their role is to push the hero into action, while the villain makes the plot move, creates a problem to be solved.

A good story has many complexities but with a great hero and a great villain, your foundation is set.

About the Author

About the Author: Pam Ravenwood is a freelance writer. Mycomicshop.com is one of the largest retailers of comic books in the world. Mycomicshop is the online presence of Lone Star Comics, a leading retailer of comic books with seven stores in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. 

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Write A Novel In A Month!

Review by Mervyn Love, WritersReign

Can this really happen? Well, after putting it to the test, my personal answer is 'Yes' and 'No'. I purchased this eBook at the beginning of July 2010. The author, Dan Strauss, who has written a number of books for writers, gives a plan on how to tackle, what to many, would seem an unlikely task. He writes in an engaging and upbeat way and lays down exactly what you should be doing from Day 1 to the completion of your book. His premise is that by the end of a month you can have your book ready to send to a publisher.

This was exactly what I needed as, although I've written many short stories, I've never tackled a complete book as it seemed like a daunting chore to me. I had a children's book in my mind which I wanted to get down on paper, and by following his plan and his methods I set about writing it. The plan, and all his other tips and shortcuts, were easy to follow, and I actually enjoyed the process which before had seemed onerous to say the least. And the result? After starting at the beginning of July the book was done by the end of the month! But...

Was my book ready for a publisher at this point? Well, actually, no. Why? Because I had not stuck entirely to the time schedule Dan Strauss sets out. Lost some Brownie points there, I know, but still, I kept going and did all the revision, corrections and so on. This took me another two months so that by the end of September my book was ready to send out. Being a children's book it was shorter than your average blockbuster too, weighing in at just shy of 60,000 words.

So is writing a Novel In A Month pie in the sky? Well, if I'd stuck to the letter of Dan Strauss's law it could have been done much more quickly. And when I get to work on my next book the experience of doing the first one will be invaluable in completing it faster. Whether I personally could manage it in a month remains to be seen, but come on, be honest, even a book done and dusted in three months by someone who has never written one before is pretty good. Isn't it?

Find out more yourself here: Novel In A Month

Postscript: Having failed miserably to find any agent or publisher who were even vaguely interested in my book I have now, in desperation, published it on Kindle (following the guidelines in KindleKash) and am now waiting for the avalanche of orders to start rolling in. To take a peek at this epic space adventure for 9 - 11 year olds go to: Toothpick and the Purple Terror.

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