More on Writing from fan faves...
May. 15th, 2012 05:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatI'm beginning to think everyone remotely interested in Joss Whedon that is also on lj has seen The Avengers now, but me.
Anyhow...speaking of The Avengers and Whedon - here's a nifty interview I found of Stan Lee (the original creator of The Avengers) interviewing Jane Espenson (with a perky and somewhat annoying assistant).
What interested me most about this interview was two things:
1. Stan Lee states that people always ask who he writes for, and he says that he writes for himself. Espenson wholeheartedly agrees. She writes things she wants to see and read.
And it's what all successful novelists have stated.
[If you want to write a story that will appeal to others...make sure it's one that appeals to you first, that you want to tell, want to read, that it is your fantasy, your adventure, something you can't find anywhere else, that you have to get out of your own head - and you are writing it because you can't find it out there. Otherwise the writing feels empty and lacks soul.]
2. Villains. Very important to create a great villain.
Stan Lee: If you don't have a good villain...you have a hero wandering around not knowing what to do.
Jane: My favorite villain was Spike, because we turned him into a hero. He was this evil villian, horrible, a big bad, and we over time turned him into a great hero, who sacrificed himself to save the world and save others.
Lee: That's amazing. Because it's new. People don't tend to do that.
Anyhow...speaking of The Avengers and Whedon - here's a nifty interview I found of Stan Lee (the original creator of The Avengers) interviewing Jane Espenson (with a perky and somewhat annoying assistant).
What interested me most about this interview was two things:
1. Stan Lee states that people always ask who he writes for, and he says that he writes for himself. Espenson wholeheartedly agrees. She writes things she wants to see and read.
And it's what all successful novelists have stated.
[If you want to write a story that will appeal to others...make sure it's one that appeals to you first, that you want to tell, want to read, that it is your fantasy, your adventure, something you can't find anywhere else, that you have to get out of your own head - and you are writing it because you can't find it out there. Otherwise the writing feels empty and lacks soul.]
2. Villains. Very important to create a great villain.
Stan Lee: If you don't have a good villain...you have a hero wandering around not knowing what to do.
Jane: My favorite villain was Spike, because we turned him into a hero. He was this evil villian, horrible, a big bad, and we over time turned him into a great hero, who sacrificed himself to save the world and save others.
Lee: That's amazing. Because it's new. People don't tend to do that.
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Date: 2012-05-15 10:04 pm (UTC)Nope. Not just you.
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Date: 2012-05-15 10:08 pm (UTC)And he did Cop Out, Armageddon and Color Of Night so he should know.
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Date: 2012-05-16 10:29 pm (UTC)The thing about villains is the only work if you make them layered. Too often we have bwahhahhah evil villains or stupid villains.
I loved the villain in Die Hard - I swear Alan Rickman made that movie work.
He was so much fun.
A good villain should be the hero if you flip the story. That's the best sort of villain.
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Date: 2012-05-16 02:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-16 03:05 am (UTC)Thing about Stan is, he allowed his characters to evolve, which is something that's often missing in comics these days. Today, it's like the writers are scared to have any character even remotely move out of the niche other writers have put them in years ago, and by freezing characters like that, you lose an essential part of what used to make a character great. (just look at how Quesada destroyed Spider-Man, just because he was scared of making Spidey look 'old')
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Date: 2012-05-16 10:31 pm (UTC)A lot of the modern writers...just like to throw insane plots at the characters, as opposed to evolving them.
They forget the readers actually do know what happened 100 issues ago.
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Date: 2012-05-16 04:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-16 10:26 pm (UTC)I can't even get that interested in Dark Knight Rises. To be honest, Snow White and The Huntsman and The Hobbit look a lot more intriguing to me.
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Date: 2012-05-16 06:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-16 10:21 pm (UTC)Cabin in the Woods on the other hand is pure unadulterated Whedon. (I was admittedly disappointed in it...so I have rather low expectations for the Avengers...)
Have you read the NY Times and Salon.com reviews? (I linked to them in another post). The critics in both those reviews state - yeah, yeah, we know it is a comic book movie about superheroes...but seriously, can't it have something to it besides fights and snappy dialogue? Does this genre have to be so empty-headed? They were both huge fans of Whedon's - just not of Avengers comics.
The Avengers comics aren't really that deep. It's basically a bunch of arguing professional heroes hired by the government to fight super-powered bad guys. The most interesting character in them...was in my opinion Scarlett Witch (who isn't even in this movie). She's the daughter of Magneto and her power is hexes. She has a snotty brother who is basically the Marvel Universe's version of The Flash. I also sort of liked Ant Man and The Wasp - who are also not in the movie.
So seeing the Avengers is sort of like seeing Spider Man Turn off The Dark musical on Broadway. You go in with low expectations.
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Date: 2012-05-16 09:23 am (UTC)Interesting quote from Jane about Spike. I think Stan Lee's answer was tongue in cheek, because of course lots of comic book villains have become heroes and vice versa.
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Date: 2012-05-16 09:45 am (UTC)As for reformed bad guys, there tends to be two options.
Either you have the misguided bad guy, who's bad in maybe one short arc, and who then instantly becomes a good guy and stays that way (for the most part). Hawkeye is a good example of this, as is Black Widow
Or you have the established bad guy, who gets bouts of going good, only to then constantly revert over and over. (which gets really really annoying once you recognize the pattern) Magneto and Sandman fall into this pattern. I love Magneto, but I'd far prefer it if they just finally let him remain a good guy, or stopped giving us hope because it's getting to be as annoying a cliché as Jean Grey's dead or alive status. (It's one of the reasons I find Hal on Being Human so interesting, because he in-series recognized that same pattern and decided to try and fight it)
The interesting bit about Spike is that he didn't just start out a villain, he was a villain for all of s2, s3 and pretty much s4 as well. (yeah, he was interacting with the scoobies, but he didn't really start his redemption until s5) And that despite this for a tv series, established villain hoods with potential siding with the good guys, that once he picked a side, he's remained on that side. And that unlike Angel, he hasn't been switching between the two.
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Date: 2012-05-16 10:39 am (UTC)I agree. I can see the signs to him 'going evil' again building up in the latest X-Men books and it's so disappointing.
The scene in the issue of Uncanny X-Men where he finds Kitty Pryde and brings her back to earth was very moving. It seemed like a fitting coda to Magneto: Testament.
I did hope that series meant they were done f**king around with the character, but I doubt they'll ever let him be 'redeemed' for good.
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Date: 2012-05-16 10:11 pm (UTC)Again? I honestly think whether Magneto is good or evil depends solely on whoever is assigned to write him.
The back and forth annoyed me in the 1990s.
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Date: 2012-05-16 10:17 pm (UTC)But then they made him a good guy for a while, until the writers got bored with it and made him a full out bad guy again. And since then they've been going back and forth with him, from ambiguous good to utter and total evil and it's that what's annoying.
Because after a while you have to wonder why the good guys even still trust him in the weeks he decides to be a good guy, since he could turn against them at any point.
One of the reasons I love redeemed villains, aside of the redemption story, is that a good redeemed villain explains perfectly why most heroes will hold to a 'I shall not kill' rule regardless how bad the bad guy is. Because if even one villain stands a chance for redemption, then what gives the hero the right to deprive them of that chance.
But when that redemption fails whenever the book switches titles, then why should the hero bother, instead of just taking out the risk when they get the chance.
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Date: 2012-05-17 08:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-16 10:09 pm (UTC)I've only seen a character turn slowly from arch-villain or "the bad guy" that is the proverbial thorn in the heroe/heroine's side a few times.
* Catwoman in Batman - gets more and more ambiguous
* the elf, Trenton in Rachel Morgan Bounty Hunter series by Kim Harrison
* Spike
It's rarely done, or rarely done well.
Usually people do a variation of Angel. Which is that good or evil is "imposed" on the character from an outside source and they are never provided a choice in the matter really. Angel is more or less ambiguously good with a soul, and just plain evil without one. Willow?
More or less ambiguously good without magic, with black magic - plain evil. Magneto...either plain evil or ambiguously good depending on who pissed him off this week. He comes closer to Spike in S6 actually.
My difficulty with a lot of villains in fiction is the tendency to make them unrelentingly "evil" or bwahhahhha evil. It's boring. No one really is that evil. Even serial killers have complexity.
A good villain doesn't see themselves as a villain, if you flip the story they are the hero. (Magneto is an excellent example). Also
they have layers...they can actually be heroic at times and good - George RR Martin's Game of Thrones series demonstrates that - good guys can be horribly evil and bad guys can be heroic. He shows that complexity. So it's more interesting and less...one-dimensional.
Darth Vader in Star Wars was a great villain because he had that complexity.
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Date: 2012-05-18 03:41 am (UTC)Thanks for posting the Lee-Espenson video. Pretty interesting.