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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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.