Write Every Day: Day 21

[the_siobhan]

It was only after I started sketching out background and character details for my main characters that I realized I need to do the same thing for the villain of the story - I don't have four main characters, I have five and since the villain is the main driver of the story that means I need to spend at least as much time on them as I do on the heroes. It seems obvious now, but it honestly didn't occur to me during my first draft.

There is a George RR Martin quote that I see a lot - "Nobody is a villain in their own story." My challenge is to create a villain that sincerely believes that there is a good reason for every choice they make.

My story has a clear cut bad guy, what about yours? Do you tend to write a villains or do you prefer conflict between equally well-meaning characters? Are you more inclined to make the conflict in your stories between a character and their environment, rather than against another person? Or do you avoid conflict at all, and find some other way to drive the story forward?



Day 21 Tally:
china_shop, alexseanchai, badly_knitted, sylvanwitch, shadaras, silveradept, brainwane, lferion, sakana17, nafs, cornerofmadness, yasaman, phrenk, auroracloud, shopfront, firecat, sanguinity, luzula, iberiandoctor, ysilme

Day 20:
china_shop, sylvanwitch, badly_knitted, luzula, alexseanchai, shadaras, nafs, sakana17, cornerofmadness, yasaman, lferion, phrenk, shopfront, firecat, sanguinity, silveradept, auroracloud, iberiandoctor, ysilme

Day 19:
china_shop, ysilme, shopfront, luzula, badly_knitted, sylvanwitch, alexseanchai, brainwane, silveradept, cornerofmadness, nafs, sakana17, yasaman, lferion, sanguinity, alexseanchai, phrenk, shadaras, auroracloud, iberiandoctor

Day 18:
china_shop, alexseanchai, badly_knitted, luzula, sylvanwitch, shadaras, brainwane, marvelouscity, nafs, lferion, cornerofmadness, yasaman, sakana17, sanguinity, phrenk, firecat, ysilme, silveradept, auroracloud, iberiandoctor

Day 17:
china_shop, badly_knitted, luzula, sylvanwitch, shadaras, alexseanchai, sanguinity, brainwane, nafs, cornerofmadness, sakana17, yasaman, lferion, marvelouscity, silveradept, phrenk, iberiandoctor, firecat, ysilme, auroracloud

Day 16:
china_shop, badly_knitted, luzula, sylvanwitch, sanguinity, yasaman, brainwane, firecat, nafs, cornerofmadness, lferion, sakana17, phrenk, silveradept, iberiandoctor, shadaras, ysilme, auroracloud

Day 15:
china_shop, alexseanchai, sylvanwitch, badly_knitted, trobadora, luzula, yasaman, sanguinity, shadaras, brainwane, nafs, sakana17, cornerofmadness, phrenk, lferion, silveradept, firecat, iberiandoctor, ysilme, auroracloud

Day 14:
china_shop, ysilme, sylvanwitch, trobadora, badly_knitted, luzula, alexseanchai, shadaras, sanguinity, nafs, brainwane, cornerofmadness, yasaman, lferion, sakana17, phrenk, shopfront,silveradept, firecat, ysilme, auroracloud

Day 13:
china_shop, shopfront, badly_knitted, luzula, shadaras, alexseanchai, sylvanwitch, nafs, cornerofmadness, lferion, yasaman, phrenk, sakana17, silveradept, ysilme, iberiandoctor, trobadora, sanguinity, auroracloud

Day 12:
china_shop, sylvanwitch, shadaras, brainwane, silveradept, alexseanchai, thevetia, yasaman, zulu, sakana17, sanguinity, cornerofmadness, lferion, phrenk, badly_knitted, saki101, ysilme, iberiandoctor, trobadora, luzula, auroracloud

Day 11:
china_shop, firecat, badly_knitted, luzula, sylvanwitch, shadaras, thevetia, sakana17, brainwane, sanguinity, yasaman, cornerofmadness, china_shop, nafs, lferion, saki101, alexseanchai, phrenk, firecat, shopfront, silveradept, zulu, trobadora, ysilme, iberiandoctor, auroracloud

Day 10:
china_shop, badly_knitted, luzula, sylvanwitch, alexseanchai, shadaras, sanguinity, brainwane, nafs, firecat, yasaman, cornerofmadness, sakana17, saki101, lferion, phrenk, auroracloud, iberiandoctor, silveradept, thevetia, trobadora, ysilme

Day 9:
china_shop, shadaras, sylvanwitch, alexseanchai, sanguinity, saki101, nafs, yasaman, cornerofmadness, lferion, sakana17, phrenk, badly_knitted, ysilme, silveradept, solo, carenejeans, auroracloud, iberiandoctor, luzula, brainwane, trobadora

Day 8:
china_shop, sylvanwitch, badly_knitted, luzula, saki101, silveradept, sanguinity, shadaras, thevetia, brainwane, nafs, cornerofmadness, lferion, sakana17, yasaman, phrenk, alexseanchai, firecat, auroracloud, ysilme, solo, carenejeans, iberiandoctor, trobadora

Day 7:
china_shop, shopfront, falkner, badly_knitted, luzula, trobadora, sylvanwitch, shadaras, nafs, brainwane, sanguinity, lferion, yasaman, sakana17, phrenk, carenejeans, cornerofmadness, firecat, saki101, silveradept, auroracloud, ysilme, iberiandoctor

Day 6:
china_shop, ysilme>, trobadora, luzula, badly_knitted, sylvanwitch, saki101, sanguinity, shadaras, brainwane, nafs, alexseanchai, cornerofmadness, yasaman, lferion, sakana17, phrenk, shopfront, silveradept, iberiandoctor, firecat, solo, carenejeans, auroracloud

Day 5:
china_shop, badly_knitted, luzula, shadaras, sylvanwitch, nafs, sakana17, sanguinity, cornerofmadness, lferion, brainwane, saki101, phrenk, firecat, ysilme, shopfront, yasaman, carenejeans, houseof9cats, thevetia, robadora, silveradept, auroracloud, trobadora

Day 4:
china_shop, shopfront, luzulaalexseanchai, shadaras, badly_knitted, sylvanwitch, ysilme, sanguinity, saki101, silveradept, nafs, yasaman, thevetia, sakana17, cornerofmadness, lferion, phrenk, solo, iberiandoctor, firecat, brainwane, carenejeans, yasaman, auroracloud, trobadora

Day 3:
china_shop, alexseanchai, alexcat, sylvanwitch, sakana17, thevetia, nafs, lferion, cornerofmadness, phrenk, solo, badly_knitted, luzula, shadaras, yasaman, brainwane, trobadora, ysilme, sanguinity, silveradept, iberiandoctor, firecat, carenejeans, auroracloud

Day 2:
china_shop, shadaras, falkner, luzula, badly_knitted, alexseanchai, trobadora, saki101, sylvanwitch, brainwane, thevetia, lferion, cornerofmadness, nafs, sakana17, yasaman, solo, phrenk, auroracloud, ysilme, sanguinity, silveradept, alexcat, iberiandoctor, firecat, carenejeans

Day 1:
china_shop, sylvanwitch, luzula, badly_knitted, trobadora, falkner, alexseanchai, silveradept, shadaras, sanguinity, thevetia, nafs, cornerofmadness, lferion, sakana17, alexcat, marvelouscity, saki101, yasaman, solo, auroracloud, phrenk, shopfront, brainwane, dreamwriteremmy, ysilme, , iberiandoctor, firecat, carenejeans

Let me know if I missed your name at any point. And participation is always open, so jump in with a comment any time.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

stayed up till 5:30 finishing this thing and it still isn't finished *sobs*

[the_siobhan]

Oh no! Well done on your progress and good luck! You will get it done!

[alexseanchai]

it might be finished for real now??

I'm going back to bed

(yes, it's four in the afternoon)

[the_siobhan]

Congrats! It sounds like you earned that bed. :-)

[badly_knitted]

I guess I do a bit of everything? I've created some villains, use some who already exist in my fandoms, had misunderstandings and other conflicts between the good guys, and had them battle weather conditions and other problems, but mostly I like writing fluff and humour *grins*

Nov 21st - 1277 words on a challenge fic. It had a bad guy in it. ;)

[the_siobhan]

Well done on your words and on your bad guy! :-)

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks.

My computer has given up and I can't install my antivirus on this one so I don't know what I'm going to do =(

I may be missing for the rest of lockdown because I might not be able to replace it until then.

[the_siobhan]

Oh no, that really sucks.

I hope you can get it working again.

[sabotabby]

I tend to like stories where everyone has a reason and everyone is the hero in their own story. And to some degree that's true in my first book, where the primary conflict is/is meant to be between two people who both think they're doing the right thing, and while one is objectively wrong, the reader should at least have some idea of why he thinks that. But then one of my readers got to it and said, "that person, lurking in the background, that's going to be the actual villain, right?"

And said person would, in fact, be twirling a moustache were she capable of growing one, and is definitely enjoying herself more than any other character, villainy and all. And yet there were times when I was writing her where I'm like, no, she's not nearly cartoonish enough compared to IRL bad guys.

[houseof9cats]

You might like Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots.

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/26/917017722/hench-counts-the-cost-of-those-high-powered-superhero-battles

[the_siobhan]

Oh that sounds amazing.

[sylvanwitch]

My antagonist isn't really a villain, insofar as his motivations are misguided but driven by belief. He's a zealot, which makes him incapable of seeing the world from anyone else's perspective. He's a bad guy in the sense that he thinks his perspective gives him the right to limit other people's life choices, but he's not outright evil. In fact, the story is driven by the protagonist's struggles to come to understand why people are the way they are, so the conflict is very much about her trying to come to terms with someone's misguided point of view.

Good thing she's also struggling with her sexuality, her purpose in the world, her relationships with the people closest to her, and other personal crises great and small. Lol!

I added 830 words today, beginning a new chapter. Yay!

[the_siobhan]

That sounds great. I love villains where you can really see why they are making their choices.

Well done on all your words!

[shadaras]

I got a couple of paragraphs written today

[the_siobhan]

Well done on your words!

[silveradept]

It depends on the story as to whether there are villains or not. Many of my stories have them because their canons do, but I've also written characters against their environment, characters with interpersonal conflicts, and a couple of comedy of error type stories where the whole thing could be resolved if only there were a crucial piece of information available.

Checking in for 20 and 21, work in clearing tabs and outstanding assignments. It was a good day for everything.

[the_siobhan]

Excellent! Well done!

checkin

[brainwane]

Today I wrote a little bit from scratch, and I copied some material from some past blog posts into the right place in the book draft, but my main accomplishment was more organizational. I reformatted and added a lot of chapter headings to my outline, and made some TODO notes about other past blog posts/articles that I should reuse in the book.

Word count from today: about 1800 (rounding down significantly from 1979 since I suspect something like 100-200 of the words I copied in today are redundant formatting markers).

I just did a wordcount across all of my draft chapters and wow, I'm over 16,000 words! This is great! I'm so happy about my incremental progress and I'm especially thankful to you and to all the rest of the WED group who's helping me along with your prompts and presence and positive peer pressure. :-) If we're in the same city someday I hope to buy you a beverage, the_siobhan.

Re: checkin

[the_siobhan]

Oh you are lovely. I would love to go for a drink with you in the After Times. :-)

Congratulations on all your hard work and progress - it's a real accomplishment.

Re: checkin

[the_siobhan]

Oh hey, I just looked at your profile and you're mutuals with my girlfriend, bcholmes. Small world!

[lferion]

Say 21 - 264 words - a double drabble and a post

[the_siobhan]

Well done on words!

[sakana17]

Day 21: Edits, and jotted down notes for a new story idea.

[the_siobhan]

Well done on your progress!

[nafs]

I also have a clear-cut villain and one of the major fixes I am making in this draft which then will theoretically help me fix the ending is to make him less of a cartoon villain and figure out his motivations. He's still a bigot and a snob and I (and a couple of the characters) frequently want to smack him but there's a certain amount of logic to what he's doing. The thing is though, that most of his motivations have to stay in the background. Unlike with the protags and their associates, his motives don't come out until we're really into it, but if I don't *know* them I can't set up what he's doing in the first parts of the book properly.

Day 21's two pages of longhand was actually a bit of a turning point conversation for the villain so the timing of your question is awesome.

[the_siobhan]

I get that - my villain is stealth until a late reveal in the third act, so I'm trying to figure out ways to drop hints without making it obvious.

Funnily enough, I've been re-watching The Good Place and they do an amazing job of sprinkling clues throughout the first season that I can only see now that I know the plot twist.

Well done on all your words!

[cornerofmadness]

Actually bad guys is one of the things I had planned to talk about on a sunday sometime soon. I think they need to be much better developed than I do.

I managed 4048 words on two prodigal son stories

[the_siobhan]

That's an amazing word count. Well done!

[yasaman]

Day 21: 473 words on my main WIP, and 122 words on another fic that's been waiting in my WIP queue for a while.

[the_siobhan]

Well done your words!

[satoyan]

Day 21: 1,600 nano words, and broke 50k!

[the_siobhan]

Wahoo! Congratulations!

[auroracloud]

Oops, how has November gone by so quickly? I really didn't mean to take such a long break from checking in again! Anyway, I've kept working on my novel for NaNoWriMo every day, though at this point I'm far from any likelihood of "winning" it - I've just recently gotten over 15K. But that's 15,000 words I didn't have before, though on the downside, I'm only now getting to the "things really start happening" part and it really ought to be sooner. So I don't know how much of what I've written will be usable - but probably it still needs to be written to get me where I'm going, even if I delete most of it later.

So anyway, when you get around to it, please add me to days 10-21 of the newest tally if it's not too much trouble!

Villains are such an interesting question. I haven't been that great at creating them, but consuming stories with really interesting and multi-faceted villains or quasi-villains has helped. I had a couple of them move into my head this summer and inform me that versions of them are going to be present in my novel, so then I've been trying to figure out what's going on with them. I'm really enjoying them, though it turns out one isn't planning to stay a villain. I suspect the other may be up for a slight redemption arc as well. They're really interesting for exploring why people do things they do, and how far they're willing to go - and how far not. I know that besides them I've got other forces causing conflicts, but I've had a harder time getting to know people representing those forces - I hope that as I go on in my story, they start turning into real personalities, too. In any case, it's really important to think about why the villains and antagonists do what they do, and why they think they're doing the right thing even if it involves some really bad activities.

[the_siobhan]

15K is still an entirely respectable number of words. Well done on all your hard work!

I also tend to develop characters as I go along, so this is kind of a new approach for me - I'm hoping to make them more three-dimensional.

[shopfront]

No Nano for me yesterday /o\ just a few hundred words on a random WIP that has no deadline *helpless shrug* I'm more of an internal conflict or well-meaning conflict writer, myself. Good luck wrangling your villains though!

[the_siobhan]

Thanks. :-) And well done on words!

[firecat]

Day 21: 835 words

Most of my fics don't have villains, or the villains are in the characters' pasts causing trauma, or looming in their futures.

I just finished writing a story in a fandom that has an irredeemable villain without much of a motive beyond "that's how they are". I had no intention of changing the villain, but my main character ran away with the story at the last minute, decided they understood the villain's motives and saved them.

[the_siobhan]

Don't you just love it when characters develop minds of their own.

Well done on your words!

[firecat]

Yeah, I do — "their" ideas are usually better than "mine." :D

[sanguinity]

It's relatively rare for me to use a villain as an antagonist -- I usually reserve that for casefic in the Sherlock Holmes fandom. (But I write Holmes casefic at about the same frequency that I write Hornblower battle-fic: which is to say, not often.) It's more usual for me to write conflict between a character's desires -- their personal feelings and their capital-D Duty, perhaps, or their finer nature vs. their personal demons.

Nov 21: An alibi sentence that turned into an alibi paragraph, thereby officially beginning the story.

[the_siobhan]

Nice. Well done on your words!

[luzula]

Oops, forgot to report on yesterday's words!

Wordcount for 21st of November: 800
Total wordcount on poly fic: 43,000

I guess I don't often have villains, really? My current story is primarily relationship-driven, and the one before that was set in a war with the characters on opposing sides, so there was plenty of opportunity for conflict without any villain.

[the_siobhan]

Well done on your words!