Plotting: Use Your Villains

Transcript (cleaned up): Welcome back to Write Better Right Now. I’ve been talking a lot about plotting because it's one of my favorite subjects, and I would consider it a strength of mine – but that doesn't always mean the plot works easily the first time around.

Today, I want to talk about villains, specifically about making sure you're using your villains, which is a little different than writing a strong villain. It's important to have interesting villains, to remember the saying that “villains are the main characters in their own stories,” so you're writing believable, well-rounded villains.

Then you want to make sure that you are using those villains well. For example:

The Eyes of Pharaoh is a middle grade mystery novel for ages 9 to 12. In this story, the main character, Seshta, is trying to find out what happened to her friend. He went missing after saying he’d uncovered a plot against Pharaoh. She talks to different people. She goes different places. She's trying to find out what happened to her missing friend.

At one point, she talks to a henchman of the main villain. She doesn't realize it, but it means the villains know about her. They know that this young woman is trying to find her friend and to stop them.

I had Seshta do these different things, trying to figure out the problem. Then I ran out of things for her to do. I just couldn't think about what she would do next. I felt stuck.

Finally, I realized the villain isn't simply sitting around waiting for her to cause trouble. He knows about her, so he would be actively trying to stop her. As soon as I checked in with my villain and figured out what he was doing, I knew what I could have happen: He could be setting a trap.

So if you get to a point where you're not sure what should happen next in your story, or you're not sure what your main character should do, think about checking in with your villain and figuring out what they're doing. They should be active throughout the story, even if you don't put it on the page.

You might be writing from your hero's point of view, so the villain is doing things in the background that you don’t share. But if you think about what the villain is doing, you may come up with great ideas for the plot when your main character stumbles across the villain's path again.

Something Shady at Sunshine Haven is a mystery novel for adults. The main character, Kate, was a war correspondent. After she’s injured in a bombing, she moves back to her childhood home with her father. Her mother has recently moved into a nursing home in an Alzheimer's unit. Kate quickly finds out that there have been some deaths which were considered to be from natural causes, but it's not 100 percent certain.

She starts investigating. She has a strong goal. It's important because her mother's in that nursing home. I knew who the villain was going to be. I also came up with some other potential villains, people that Kate could investigate. It's a mystery novel, so we need multiple suspects. We need red herrings.

I got a few chapters in and I realized I didn't have enough action. She interviewed people, she investigated, but it was mostly talking to people. The problem was the villain didn't know Kate was investigating him yet. The way I'd set it up, he wouldn't know until she got really close. But I needed a way to have forces working against her.

I decided to add a secondary plot with a different villain. Somebody else at the nursing home is also doing bad things. This person knows that Kate is poking around and is worried that she's going to find out what he's doing. He immediately starts working against her, which gave me the potential for some more dramatic action scenes, like her almost getting run down by a car as she's crossing the street.

It worked so well to have those two mystery plots that I started doing it in more of my mystery novels. When you have two plots, it creates more red herrings, more clues. The main character has to figure out how these things fit together or which things fit together, because they're not all part of the same mystery.

If you have a villain, try to make sure that your villain is getting to work quickly and working against your main character throughout the whole novel. You could even make an outline where you list what happens in each chapter and see where your villain is active. If your villain isn't active for a long time, maybe you want to change that.

No Villain?

Of course, not every book has a big villain in the sense of a killer or somebody trying to take over the world or overthrow the Egyptian government. But you can still add action to your stories by having a villain, perhaps in a subplot.

In the Haunted series, siblings Jon and Tania travel with their parents' ghost hunter TV show. Tania can see ghosts and wants to help them. Jon can’t see ghosts, but he takes on the role of helper and protector to Tania. So they're working to help ghosts and keep her ghost sighting secret from their parents and everybody else.

In the first book, I introduced a very minor character, a fake psychic. She only appeared because the kids are watching the show filming and the psychic is saying, “Oh, yes, I see the ghost.” Tania says, “She's lying, because the ghost is over there.” I didn't necessarily intend for the fake psychic to be a big character, but she was kind of fun, so I used her in the next two books.

In book two, she figures out that Tania can see ghosts. She threatens the kids and says, “You need to help me look good as a psychic or I will give away your secret.” That adds some drama to book two. Then in book three, the kids decide, “We've had enough of this. We need to get rid of her.” Their main goal is to help the ghost move on, but now they also have this enemy that they can fight against. That causes more drama, gives me some more action scenes, and leads to fallout from the things that they do to try to counteract her.

Minor Villains

If you don't have a big villain, think about having a more minor villain. It doesn't have to be a horrible, horrible person. It can just be somebody who is working against your main character because their goals are opposed.

This is something you can do even in romance novels where the main plot is about the two characters falling in love and getting together. You may not have much of a villain at all.

Coffee and Crushes at the Cat Cafe starts a sweet romance series set in and around a cat cafe. In book one, Kari is trying to open this cat cafe. She has to deal with hiring people and renovating the space and figuring out how they're going to work with the shelter to get the cats in the cafe.

She also has to deal with a health inspector. I set it up that she thought she’d gotten permission to have simply one big room with the cafe and the cats. But then the new health inspector says, “No, you can't do that. You have to have a dividing wall.” That means completely renovating the space. It's not a life-threatening challenge, but it gives her something else she needs to do in the middle of all the stress, and it also gave the hero a way to help her, which brings them closer together. The health inspector isn't a true villain, but even having that minor character causing trouble adds a little more action to the story.