I had a grade school villain. Her name was Karla, and she, like most bullies, had been held back a year in school and seemed as if they came out of the womb fully grown. She had a gang – her little brother and a few other cling-ons who were fed by her power, and she owned the swings. I loved to swing. Especially the old kind of swings that hang from chains. In our playground, we could tie one of the set of three to the side, and then play a game with the other two – the one in the middle would swing in a circle, gathering momentum and at the exact right moment, the other “swinger” would position themselves in the middle and the two […]
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“Don’t shoot! I believe you!”
Who are some of the villains that have stood out as scary to you? For me, it would have to be, hands down, Alan Rickman, all the way across the board. Remember him? Die Hard – Hans Gruber (the mastermind thief), Robin Hood – the Sheriff of Nottingham (Ewww!), Harry Potter series – Severus Snape. I know he’s played a few good guys but the guy embodies BAD so well, I just love to watch him. Why? Because he makes you BELIEVE he’s bad. We know he’s out of his mind and crazy, and we don’t know what to expect except….Badness. We’re going to be talking this week about what makes a great villain – 4 key components (and there are others, also, so we’ll be starting a thread […]
Read the RestVillains all around me!
Villains: “Rescue me from evil men; protect me from men of violence, who devise evil plans in their hearts and stir up war every day. They make their tongues as sharp as a serpent’s the poison of vipers is on their lips. … I love David. (This is from Psalm 140). He calls it like he sees it – “stir up war” and “poison of vipers” “Keep me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked; protect me from men of violence who plan to trip my feet. Proud men have hidden a snare for me; they have spread out the cords of their net and have set traps for me along my path.” What are Villains? I believe a villain is anyone or anything […]
Read the RestNo, no, it can’t end this way!
Every romance has to have that moment when we as the reader jump up from our chairs and are tempted to throw the book against the wall, furious that these two can’t be together. In other words – it has to have a BLACK MOMENT. Your black moment is where everything goes south. It’s when the hero loses the heroine, maybe he finds out some truth about her and turns his back, or maybe she finds out something about him and runs away. Maybe the external obstacles become so large that they can’t be overcome and both turn away. But you need to force these two apart, and you need to make miserable. Really despairing, so that they are in a worse place emotionally than they were before […]
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