Words, words, words. That's what we're made of. Herewith some of my thoughts on what we're doing with them.

Okay, friends, it's time to talk about 'villains'. Meaning basically, 'people we don't like, or disagree with'. Earlier in this series I advised everybody not to start with the villain, because you'd end up with either a straw man or a character you over-identified with. But once you've got a tale worth telling, and some interesting characters, sooner or later a contrary cuss of a personage is going to come along. The question is, what do we do with this person?

My first advice is to be careful with the sucker. The temptation is great to dump just about every irritating habit you can think of on the poor slob. This makes for satisfying writing, but dull reading. If the reader wants realism, he can look out the window. Just describing the fellow as a bore and a bully with intellectual pretensions is dull. Try injecting a bit of humour, as Mark Twain did when he was explaining how he got interested in the Shakespeare Identity Question (yes, it was around as long ago as that). Here Twain is talking about his nemesis, the Bard-quoting riverboat pilot he was apprenticed under:

Also – quite uninvited – he would read Shakespeare to me; not just casually, but by the hour, when it was his watch, and I was steering. He read well, but not profitably for me, because he constantly injected commands into the text. That broke it all up, mixed it all up, tangled it all up – to that degree, in fact, that if we were in a risky and difficult piece of river an ignorant person couldn't have told, sometimes, which observations were Shakespeare's and which were Ealer's. For instance:
What man dare, I dare!
Approach thou what are you laying in the leads for? what a hell of an idea! like the rugged ease her off a little, ease her off! rugged Russian bear, the armed rhinoceros or the there she goes! meet her, meet her! didn't you know she'd smell the reef if you crowded it like that? Hyrcan tiger; take any shape but that and my firm nerves she'll be in the woods the first you know! stop the starboard! come ahead strong on the larboard! back the starboard! . . . Now then, you're all right; come ahead on the starboard; straighten up and go 'long, never tremble: or be alive again, and dare me to the desert damnation can't you keep away from that greasy water? pull her down! snatch her! snatch her baldheaded! with thy sword; if trembling I inhabit then, lay in the leads! – no, only the starboard one, leave the other alone, protest me the baby of a girl. Hence horrible shadow! eight bells – that watchman's asleep again, I reckon, go down and call Brown yourself, unreal mockery, hence.'
He certainly was a good reader, and splendidly thrilling and stormy and tragic, but it was a damage to me, because I have never since been able to read Shakespeare in a calm and sane way.   – Mark Twain, Is Shakespeare Dead?.

That pilot is unforgettable. You are also fully prepared to enjoy it when Twain takes him down a peg.

It's always best, when dealing with people you don't like, to show rather than tell. If the reader sees the offending behaviour in action, he is likely to take your side. Presenting the conclusion, however – 'This person is a bore' – can backfire. The resistant reader may begin to think that you, the narrator, are being harsh and overcritical¹. Best to give the boor enough rope to hang himself.

Another question, of course, is 'how threatening do we want this villain to be?' The riverboat pilot was just a partner in an argument for Twain. Not only did he wish the man no harm, he learned much from him about navigation. Some of these characters, though, are deadly. If that is the case, we're going to have to spend a fair amount of time with them. If the baddie resembles Hitler too strongly, we're likely to make the reader depressed enough to leave. Maybe we should make him interesting to look at:

The eyes – and it was my destiny to know them well – were large and handsome, wide apart as the true artist's are wide, sheltering under a heavy brow and arched over by thick black eyebrows. The eyes themselves were of that baffling protean grey which is never twice the same; which runs through many shades and colourings like intershot silk in sunshine; which is grey, dark and light, and greenish-grey, and sometimes of the clear azure of the deep sea. They were eyes that masked the soul with a thousand guises, and that sometimes opened, at rare moments, and allowed it to rush up as though it were about to fare forth nakedly into the world on some wonderful adventure, – eyes that could brood with the hopeless sombreness of leaden skies; that could snap and crackle points of fire like those which sparkle from a whirling sword; that could grow chill as an arctic landscape, and yet again, that could warm and soften and be all a-dance with love-lights, intense and masculine, luring and compelling, which at the same time fascinate and dominate women till they surrender in a gladness of joy and of relief and sacrifice.   – Jack London, The Sea Wolf.

That, of course, is Wolf Larsen, a very dangerous man to be on board a ship with. If we're going to read the novel, we need to find him interesting enough, though.

Yes, ladies, I am aware that a more modern eye has just spotted the weakness in that paragraph. Are we going to believe this joker when he claims Larsen's eyes 'fascinate and dominate women', etc? (Yeah, in your dreams, bud...) See what I said above, about showing rather than telling.

Now that we've made the irritating or menacing character clear to the reader's eye, we can start playing with him, stringing him along. He's got to succeed for awhile, you know: Larsen has to get his way (until he doesn't), Twain's pilot has to be large and in charge until somebody sneaks in a zinger, Uriah Heep has to have everybody fooled until he reveals himself as a rotter. How you do that will determine how the audience reacts: with laughter, satisfaction, or even (perhaps) pity for the poor, misguided fellow.

If you show them, rather than telling them, though, they'll have all the fun of deciphering the behaviour themselves. That's where you display your Dickensian skills:

'Well, Twenty Seven,' said Mr. Creakle, mournfully admiring him. 'How do you find yourself today?'


'I am very umble, sir!' replied Uriah Heep.


'You are always so, Twenty Seven,' said Mr. Creakle.


Here, another gentleman asked, with extreme anxiety: 'Are you quite comfortable?'


'Yes, I thank you, sir!' said Uriah Heep, looking in that direction. 'Far more comfortable here, than ever I was outside. I see my follies, now, sir. That's what makes me comfortable.'


Several gentlemen were much affected; and a third questioner, forcing himself to the front, inquired with extreme feeling: 'How do you find the beef?'


'Thank you, sir,' replied Uriah, glancing in the new direction of this voice, 'it was tougher yesterday than I could wish; but it's my duty to bear. I have committed follies, gentlemen,' said Uriah, looking round with a meek smile, 'and I ought to bear the consequences without repining.'
A murmur, partly of gratification at Twenty Seven's celestial state of mind, and partly of indignation against the Contractor who had given him any cause of complaint (a note of which was immediately made by Mr. Creakle), having subsided, Twenty Seven stood in the midst of us, as if he felt himself the principal object of merit in a highly meritorious museum.   – Charles Dickens, David Copperfield.

The idea that Uriah Heep, who is such a complete scoundrel, finally goes to jail, only to be put into a country-club of a prison by a reformer who used to be mean to schoolchildren, is one of the ironies that makes this novel such a joy to read.

Obviously, Heep hasn't learned anything. If you're realistic, you'll probably agree that the characters we don't like aren't particularly educable, either. But make them clear and interesting enough, and maybe the reader will learn something.

Another time, we can talk about how to kill them off when we're tired of them.

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Dmitri Gheorgheni

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