Versions of Villains
||| When writing Louisiana Hydra, I tried leveraging lessons learned from great storytellers like Ian Fleming. I have always been a big fan of James Bond-like characters like Goldfinger and Dr. No.
Of course, with Hydra being set in the present day, I had to make my characters a little more current. In my mind, that meant looking at the current crop of perceived bad guys. Villains like the elite Tech CEOs we see trotted out in front of the Senate to offer public mea culpas for their misdeeds in what seems to have become an annual tradition.
I don’t know if it’s just me, but these guys seem to have more in common with a villain like Dr. Evil than a Bond villain. Of course, Dr. Evil isn’t a Bond guy, but you know what I mean. Pick one of the more visible Technology CEOs out there, and tell me you have difficulty picturing them petting their hairless cat…
These guys made creating a serious character somewhere between them and a Bond villain a little more difficult. You see, the amount of wealth they accumulate doesn’t seem to matter. I just don’t find them terribly interesting. Awkward? Usually. Creepy? A little. Unintentionally funny? Kinda. Interesting? Rarely.
As a result, no matter how entertaining being awkward, creepy and unintentionally funny might be, they didn’t have much of what I was looking for in an antagonist. So I fashioned Hydra’s Villain 1.0 off their collective personas but immediately began looking over his shoulder to see if he was hiding someone more interesting I could drag out of the shadows.
As the old saying goes, behind every successful villain stands a strong politician (or at least I think someone said that…), so it was no surprise that Villain 2.0 would bring at least a little more charisma into the equation. And although politicians can be far more objectionable than most people you meet, this new guy didn’t bring enough of what I needed/wanted to the story either. There was still something missing. It turned out my antagonist would become an ensemble.
In my view, if you want a really good villain, you have to step away from the idea of a person who can justify or come to terms with committing a sin and find someone who cannot begin to grasp why something is a sin in the first place. If you look at the most diabolical public figures in history, I would be willing to bet that there is someone behind the scenes feeding that frontman all the real nasty ideas, patiently convincing them that implementing certain ideas is the right move. Saying people will admire them for their courage and strength. A creepy background monster like that Josef Mengele character.
An individual who, when listing off the steps of their diabolical plan and explaining the really awful step that makes everyone cringe, will look around with a confused look and say, ‘What?’ That is my Hydra Villain 3.0.
Psychopaths, I imagine, tend to be loners and don’t generally have a lot of long-standing relationships, mainly because they are smart enough to know they stand apart from others and engage only as a means to an end. They can, however, be terribly efficient when given a task, which is usually why they are brought into the picture in the first place. They are simply capable of doing what others could never bring themselves to do.
In any case, it turned out that the third time was a charm. Hence, the Hydra. The multi-headed, poisonous serpent from mythology.
Now that I’m working on the next book in the series, I’m considering my next villain. Sadly, there seems to be a crop of public-facing villains out there that appear truly evil and are getting worse by the minute (but we can’t find anyone willing or able to stop them). Even more alarmingly, these bad guys probably don’t need to employ a psychopath. They seem to encompass the whole enchilada. The true triple threat. Brilliant. Charismatic. Bat-shit crazy. Stay tuned. This should be fun… the book, I mean...
#suspense #thrillerbooks #crimefiction #mysterybooks #thrillers #thrillerreads #crimethriller #suspensethriller #suspensebooks @booktrib @amazonbooks @google_playbooks @goodreads @buzzfeedbooks @indigo @barnesandnoble @bookofthemonth
Comments