Building a better Villain, Tiffany Trent spills the Dirt

The same energy of character which renders a man a daring villain would have rendered him useful in society, had that society been well organized.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

When Synde asked me to write about villains for this guest post, I have to admit my wicked little heart grew a few sizes larger. Is it odd to admit that when I went to Disney’s MGM park as a kid, I spent an inordinate amount of time in the villains store? Or that I wanted to be Maleficent rather than Sleeping Beauty? Or that I was always making stories up for the villains because no one ever told their tale? 

I think it’s safe to say I have a bit of an obsession with villainy. 

And I find it very interesting what actually constitutes a villain. Someone who disagrees with others? Someone who manipulates others into doing what he wants? Someone who enjoys having power over others?  Turned just slightly differently, all those qualities are things we admire in leaders.  (And we wonder why leaders can often go suddenly, horribly wrong!)

Perhaps the distinction is that leaders hold these things in balance while villains don’t. A villain is often simply a person out of balance who tends to spread that unbalance throughout the world of the book. The protagonist must bring back the balance by whatever means necessary. This often means the villain has to die, but I feel strongly that it doesn’t always have to. 

In my latest novel, THE UNNATURALISTS, the villain is fairly obvious right away. For the entire book, he has an agenda that is never fully revealed to the reader. And for the longest time, I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what he wanted and why he plagued the main characters so.  It took actually writing a segment of the novel from his point of view to finally get it. As with other villains I’ve written, the kernel of his villainy is in something that should ultimately make him sympathetic. At some level, as Don Maass mentions in his The Fire in Fiction, the villain must be right. 

It’s so much easier to write a cartoon villain, a la Scooby Doo: “And I would have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for you meddling kids!”  It’s fun, too. (I refer you back to Scooby Doo). But the problem is that real-life villains are seldom that simple. I think the same should be true of villains in books. Even if it makes my life harder as a writer, I will always choose the villain who is complex, who does what he does for reasons that are very clear in his own mind, and who often overturns his own humanity (sometimes quite literally) to accomplish his goal.  The villain never sees himself as the villain; he’s always the hero in a story that we never see (to paraphrase that infamous quote). I try to work from this principle, to make my villains both attractive and revolting, both pitiable and enviable.

It’s definitely a fine line to walk, but the rewards for the story are priceless. 

about Tiffany Trent~
Tiffany Trent is the author of the  young adult steampunk novel THE UNNATURALISTS and the HALLOWMERE series. Her first book, In the Serpent’s Coils, was named a BookSense (IndieBound) Children’s Pick in Autumn 2007 and a New York Public Library Book of the Teen Age in 2008.  She was also the recipient of the 2008 SCBWI Work-in-Progress grant, and has won awards and fellowships for her nonfiction. Her short story “Blackwater Baby” in Magic in the Mirrorstone was given Honorable Mention for the Year’s Best Horror 2008.  She is represented by Jennifer Laughran of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency.
Tiffany currently lives in the New River Valley of Virginia. When not writing, she plays with bees, presides over her avian army, and frequently gets lost in the jungle of her garden. 

where to find Tiffany~

on twitter

@tiffanytrent

her website-

http://www.tiffanytrent.com

buy The Unnaturalists~

 Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1442422068/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d1_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=17EAP8KTXSPAGHSYGNC2&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1389517282&pf_rd_i=507846

B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-unnaturalists-tiffany-trent/1107043645?ean=9781442422063

Indiebound: http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781442422063

The Psychology of Duran Duran Tiffany Trent Talks Music and Writing

When I’m writing, music is a requirement. Nothing will get me into the mood to work faster than the perfect song. Although I am perhaps not the most widely-listened of people (I’m always looking for new tunes!), I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to come up with the perfect playlist for my work-in-progress. Sometimes a book will simply require a soundtrack or two, and that’s wonderful. THE UNNATURALISTS (my steampunk YA scheduled for release in August) was such a book. I alternated between the soundtracks for “The Duchess” by Rachel Portman and “The Illusionist” by Philip Glass—which was fairly easy, if extremely repetitive over the course of three years of writing and revising!

But some novels are a bit more demanding. Some require a bit more effort and some just require every trick I know to help me finally get to a place where I can work again. For me, the go-to band that never fails me has always been Duran Duran. Go ahead. Laugh if you like. But if anyone taught me the value of a good lyric, it was Simon Le Bon. And if anyone taught me how to pull an entire story from a three-minute song, well, I think Duran Duran gets all the credit. (If any band can claim a more direct bloodline from science fiction, please tell me—they took their name from the science fiction cult film “Barbarella”, after all!)

Most people know Duran’s catalog from the 80s—“Hungry Like the Wolf,” “Save a Prayer,” “The Reflex.” (They also might remember the resurgence in the 90s with “Ordinary World” and “Come Undone”). But it’s always been the band’s lesser-known songs that have spoken deepest to me. If you want to hear some really haunting New Romantic stuff, go listen to songs like “Waiting for the Nightboat” or “Friends of Mine” off of their eponymous album, DURAN DURAN. Or, on later albums like MEDAZZALAND, songs like “Out of My Mind” (highly recommend the video—I watched it endlessly when I was working on my HALLOWMERE series) or “Midnight Sun.” (And of course, there’s the lone album by Arcadia—the Duran that never was, according to some people--which has some lovely songs, but we won’t go there just now).

I’ve always loved Duran’s B sides and unreleased stuff best. See “Secret Oktober” for a taste of what I mean. I nearly died of joy when I first heard the song “Virus,” which was only released on the Japanese version of their ASTRONAUT album. With its slinky bass and spine-tinglingly morbid lyric drive, I’m still convinced it would have been a big hit had it been released worldwide. (Yes, I seriously should be given a PhD in the Discography of Duran Duran).

But I digress…

Even more amazing to me was when I discovered the album POP TRASH. I had avoided it for years because I’d heard it was truly awful. (And hey, everyone has a stinker in their history somewhere). But one day I decided that if I was a true diehard I would listen to every album. And this one was marvelous. The song “Starting to Remember” (which is only two minutes long) carried with it such a vivid, poignant scene that it’s now the basis for a series I can’t wait to write. Other songs on that album like “Playing with Uranium,” “Lady Xanax,” and “The Sun Doesn’t Shine Forever,” also hearken back to Duran’s lush science fictional roots.

I’m not sure if one can psychologically wire oneself into inspiration via sound, but Duran Duran’s music does just that for me. If I am really stuck, I have a special playlist of all my favorite Duran Duran songs and that will usually move me along. Though I love many bands and singers—Snow Patrol, Silversun Pickups, Florence + the Machine, Sia, Muse, Ray LaMontagne—I still go back to the music of my adolescence when push comes to shove. I suppose that means I’m obsessed, but thank goodness for obsessions that don’t fail us.

If you’d like to play along some time, here are a few of my faves:

-Tiger Tiger

-The Chauffeur

-The Seventh Stranger

-Lonely In Your Nightmare

-Crystal Ship (cover)

-Salt in the Rainbow

-Chains

-Someone Else Not Me

-The Man Who Stole a Leopard

-Land

Tiffany's books are available here~

 B&N
 Amazon
indieBound


Tiffany's Blog
Out of my Mind