Sacha:

I have focused a lot on character

-      So I have a different character template sheet on heroes, one on villains, and another on side characters

-      It’s the cause of their hurt in the past and therefore their action in the present

(I also have a book on the anatomy of prose, and my most recent book is on the anatomy of a bestseller – I’m currently writing a book on ‘The Villain’s Journey’ and it’s all about unlikeable characters)

In order to create some believability around a villain’s inherently evil nature, the reader will expect some depth to that. And the only way to create depth is to give the reader a reason ‘why’.

David

Help with maybe the benefit of some kind of villain antagonist injection novels where it’s something like: a young character arrives at a new place, they meet a series of interesting people, they have a bunch of conversations, and they’ve probably got some kind of internal dilemma, regret, demon. American arrives in Hackney and starts talking to each other in Hackney, and what I think a lot of people discover is that around page 70 or page 100, they suddenly run out of things to talk about because you can fill up a lot. Then … what’s next? Theory of villain’s, antagonist’s stakes to try to give writers some tips.

Sacha

My advice is very genre based, but I still think that you can steal tools and tricks from any genre. … of spectrum of villains and the fact you have a pure villain and then you have an antagonist and then you have, like, inner conflict. And so you find it’s almost like romance stories there is no villain as we would think of in a fantasy story. There is only some kind in inner conflict. Some kind of would that is leading the protagonist to make bad decisions that are basically causing more problems and going them any good.  And that is what creates conflict.

Is this something that somebody there you have an embodied person had dome and, therefore, how has that affected them? Or is this something that they’ve done and are running away from? … then the conversations that they’re having in person with these people need to push them to reflect on their actions or their reasons for why they left?

Maybe there’s an adjacent story … learned helps the protagonist to reflect on the things that they are going through. If it’s a social commentary, then often I always feel like Dystonian …  of our society that they think is broken and taking it to an extreme … a system creating the system maybe is failing your American character. But what you would want is some kind of change in the character to either go back and fight or to grow and develop and I don’t know, but there needs to be some kind of inner change and that change will create conflict because they do not want to face that problem. And pushing them to face those problems through those conversations … All of those characters need to be linked to the problem. They all need to be pushing the protagonist to reflect or circle around or give them a thought that brings it back to the theme of the story.

So, yeah. Things that they ran away, but, they ran away from what? What wound do they have that’s causing them an issue and making them unhappy in the other country? And then, the other thing that I would say is, can you force that character to go back home? Because change forcing a physical change … Maybe you could raise the stakes by a loved one home getting sick? Well, now the stakes are up because they’ve run away, but there are responsibilities back home. So, that basically condenses the timeline. So, can you push them back?

And then I would also say that you could have a mini-conflict as well, so, even if you haven’t figured out what your main story conflict is, you could have mini-conflicts.

… and like having inner turmoil about the story they’re hearing.

… can one of them scold him and tell him off and tell him he’s wrong? It’s a min-insane conflict.

Or characters that push your protagonist out of their comfort zone? I always think agents of chaos are good in this because you never know what they’re going to do next. So a character that drags the protagonist through the story by constantly changing things – oh, we’re going to do this now – and the protagonist never gets the chance to say no.

… of different ways that you can time pressure. Is there a ticking time bomb? Did they buy a return flight and they haven’t got any more money to return, so they have to go back on that flight – and yet, they haven’t processed what they’re thinking about or the big theme of the book. Even in a literary fiction, you need to know the point of the book. What is the thing you are trying to say? And that is where you should drive your conflict from.

David

I really like the way you took the premise of the book. You didn’t add something. You didn’t say okay, and then at page 100 aliens attack and it was dead. Rather, taking what was already there and giving it teeth. Giving these conversations, they’re causing discomfort. They’re turning into moment periods of conflict, or the characters are forcing our protagonist to sort of do stuff. And then the idea of sort of really get clarity by using things like a ticking bomb.

Sacha

I think you can always find conflict as long as you have a character with a problem. And whether you meant to or not, you did give me a character with a problem because you said that they were unhappy. You can make conflict of they are unhappy about something. There is a problem, therefore, there is conflict.

David

But they’re still unhappy, and that suggests there is something else going on, because surely they should have become happy by moving.

I have one more question in the book , and then I want to give people tips on how this idea that people are basically kind of predictable … turning points in your craft book, in the villain book. The plot should push the character out of their norm and that in the first half of the story, characters, especially the hero and the villain, are consistent. They behave as you created them and the plot does stuff to them and they’re almost victims of the plot. But then at some point in the book, usually around the middle, this changes, the characters shift.

Sacha

That is a generalization, different structures will require different points. However, we talked about stories change. Which means we have to know; we have to have a before state, and the first half of most books is the before state. And the thing is, in order to be able to show change, to show the after, we need to have established what the before was. And the thing is, because we are habitual creatures, some of that is showing consistency of character, places they frequent and why they are meaningful to them. That makes the change meaningful when the leave the city.

If you’re reading in present time in order to see that change … and that’s the same as essentially story and characters of big juxtaposition – and you need the before and the after. And having the difference creates more clarity around the change.

You need a finish point, which means you need a start point; and those things are different. The reason things happen to the hero in the first half is because the hero is still flawed. They haven’t changed enough to be able to take over the plot. It’s those flaws that prevents them from driving forward. So, at the midpoint, you tend to have a false high or a false low. But when you look at the other plot points in the book so the inciting incident that happens to the hero, the hero isn’t in control of that … concept and you have refusal of the call where the hero refuses to engage with this mission or this journey which has fallen before him. And that’s because they are flawed and they are the before and they are the system. So things are happening to them, and they don’t want those things to happen. That means they are a victim of the plot or the things that are happening to them. And its as though the inciting incident … that they are not given a choice and they are forced or pulled through the first half of the book. And this is that foece and that motion that we were talking about earlier. We talked about the laws of the universe, the fact that with even your heroes, there needs to be some pushing force that pushes them through. But what happens is that the hero picks up speed. They start to take control because then they start to change.

They realize the error of their ways. And, even though they aren’t at the end of the book where they have completely overcome their flaw, they start to take control. And that’s when they start driving, they drive the action, and they start controlling what happens.

And so people are like, my characters just won’t do what they say. Well, good, because by the time you get to the halfway point in the book, your heroes should be making the decisions and should be deciding how they’re going to attack the villain or how they’re going to stick up the building that they’re going to heist. And they then start pulling the reins of the story into their control. … pissed off enough by the midpoint to actually do something about it. But seizing “power” is a really good way to explain this. So – it’s the protagonist who decides when to engage with the inciting incident. So, they are still making decisions, and those decisions are affecting the plot. It’s just that they become very active in drive towards the finish line. Or if you like, driving towards the villain.