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Everyone loves bad guys.

But how do we make sure our villain isn’t a mustache twirling sadist, who is bad only because he does bad things.

The more readers can understand the bad guy’s motives, the more layered the experience of the story.

If you remember one thing: the villain sees himself as the hero. The villain has reasons for what he or she does. Part of your main character’s journey is learning who her foe is and why she must face him down.

In Starside Saga, there have been several “big bads.” The Hargothe claimed to only seek Til’s glorification, though it was clear that he was powermad. “All things are permitted in the service of Til.”

Dunne Yples went mad because he witnessed Kila burning up a village of people. He was sure she was a prophecied destroyer of the world and had to be killed at all costs.

Yiothizandra is a demayne of Night, trapped in Kila’s world against her will. She has contempt for humans, and wishes only to be free (she’s the real victim here, you see), even if it requires killing everyone alive.

As the saga continues Kila faces the Revulsion, the ultimate force of destruction. It is pure suffering and wishes to bring about the End of All Things, including itself.

Bad guys are powerful. That makes them worth fighting. But they also have understandable reasons, even if we think they are insane. In fact, the more compelling (dare I say convincing) we make the villain’s rationale, the more frightening he is.

The beauty is that every writer contains multitudes. We all have a shadow side where our bad guys dwell and plot mayhem. One of the great pleasures of writing fiction is unleashing that aspect of our nature on the page.

Your bad guys may be murderers, or mistresses, or even opposing ladies in a fundraising competition for the church. She can be the rich woman who outbids your hero on ebay for a family heirloom, or a guy who smashes mailboxes. It all depends on the scope of your story.

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Writing through the middle of your novel can be like trudging through a bog, every step an enormous effort, mud sucking your shoes and socks off as you go.

In the distance, fog. Behind you, fog. Above you, fog.

And then come the mosquitoes of doubt and self-loathing. They buzz around you, nibbling constantly, until you cry out: “Why am I doing this to myself?”

This is where I would normally quote Bradbury to you, and you would roll your eyes and tell me to just shut up about Write—Don’t think—Relax already. You’re sick of that and you want an answer to the problem of the day-to-day toil, of churning out words that you know just suck and that aren’t going anywhere.

I wrote 1788 words yesterday.

At no time did I believe the writing was good.

At no time was confident that the descriptions (filtered through the opinions of my viewpoint character) were vivid and compelling.

At no point did I feel pulled along by page-turning momentum.

I’m not immune to the changing weather of mood and emotion.

But I have no intention of stopping, because I have the benefit of experience. Sixteen novels, over a million words published. I know this territory.

The first time you cross the swamp, you don’t know if it ever ends. But if you cross it once, you have that knowledge, that certainty forever. There is firm ground ahead.

Here’s what I’ve discovered:

• Your writing is never as bad as you think it is. Scenes written while you feel enthusiastic aren’t necessarily better than the ones you write when you have a cold and want to fall asleep at the keyboard. I’m often delighted by chapters I had assumed were slow-paced masses of confusion when I wrote them.
• You learn to distinguish between self-criticism of plot and instinctive alarm bells that something isn’t working. Pay attention to your gut, not so much your mind.
• If you write yourself into a corner and don’t know how to get out, good! Your reader won’t know what’s going to happen either.
• It’s okay to do a larger loopback and take a right where you previously took a left. Yes, you’ll have to get rid of a bunch of hard-earned words sometimes. That’s no problem. Your only concern is progress.

In any endeavor, discomfort is how you know you’re exercising. It’s what forced your brain to adapt. Recognize it and take satisfaction that you are doing something difficult.

Writing tips, tricks, and inspo straight to your inbox. Bi-weekly except for November when I send a daily email to keep you on track for NaNoWriMo.

Want to know how to write a page turner?

The kind that readers simply cannot put down?

There’s a technique to it. And it’s easy to learn.

Oddly enough, I learned this technique at a little woodworkers shop in Milwaukee. The entry to it was just in the middle of an alley, in the side of a big old warehouse.

It was actually the back room of a slightly larger shop selling brewing supplies to hobbiests. The guy who leased the space was illegally renting out his back storeroom to the woodworker.

I had heard about this guy from a friend who collects typewriters. Apparently the woodworker had been a typewriter repairman way back in the day. But now he was in his 90s and was selling off some of his old tools. Typewriters have very specialized tools.

When I went in, the place smelled really off. And I don’t mean strange. It the gaggy sweet smell of decay. I was sure the old man had died and I was going to find his body. If only.

What I found was much, much worse . . .

That’s the technique.

Bait: Spark interest in the reader’s mind with bait. (I want to learn this easy powerful technique Eric mentioned!) Usually a question.

Tease: Delay answering the question with details that seem to be leading somewhere, but you can’t quite figure out where. Show details that create more confusion (brewer hobbiests? typewriter repairman? woodworker? What does any of this have to do with the technique?)

Twist: Surprise with a little (or big) twist. Something unexpected. (bad smell? not a dead body but something worse?)

Release: Relieve the tension, but not all the way because you put out some more bait.

So how does this translate to scenes in your novel?

Like everything else I’ve discussed, it’s a skill you learn through practice. And once you’ve practiced it, your creative mind will happily use it. This constant bait, tease, twist, release cycle can happen even in very mundane scenarios.

Imagine using it in a scene where your main character is going to meet his girlfriend for dinner where she’s going to tell him whether or not she’ll marry him.

The reader wants the answer. Most will be hoping for a particular answer.

But he doesn’t just sit down and she says “yes!”

You want the waiter to interrupt before the conversation can even get started. You want your hero gauging his girlfriend’s answer from her demeanor, her eyes, her outfit. You make him listen to her talking and talking and still not answering. And he starts to realize that if she’s giving this long preamble, the answer can’t be good.

And then he starts resenting her and berating himself. Because why didn’t he see that her wanting to meet him at a restaurant was a bad sign in the first place? She just wanted to avoid dealing with him in private. She’s here to let him down where his natural politeness will prevent him from making a scene.

OMG this is a disaster.

To make things worse a mariachi trio comes up and starts playing “Bésame Mucho.” It’s agony.

What’s she doing now? She’s getting down on one knee. He’s appalled. She’s mocking him.

NO! She’s apologizing for making him wait, for saying that she needed to think about it. She’s apologizing for ruining his proposal by not leaping into his arms and shouting yes, yes, yes. She’s apologizing for ruining the special moment that they would one day tell their children about.

She’s proposing to him, right now, to make the proposal memory unique and unforgettable. Something they’ll tell their children about with laughter and tears.

“Will you marry me?” she asked, eyes welling with tears.

He pulled her into his arms. He whispered his answer so that nobody but her could hear. “Yes. My dear, sweet love, yes!”

The people seated nearby applauded, and the cheers rose and spread through the restaurant. But one woman, seated near to the kitchen did not clap, nor cheer, nor clink her wine glass with the back of her butter knife. . .

And so the cycle continues. You could write a book using only this technique, and it would work out pretty well.

So practice this idea. Take ten minutes and make up your version of the scene above and see where it leads. When your creative mind is engaged in this pattern, you will be dying to see what happens next.

It’s tempting to go straight at the emotion of a scene. To write what the character is feeling. Or to even have them say it in dialogue.

“I love you.”

That lets the reader know it. But it doesn’t make the reader feel it.

The picture above conveys tenderness, love, partnership, safety, comfort, ease. And we can sense it because we can see it.

No emotion words needed.

Here’s a snippet full of emotion that does not use any emotion labels:

Jen studied the table, finding it impossible to meet her mother’s weary eyes. The cafe door jingled as another patron went out. Jen’s neck flushed. Her sweater felt suddenly too tight, too hot. The heat rushed like a geyser to her cheeks. God! To be just a patron and not a daughter. That was freedom. Because then she’d be able to get up and walk out, jingle the bell one last time, and be away from this impossible table and its half-eaten scones and going-cold coffee.

We might need more context to understand all of the emotional currents in the the little vignette above, but we don’t need much.

Even by itself it provokes a sense of several emotions. Jen is uncomfortable under her mother’s gaze. Whatever she’s feeling, it’s making her too hot, and that’s making her more uncomfortable. Is it embarrassment? Is it anger? Is it guilt? She sure has a wish for freedom, which suggests being trapped. The half-eaten meal and cold coffee suggests the meal was interrupted by a discussion that had cost one or both of them their appetites.

Real emotions are complex, and you can evoke them more powerfully by not naming them directly. Let your reader infer the emotion and suddenly they aren’t merely thinking: “oh, this character feels guilty, or she feels judged.” They are feeling it.

And that is powerful.

As you continue in your writing journey, you’ll come across scenes where complex—or chaotic—emotion is needed.

Sometimes the most powerful way to say “I love you” is something quite indirect:

“You had me at hello.”

Do you remember what movie that famous line is from?

That payoff is anything but generic, and that’s why it knocks our socks off.

Writing tips, tricks, and inspo straight to your inbox. Bi-weekly except for November when I send a daily email to keep you on track for NaNoWriMo.