What Hangs in the Balance

Like most things in writing, villains are a delicate balance. Not enough evil and you get this:

Too much evil and you get this:

The most effective villains are like this:

See what I mean? Delicate balance.

The weird thing is, though... true villains aren't balanced. They've leaned too far over the edge and lost their footing... or maybe they just swan-dived into the abyss. Either way, they're free-falling down a deep, dark hole. 

And they like it. 

They presents well. They look normal. They smile and talk. Give their seats up to little old ladies on the bus and rescue cats out of trees. They have children and drive minivans. And all the while, they harbor darkness.

Not that we don’t all harbor darkness—we do. We all have thoughts and desires we would never act on because not only do we know the difference between right and wrong, we respect it. 

We're balanced.

In order to write an effective villain, we have to knock ourselves off balance. We have to be willing to go there. You know, there. We have to be willing to search out the dark spots we keep hidden and poke at them until they bleed. To get the page a bit dirty, to scare ourselves silly. To dangle our toes over the abyss.

There have been times--many times--when I've written something and afterward wondered if there was something fundamentally wrong with me. My husband blames (for lack of a better word) my childhood. He's probably right.

Whatever the reason, I'm thankful for my keen sense of balance because no matter how many times I dangle my toes, I'm able to right myself without falling. 

And now, just for fun, some of my all-time favorite villains:

and last, but not least...

who's your favorite all time villain?

Maegan Beaumont is the author of  Carved in Darkness, available through Midnight Ink, May 8th, 2013

Top 10+1, Holy Crap, We're All Gonna Die! Movies of all time... According to me.

Okay... now that we're one week into 2013, I feel comfortable in saying that, we, the human race, made it through 2012... it's official, folks--we're living on borrowed time. To celebrate, I've compiled a list of my favorite end of the world movies... enjoy.


 I'm not one for scary movies... but this one makes the cut. In 28 Days Later,
we see a group of activists unknowingly unleash a bunch of monkeys infected
with a genetically altered strain of human emotion called RAGE. Crazy, angry monkeys bite humans, turning them into crazy, angry people who then, bite other people. Interesting that in trying to dull the human experience, those asshats
 actually messed stuff up even more...

Moral of the story: If it ain't broke--don't fix it.

 2012... We all knew it was a big hoax, right? This movie portrayed a huge
cluster-F of natural disasters. Earthquakes. Fires. Super Storms. Tsunamis... John Cusack fights his way through it all to save his ex-wife and their two children from certain death. We come to find out that government knew this was going t happen all along and contracted the Chinese to build HUGE ships to ensure the survival of the species.

Moral of the story: The Mayans were wrong, bitches!

Armageddon gives us an asteroid the size of Texas, Bruce Willis and
a $300 plastic ice cream scoop. This movie was all about the cinematography (Michael Bay films are filled with stirring images of  Americana) and the fact that Bruce Willis dies in order to save the world. I've seen this movie a hundred times and still cry like a baby when Liv Tyler finally realizes her father isn't coming home.

Moral of the story: Promises are made to be broken.

  Children of Men gives us nearly 20 years of human infertility, a world on the brink of collapse and Clive Owen as the cynical escort to the only woman to become pregnant is over 18 years. This movie paints a bleak picture--police states, civil war and refugee camps. A disaffected government and a hopeless public fight each other for their own version of humanity.

Moral of the story: Whitney was right: Children really are the future.

 The Day After Tomorrow... Dennis Quaid as a Climatologist
(is that even a real thing?) warns the government of an the catastrophic
effects of global warming and the resulting  2nd Ice Age cometh. Jake
 Gyllenhaal plays his dutiful son who holes up in a New York city library
and burns books to wait it out. In a strange twist, the only habitable place in Northern America is Mexico and Americans bum rush the boarders much to the dismay of our Southern neighbors. We are granted asylum by the Mexican
government in return for the forgiveness of their country's debts to
the U.S..

Moral of the story: If you hold out long enough, eventually you
won't have to pay up.


Okay, okay... I know what you're thinking: Deep Impact and
Armageddon are the same movie. You're right, they pretty much
are the same movie--but I have to admit that out of the two, I like
 this one more. Why? Because it was more realistic, for one. I think
 we all know that an asteroids cannot be drilled upon and nuked
 by a bunch of Roughnecks. Deep Impact gave us the human
experience... and Morgan Freeman as president.

Moral of the story: When your mother hands you a baby
and tells you to run, don't argue--just do it. (See above).

  I am Legend is one of those rare movies I actually like more than the
book... and I use the term "book" lightly here. It was more like a short
story and is was... well, it was boring. I did appreciate the fact that the
 pandemic (Matheson never says for sure what it was, but the afflicted
sounded a lot like vampires to me) that sweeps across the
planet claims everyone but Neville... who is finally captured and
executed because he is trying to cure everyone. He in turn, has become
 the threat and they kill him for being different. The movie moves along
 the same lines, but Neville finds a cure and sacrifices himself to ensure
that it reaches the last outpost of civilization and in effect, saves
humanity. I like that Will Smith is half nutty in the movie and I cried
when he had to kill his dog... but I always cry when the dog buys it.

Moral of the story: Never trust a mannequin named Fred.

My favorite Mad Max movie is Thunder Dome (yes, it's because of Tina Turner) but the film that kicks off this franchise is a close second. Mad Max gives us a look at what will happen in Australia if the world ever runs out of oil. Crazed motorcycle gangs will rule the highways, raping and killing for fuel. Policemen will turn vigilante and kangaroos will become extinct (it must be true, because I didn't see any in the movie).

Moral of the story: Never piss off a guy named Max.

 I loved this movie as a kid... that's the only reason it's here.
Night of the Comet is a campy B-flick about how the tail of a
comet passes over earth and turns everyone to dust... and those
 who survive into flesh-eating zombies (like there's any other
kind...). Two sisters survive--each had inadvertently been
shielded from the effects of the comet by spending the night in
steel lined structures and are left to fend off said zombies,
and government clean-up and whack-a-doo scientists while
lamenting over the death of so many cute boys!

Moral of the story: When given the option, always opt for
MMA classes over piano--a round-house kick is so much more
 helpful during the Apocalypse than knowing how to play Heart
 and Soul.

 Okay--confession time... this movie scared the absolute shit out of me . The Happening starts when a bunch of people start randomly killing themselves--and each other--for seemingly no reason at all. Mark Wahlberg uses the power of his third nipple (he has a 3rd nipple--you can see it clearly in the scene from Shooter where he's laid up in Kate Mara's house waiting for her to pull a couple of bullets out of his belly) to determine that the trees are trying to kill us. I looked this up and there is scientific evidence that supports the theory that trees can communicate with each other and that they are capable of releasing a nerve toxin that can make us all crazy if and when they decide to perceive us as a threat.

Moral of the story:  Recycle.

 The good news in The Road, is that all those homicidal trees are dead. The bad news is, so is everything else.
This is one horrible, bleak, what's the point, we're all gonna die anyway movie. Early on, we see Mother give birth at home, aided by her husband, shortly after some cataclysmic event caused society to implode. Mother, driven crazy by despair commits suicide shortly after giving birth. Man takes Boy and hits the road... and is set upon by cannibals... and more cannibals... and more--well you get the picture. Man dies in the end and leaves Boy alone. Boy is found by Family who has been following Man and Boy for a while because they were worried about Boy and the fact that every time shit went sideways (which was every 5 minutes), Man's solution was to kill Boy and then himself, but could never seem to pull it off.

Moral of the story: Buy bullets in bulk.

Motivation, Hitchcock and Why Cheaters Never Win

I was watching The Girl the other night and something Hitchcock said to Tippi Hedren has stuck with me. I can’t stop thinking about, even days later, and how it plays to the vanity of Hitchcock (specifically) and writers (in general).

In the scene where Hedren (played by Sienna Miller) and Hitchcock (played by Toby Jones) discuss her character’s motivation for going into the attic alone, knowing there would be birds there, (they were filming The Birds at the time). Hedren asked, “Why would Melanie go into that attic all alone?”

Hitchcock replied, “Because I want her to.”

Because I want her to.

While a cinematic genius like Hitchcock might be able to get away with that, for a lowly novelist like me, writing takes a bit more work. Just because I want my characters to do something, doesn’t mean I should make them do it. There has to be a reason my characters do and say the things they do and it's my job to give them that reason.

It's called motivation.

Motivation is what a writer weaves throughout a plot to bind it tight. Motivation is what makes even the implausible seem possible. Even the most unlikely seem inevitable. But what is it? A traumatic past? Money? Love? Revenge?

I can’t simply decide I want my protagonist to rob a bank or rescue a bunch of kids from a burning orphanage. There has to be a trigger that sets them on the course. Are they days away from losing their home to foreclosure? Is their child in need of a lifesaving operation and the insurance company refuses to pay. Did they lose a loved one to a fire? Did they grow up in an orphanage themselves?

These are seeds from which future action grow and if you want your novel to feel real, they must be planted. From these seeds should sprout a chain of events, fed on emotion and tended by circumstance, that will inevitably lead your protagonist to a place where the life-altering decisions they make are the only ones that make sense.

Look at it this way...

If a novel is a vehicle, then motivation is the fuel in the tank. It makes us move and takes us places. Maybe even places we never had any intention of going. Place we don't want to be... places we have a hard time visiting. If there's no gas in the tank, that vehicle isn't moving. But if you put the wrong kind of fuel in the tank then your vehicle breaks down completely. It becomes an undriveable hunk of crap that noboby wants to drive. Or read.

When Hitchcock sent his character into that attic full of live, pissed off birds, he wasn’t sending the character—he was sending Hedren. He allowed his personal motivation to color the actions of his character… and in doing so, changed the movie completely.

It was no longer about the story itself at all. It was about Hitchcock’s desire to punish Hedren for finding him repulsive. In punishing Hedren, Hitchcock gave as a peek behind the curtain. Even though we may not have known it at the time, we saw a writer at work and that is something your reader should never see.

The stories we write should be seamless. Our characters should be fully formed, with their own set of experiences that give their choices weight and purpose and the conclusion those choices lead them to should seem inevitable.

Anything less would be a cheat—to myself as a writer and to people I write for.