Making Smarter Villains

I was pretty down on myself about productivity (or lack thereof) yesterday, but I really was kind of stuck. I didn’t like the scene I was working on, and it affected the things that would happen next. As a result, I fell prey to all kinds of distractions.


But I made myself do another round of brainstorming later in the evening, and that was when I realized that none of what I was trying to write really made sense. It fell into the “who would even do that, and why?” category. Meanwhile, a totally new event popped up, and that sent things into a different direction that will be a lot more fun.


So maybe all my distraction yesterday was my brain getting me out of the way so it could think of new stuff. This new stuff is pretty much going to kill a bunch of stuff I’ve already written, so I’m further from the end than I thought, but it’s a lot better.


Funny, I just couldn’t come up with a reason why the bad guys would meet in public to do their nefarious scheming so they could be overheard, even if they were using magic to create a zone of privacy around themselves (that they didn’t know wouldn’t work on a magical immune). I had the good guys meeting privately and being sure not to talk in public, and then the bad guys sitting in a restaurant to scheme. Ugh. So all that has to go, and the heroes have to figure things out some other way.


Villains can be pretty dumb, but it’s a bad idea to build your plot around that. It’s so much more interesting if they’re smart, but with maybe a blind spot or two.


The post Making Smarter Villains appeared first on Shanna Swendson.

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Published on July 19, 2018 08:46
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message 1: by Lexi (new)

Lexi Hooray for smart villains! They are so much more satisfying to defeat!


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