Sleeping with the Enemy

What do you do when you fall in love with the antagonist in your novel? I've never heard of this happening in any of the writing manuals I've read, but it's just happened to me, and it's caused me a really tricky plot dilemma. I'm 25,000 words into this novel and it's going great. I'm happy with the writing. I'm especially happy with the hero, who I find endearingly nerdish and obsessive, but with hidden depths and strengths he's only beginning to discover.

The trouble lies with the bad guy. I made him deliberately charismatic to contrast with the hero. But now I really like him, and I'm getting very uneasy with the downward, increasingly violent trajectory I've got planned for him. For one thing, it doesn't feel quite true to his character, as it's developed during the writing.

Escape route?

There is a possible escape route: a shadowy organisation that exists in the background to the story. I could turn it into an evil, shadowy organisation, and make that the antagonist. I have a believable, ready-made motivation for why it should turn evil, so that's no problem. This could make for an interesting gear change in the novel. So far most of the tension has been generated by my bad guy's mischief-making. Now, maybe, he and the hero could join forces to fight this organisation.

Hitchcock did it!

It's a little like the way Hitchcock killed off Janet Leigh halfway through Psycho. In that case, the antagonist (Norman Bates) remained the same, but the protagonist changed. Hitchcock killed off his protagonist. I don't want to kill off my antagonist. So my big fear with going down this route is that it could overcook things. Suddenly we'll have protagonist + former antagonist joining forces to fight new antagonist. There's also a girl – there has to be a girl! – and she has complex and interesting relationships with both of the main characters. Too much maybe? It could end up as a big overblown, full-fat blancmange, when what I was aiming for was a low-cal Angel Delight.

But the blancmange might spawn babies…

This is a big danger, admittedly. But it could be outweighed by one major benefit of going down the evil organisation route: sequels. It opens up the enticing possibility of more adventures starring my two former enemies, now best buddies. They've vanquished evil organisation, so what's next? In my original storyline, bad guy would have had to perish, making the book by necessity a stand-alone. I don't want to give anything away, but the entire hook/USP of this novel would vanish without the bad guy – so no sequel would be possible.

What do I do? Good question. Have a cup of tea, I think.