Tullaia
asked
M.L. Rio:
Recently bought + just started reading 'If We Were Villains' and I'm so excited to continue reading! Anyways, I have a few questions. How do you come up with stories/where do you get your ideas? Also, how do you come up with characters? I have more questions, but I don't want to bother you with lots of questions right away, so I'll ask them another time :)
M.L. Rio
Hi--I'm so glad to hear you're enjoying the book so far. As for where I get ideas, the short and largely unhelpful answer is "life." IWWV started with my own experience being a Shakespearean actor for the better part of 10 years (in some ways, you might call it my "Dear John" letter to the stage--I still work with Shakespeare, but as an academic rather than an actor now), and evolved along the lines of Shakespearean tragic structure. (Everything I do is somewhat intertextual; art begets art.) Other novel ideas have come from other experiences: road trips, live music, natural disasters, you name it. Increasingly, I find much of my inspiration in the realm of nonfiction. Real life is wild, and the more you learn about what makes the world turn, the more fodder for stories you find.
As to the characters, this is from a reply to a previous question which I think also answers yours: "The characters, in their earliest iterations, were the result of my asking myself, 'If you were to walk into a room where a small Shakespearean troupe was rehearsing, what personalities would you inevitably encounter?' And the fourth-years are what, after about six months of outlining and character development, I had to work with. I didn't at any point stop and say, 'No, this person can't have that trait or say that thing because it doesn't conform to their archetype,' or 'This is what this character must do or say to conform to their archetype' because real people don't have archetypes. They're much more complex than that; thus also to good fictional characters. (In IWWV there's actually quite a bit of conversation about the students being consistently typecast and why that's often problematic. The short answer is that expecting real human beings to fit neatly in character categories established by drama or literature doesn't work.)" So the answer is really the same: I write from life. This doesn't mean that the characters are avatars for people I know (they aren't) but rather that they are assembled from shreds and patches of types of people I've known--which, in a way, makes them entirely their own.
As to the characters, this is from a reply to a previous question which I think also answers yours: "The characters, in their earliest iterations, were the result of my asking myself, 'If you were to walk into a room where a small Shakespearean troupe was rehearsing, what personalities would you inevitably encounter?' And the fourth-years are what, after about six months of outlining and character development, I had to work with. I didn't at any point stop and say, 'No, this person can't have that trait or say that thing because it doesn't conform to their archetype,' or 'This is what this character must do or say to conform to their archetype' because real people don't have archetypes. They're much more complex than that; thus also to good fictional characters. (In IWWV there's actually quite a bit of conversation about the students being consistently typecast and why that's often problematic. The short answer is that expecting real human beings to fit neatly in character categories established by drama or literature doesn't work.)" So the answer is really the same: I write from life. This doesn't mean that the characters are avatars for people I know (they aren't) but rather that they are assembled from shreds and patches of types of people I've known--which, in a way, makes them entirely their own.
More Answered Questions
Nitya
asked
M.L. Rio:
This book is honestly one of my all-time favorites, and I really like how you left it open-ended. When I first read it I wished for more, some sort of novella or ending to wrap it, but I think you left it at a good place. I only have 1 question for you, this might be a little personal so feel free not to answer, but which of the actors do you see yourself the most in/ did you connect to the most while writing Iwwv?
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