Villains

I flung the bathroom door open sharply and stepped into the bedroom. I kept my pistol raised, even though the source of the terrible scritching was nowhere to be seen. But then, I hadn’t been playing the international jet set spy for very long and from who knows where a stiff blow struck me on the back of the neck and the world went first stark white and then tar black.

After what felt like an instant, but could have been a lifetime, my eyes damply opened. I looked around as much as I was able. I appeared to be trussed up to some sort of rack device, my hands bound tightly above my head. My field of vision was severely restricted, but I could just about make out a man’s body. He was sat prissily in a stiff backed chair, wearing a light brown suit and his hands rhythmically groomed a white, long-haired cat.

‘Ah, Mister Marston,’ a voice that sounded hauntingly familiar said, ‘welcome to my liar.’

All of which, is of course, completely invented. I have, however, recently been tied… No-no-no. Let’s not go there.

Villains. Adversaries. Nemesis.

The Baddies.

If there is an innate requirement for a fictional hero, as discussed last week, then do we naturally have the same need for its mirror image?

Going back to all those old films I watched as a child, back to when the bad guys were mainly hordes of unnamed characters, extras got in dressed up and told to fall over at the right time. They were the Germans or the Japanese. They were hordes of unspecified Asians strangely working for a white eastern European. They were Red Indians (or, I should really say, Native Americans) or they were the unidentifiable members of the posse – except the ugly one who spat chewed tobacco every ten minutes.

Yet there was always someone who was the lead villain; the one so dastardly that even his henchmen flinched away from his rage. The German Major who’s glasses steamed up with excitement whilst he gunned down refugees. The unpredictably raging cowboy with the low slung bullet belt and the glint of glass in his eye. The genius corporate magnate with the burning urge to suppress boredom by developing a super yacht and hijacking oil tankers to ransom back to the world just to make money to fuel the hog roast because it might raise a giggle.

If the hero was a cipher, a disguised melee of ideas, then the villain was little more than dots on the screen. He didn’t even get time to have conflicts about his motivation, to give any sort of insight into his troubled childhood that led him down this path of destruction.

‘I think you would say absolutely anything to make sure you got your own way,’ the curly blonde said through clenched teeth in the corridor of a club underneath central London. ‘Did you think it could just go on forever? That this would be enough? Getting drunk together and occasionally snogging? Is that all you want?’

I couldn’t think what to say; words literally failed me, but the voice in the back of my head: ‘It’d been working okay for me.’

As I got older the psychos, the deeply detached lunatics, came out to play more often. They would be allowed more screen time; their own voices in the books. They were malicious and broken and sometimes on our side, but they had motivation. They were characters. When I drifted through puberty dark thoughts of rebellion and subversion were much more attractive. It was a blessing to revel in their complexness.

But that’s the fictional rhythm of good versus evil. At the very start the hero will appear to be on top of it, to have a plan. Then it’ll all go more and more wrong until there doesn’t appear to be a way out. It’ll reach the point where the villain is so supremely confident in the inevitability of his cunning trap that he will, only for a moment, take his eye off the game.

Isn’t that how it works? Isn’t it always the way and then at the last moment, the hero will succeed? In the end? The villain helps us reach the end, helps us get to the point.

It’s often been said that all writing is driven by conflict. It helps enormously to get the audience on side if the hero has something, if not actually someone, to strive against. Their story must be a struggle.

I used to know someone who disputed this vehemently usually citing Jane Austen as an example, but there are huge amounts of sexual tension in Austen’s writing. There are parties to be endured and men to find. This is conflict. Just not conflict in the guns and explosions mode.

There are, I am sure, books (or possibly even films) without conflict. And I am sure that these books have something to justify their publication. Sumptuous prose, for example. Gorgeously constructed sentences which may appeal to the extremely literary minded (and I can think of at least one person who never remembers plots, as in what happens in a novel, but has total recall on literary trickery), but for the vast majority they will be an indecipherable, time wasting snoozefest.

So, it helps to have conflict and the easiest way to this is to create an identifiable bad guy; the enemy, someone the crowd can throw rotten tomatoes.
The opposition can be a love rival, it can be an insane murderer stalking the streets, it can be an institution, a company or even the government, or it can be a mysterious international terrorist organisation. It could be the weather. It could be vague unidentified apocalyptic fall out. It can be used to create fear, hatred, anxiety, unfulfilled lust, desperation, pity, anguish or relief, but whatever it does, it must thrust the narrative and therefore characters forwards.

It should also have resolution.

I lay back on the obviously dyed redhead’s bed and looked at the coving on the ceiling wondering exactly what I was doing there and how was I going to get out.

She looked across at me. She had a cute smile if nothing else.

Then, for some reason, she asked: ‘What’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told?’
Again, I couldn’t think what to say. The question took my by surprise. The voice in my head, ever helpful, suggested: “Same as everyone else: I love you, too.” But I couldn’t make my tongue form the words.

In the probably-a-novel I’m trying to finish, my central male character has plenty of potential adversaries. There’s his ex-wife, the police as a whole, one policewoman in particular, the mysterious American teenager stirring up trouble at right-wing rallies, the cracks in the relationship with his best friend, his manager at work, or even his manager’s manager. Then there’s the shadowy figure of the Boss, the man in charge of everything who lurks on the edges of everyday life roaring above London in a Chinook helicopter. It might even be the city itself.

Or it could be something a lot simpler, something significantly closer and easier to define.

After all, in real life, does anyone have an out-and-out enemy?

Whilst my ex was breaking us up, she said something. At the time just another verbal stab to the eyes, but it went something like: ‘You can’t keep blaming others for everything that’s gone wrong in your life.’

Which was slightly odd. I wouldn’t have said I did and anyway, up until that point, not much had gone wrong. However, she had a vitally truthful point: The ultimate adversary always comes from within.

The eerie voice kept on talking to the rhythm of the hairs being plucked from the cat. It was something about death-rays hooked into weather satellites manoeuvring into position over the world’s capitals. I wasn’t really listening. I was busy using my special cuff links that handily doubled as lock picks.

The chains gave a satisfying ping and I rolled over the rack just before the buzz saw ripped open my genitals.

‘Looks like you’ll need to take a rain check on those plans,’ I quipped (and then worried about whether that had actually worked, whether there could have been something actually funny to have said), but when I finally saw his face it froze my blood.

No wonder the voice was familiar. It’s owner was me.