What makes a really good villain?

Identity and belonging - two strong words - running through my mind as I am waiting outside the Elephant House in Edinburgh waiting for a friend for a coffee.  I suppose I have always been interested in identity, but it is especially strong due to the fact that I am super fan of the television programme "Who do you think you are", the hit BBC show about exploring people's family tree.

"Sometimes I wonder who I am and how much of me is defined by my ancestry, and if the figures from my tree are shaping me, how do I ensure that I don't lose me whilst being a range of characters for other people." 

If there is an answer to the above thought, I don't know whether we will ever find out.  When you start working through the ghosts in your branches, you start to understand that there are character traits that wonder down the generations and it isn't explainable, because at the end of the day, they may be blood but they are strangers to you and you cannot possible understand their lives and actions.

You are probably wondering what has this got to do with writing? Characters and character development. For me, characterisation is key to my novel and one of the problems (yes, there is more than one) is that my villain, in parts, comes over as a cupboard cutout, which isn't good.

If you are writing any story, it is important that each of the characters has depth and meaning, and although I think I know my villain inside out, I think that I have always written it the novel inside the head of my main characters, and in her eyes, she doesn't really like him.

For a writer, it is easier to write the characters which are nearest to yourself and it takes more vulnerability to write the ones that you really don't akin yourself to. But for my novel to work, my villain has to come across as a real person and there has to be depth to why he acts in the manner he does. I think about the villains that I have enjoyed reading, they have always had the same depth as the hero, and sometimes, the people you see as villains are the heros for other people.

I wonder what make a really good villain in your eyes?

Don't walk backwards

Don't walk backwards

I think when I started this blog it was about the future. The journey of Julia Boxer and her world of writing and the journey to get published. But over the last couple of weeks, I have felt as though my move forward has taken me back into my past. People seem to worry about going backwards and making the same mistakes over and over again. There is a great quote by Anna Maxted in the book Getting Over It:

"There's a time in your life when you have to stop looking back and start looking forward otherwise you're going to walk down the road one day and bump into a lamp-post."

Now reading her words again has made me realise that there is a different between going back to the past and going backwards. You will always be moving closer to the future and it is down to yourself whether you look at the future and long for the past. I know for me the past is important but it is the future that I am looking forward to (even though I am listening to classic 80s rock).