One of the great satisfactions of writing...

[seawasp]

... is that not only do you get to create villains, you get to KILL them. I just this weekend killed off the main villain in Threshold (if that really ends up being the title...) and I reread the sequence yesterday and I'm very happy with it. Mr. Richard Fitzgerald meets just about as bad an end as one can imagine.

Threshold is just about done -- I am pretty sure I will finish it this weekend. And then I send it to Eric and immediately ask Toni to give me a contract for Demons of the Past. Which is at 40k already, so I have a head start on writing it.

Comments

[shana.livejournal.com]

I look forward to reading Fitzgerald's demise.

And while you're waiting to hear from Toni, work on the Jason Wood stories so they'll be all ready when Eric starts buying for Universe again...

[nycshelly.livejournal.com]

I rarely kill villains, not until they've used up all their usefulness in sequels. I've always been a fan of the recurring villain. I'm not sure what that says about me and I'm not sure I want to find out.

I do like being able to kill characters, though, good guys and baddies.

In HARD SF...

[seawasp]

... especially this sort, it's really not practical to NOT kill the villains, unless they're the long-range sleazy sort that don't actually get into dangerous situations.

The old comic-book "I didn't see the body, therefore he's not dead" rule doesn't apply in such universes, either.

Remember...

[seawasp]

... no contracted payment, I have to work it in when I happen to have time. If I have a contract, Kathy tolerates my writing on the weekend. Without one, she would be unhappy about my disappearing every weekend.

Re: In HARD SF...

[nycshelly.livejournal.com]

I always like it when they show the last minute escape. But a good villain, especially if you're planning a series, is just so much fun to keep around til a new one shows up. In my little self-published spy series (well, not so little, with more than 15 "books" so far), we've had at least 3 recurring villains who all finally were killed in violent and wholly satisfying ways.

But then, I tend to write the villain's pov and I like getting into the psychology of them. Unfortunately, in my SF WIR, one villain really wimped out. Most of the others are politically connected and were able to maintain their positions. I'm not sure yet if any of them will show up in the sequel.

Re: Remember...

[shana.livejournal.com]

But you can't get a contract for a short until it is written.

And it won't take long for you to finish the two you've started.

And Eric _said_ he wanted Jason Wood stories...

Re: In HARD SF...

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

I remember watching Spider-man 2 in the theater (it's been out long enough that I can presume that everyone has either seen it or doesn't care, right?...), seeing Doc Ock fall into a river literally on top of a runaway fusion reaction¹ that nobody could possibly survive, and turning to my friend and remarking, "Well, we'll be seeing him again."

¹Which they were dropping into the river so as to put it out. Because, you know, water extinguishes fusion.

Re: In HARD SF...

[seawasp]

In this kind of story, though, "villains" are actually hard to come by unless you work really hard at it. Real people rarely have the LUXURY to be true villains (in some ways it's easier to become a hero). Even Fitzgerald, who's pretty bad, doesn't think he's the bad guy. He's clearly WRONG about that, but it's amazing what people will do to avoid recognizing that.

Re: In HARD SF...

[seawasp]

Water is actually a good choice for shutting down just about ANYTHING that's dependent on maintaining some set energy concentration. For comic-book level science, that was dead on. It was running fine in AIR, but dump a continuous supply of dihydrogen monoxide into the mix and it chokes.

Re: In HARD SF...

[nycshelly.livejournal.com]

I obviously can't speak to your story, especially since not only am I not the writer, I haven't read it, either. However, my WIR involves antagonists more than villains in the traditional black hat baddie mode. My antagonists are uh, like the people in government now who are convinced they have the answers and try to impose their solutions on others, even break some laws and kill if it furthers their cause which of course is for their perceived greater good. That interests me.

In the spy stories, we get to write pure sadists, sociopaths, and psychopaths who are a great deal of fun to play with.

And yes, it is amazing what people will do to avoid admitting they're wrong. I'm thinkin a particular current administration, for one.

In both cases, though, I like writing them and when I get good ones, I find ways to keep them around for a while. Heroes are harder for me to write. I write screwed up good guys who end up doing the right, aka heroic thing. Which is why Grisha in the WIR has been so hard for me. He's screwed up, but he's been trying to do the right, heroic thing all along. I'm not used to working with that mindset. Maybe it's just me, but I find villains, antagonists, and screwed up protags easier to write. They have nice, messy agendas. ;)

Re: In HARD SF...

[seawasp]

I obviously can't speak to your story, especially since not only am I not the writer, I haven't read it, either.

All you need do is join my beta-reading LJ community, and it would solve the LATTER problem... :)

However, my WIR involves antagonists more than villains in the traditional black hat baddie mode. My antagonists are uh, like the people in government now who are convinced they have the answers and try to impose their solutions on others, even break some laws and kill if it furthers their cause which of course is for their perceived greater good. That interests me.

To me those are overall somewhat less interesting, and certainly less fun, than true villains -- to a great extent BECAUSE I can find plenty of real-life examples of fools who convince themselves that they're the Good Guys when it's obvious they are not.

Fitzgerald, at least, is a SOLO self-deluder, which makes him pretty easy to paint as a villain. And he takes it to extremes. But still, he's not a Real Villain in the sense that Virigar is.

Re: In HARD SF...

[nycshelly.livejournal.com]

Welll.... I have to at least get a beta read in return. ;) And getting one from a published author would be really nice. heh

I set out to write a mystery set on Mars. I ended up with my usual intrigue but a lot more politics than I'd realized. I have to redo things because I'm making the universe wholly my own and I don't like some of the things my collaborator had set up re: corporate powers, so a few things will likely change story-wise. Seeing how far some people will go to protect their image, agenda, and their delusions, as well as cover up their mistakes is interesting to me. I just don't know that I really got those points across in the WIR because I was concentrating on story and wrestling with Grisha, who turned out to be the real reason behind the problems I was having finishing the draft. I'm still not sure I have him just right yet.

And I also have to deal with agreeing with a principle even if I don't agree with how it's practiced.

[patricksmalone.livejournal.com]

What? No spoiler warning? Bah!

I write...

[seawasp]

... stories where good guys win, bad guys lose. There's little spoilery in telling you that a baddie dies. Only, perhaps, in detailing HOW he dies.

Of which I will only say that he follows the Narn Assassin's program: "You will know pain. And you will know fear. And then you will die."

[(Anonymous)]

Yay, very good deaths! Was Fitzgerald a real-life redshirt, by chance?

No...

[seawasp]

... Mr. Fitzgerald was purely my own invention. Well, the name and the fact he was an ex-merc of Irish extraction, that was in Eric's basic outline. The rest of it was mine.

Re: No...

[shana.livejournal.com]

Every rotten bit of him.

[howardbrazee.livejournal.com]

Of course, there's the long tradition in serials (which Digital Knight is one), where the top bad guys survive for next time.

True, but...

[seawasp]

Of course, there's the long tradition in serials (which Digital Knight is one), where the top bad guys survive for next time.

... as I said on my betareading group, that's also a very different genre. Boundary/Threshold is (or tries to be) hard SF, and that means that miraculous escapes from impossible situations are much harder to do, and really have to be set up clearly on-screen.

In the universe of DK, you're clearly much more into "if I don't SEE the body and EXAMINE the body and do an AUTOPSY, then he's NOT DEAD" territory. But even there the villains actually DON'T live forever. Of the five villains encountered in Digital Knight, three are dead (Elias Klein, the General and many of his underlings, the Maelkodan) and one of them (the drug runner) is basically broken and of no consequence. Virigar will be killed in the story I have always thought of as "The Grand Finale", but obviously isn't dead yet and will be visible in a couple of other stories before getting whacked. Obviously the power BEHIND Klein, whose presence they deduced, is still alive, but he's also slated for an exit (though not at Jason's hands).