Yesterday I had the joy of attending the Fall Oregon Christian Writers’ Conference all day. Jeff made it possible, by first insisting that I go, and then by taking care of Dutch all day, even driving into Portland during my lunch break so I could nurse him. What a husband! It was so worth the time and expense of attending. Randy Ingermanson was the key speaker, a physicist turned fiction writer. During the afternoon I attended his workshop on Fiction: Writing Deep Characters. One of the exercises he uses, in order to develop characters that are real, believable, and consistent throughout the story, is journaling from that character’s perspective. He pointed out that we must get into our character’s minds, know their personalities, how they respond to other people, conflict, criticism, success. We have to know them so well that we know exactlyhow that character will respond in any given situation. He insisted that we even need to do this with our “villain” — if the story has such a character (which most stories do, we just wouldn’t be so bold as to name them that). He explained that the villain does not think he is the villain! He thinks he is the hero! Of course he does–no one thinks they are the villains of anything. So, in order to understand that character, and make them more than a two-dimensional meanie, we must write a page of a journal entry, as if we were that person, writing the story line from their perspective. Even though this work isn’t something to include in the actual story, it gives us, the writer, the opportunity to see why the villain will do what he does.
So, what’s the big deal, Kari? Why include this on your blog? Because I think we all need to write our villain. Of course we may not have an arch-nemesis, but there may be a person who hurts us or annoys us or just seems to be standing in our way. Yes, this is really just a more labor-intensive way of saying “Well, I’m sure they must think . . . ” and forcing ourselves to see their perspective, but when we do that, we’re really just going through the motions, it’s rarely that we ever truly convince ourselves of someone else’s perspective. So, by actually writing out a situation, from his or her point of view, as if they were writing it themselves, we may surprise ourselves, and wind up loving people and understanding people a whole lot more than we ever thought we could.
Let’s write our villains.
Understanding is a fountain of life to those who have it . . . Prov. 16:22