Guest blogger Karin Tabke on bad boys
Guest on May 26 2009 | Filed under: CRAFT
Today’s guest blogger is the always awesome Karin Tabke. Though she’s best known for authoring romance novels featuring buff contemporary cops, Karin has recently burst onto the historical romance scene, writing books about buff medieval knights. (You see the common thread: sizzle.) Thanks for being here, Karin! (Therese, by the way, is being all controversial elsewhere today. Check it HERE.)
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Guest blogger Karin Tabke on bad boys
First of all thank you, Teri, for having me back!
Today I’m going to chat about villains. Muwahahahahahahaha!
I like villains. The good meaty complex ones. I find them fascinating.
The more layered and humanized the better. I’m a writer who believes for a story to work the writer should know her villain as intimately as she does her hero and heroine. The villain often drives the plot. And if one isn’t careful, a villain can take over the story.
Here’s what Merriam-Webster has to say about the bad guy:
1 : VILLEIN 2 : an uncouth person : BOOR 3 : a deliberate scoundrel or criminal 4 : a character in a story or play who opposes the hero 5 : one blamed for a particular evil or difficulty
Yep, the villain throws the wrench and causes the problems. But villains are people too! For a villain to work, he/she must have layers. They must be complex and they must have believable reasons for being, well, villainous. The one-dimensional villain falls flat. He’s bad because he wants to conqueror the world. So? Not good enough. Why does he want to conqueror the world? Because he’s a power monger? Not good enough. Does he have deep seeded insecurity issues? Does he have something to prove to his evil stepfather? Was he orphaned and had to fight for every scrap of food to survive?
And what about the classic bitch villains? Being a bitch for the sake of plot is not going to pull me along. In fact, I start rolling my eyes. Why is she a bitch? Is she afraid? Insecure? Was she laughed at in elementary school? Was she victimized and now she lashes out before being lashed at? Give me a good villain, and I will read your book!
Of course, for me, the best kind of villains are the ones who are heroic. A perfect example of this is John Travolta’s character Gabriel in Swordfish. At his core, Gabriele is a patriot. He kills a lot of innocent people to protect America against terrorists. The killing of innocent peeps bugged me, and I’m not sure I could justify in my mind Gabriel as a true hero, but he was so simply complex in his life’s mission, one understood his reasoning for what he did. He was driven. Driven for a noble reason. His methods however were that of the same people he strived to protect America from.
In the anthology WHAT YOU CAN’T SEE I’m in with my good friends Allison Brennan and Rocki St Claire, my story REDEMPTION is about Zach Garret, a bad ass vigilante cop who is given a second chance as he is thrust into the fires of hell. Here’s a guy who took the law into his own hands and destroyed bad guys on his terms, not the law’s terms. Zach has a particular appetite for removing pedophiles and rapists from the face of the earth. His emotional back-story supports it. Zach was one of the most complex yet easiest heroes for me to write. I understood his anger, his pain and his burning desire for justice when the time honored judicial system failed. He goes a step further and does a bad thing to protect the woman he loves, and in effect destroys their love. But for him, the suffering for them both is worth preserving her life. He was not hard to redeem. Everything he did, he did with passion and for the love of a woman. He could have easily been the bad guy, but there was too much good in him.
All villains, like our heroes and heroines, have issues. Baggage, and a deep seeded belief in their particular means to an end. And so long as they stay true to it, they are believable. It doesn’t matter if the villain is male or female, for to them work they must have a cause, a deep rooted belief, even if the motive is revenge, or power or for so many, love lost.
Who is your favorite villain? And why?
I’d also like to take a quick moment to let you all know, MASTER OF CRAVING, book three in my Blood Sword Legacy series releases today! Happy dance! Talk about a tortured hero! Stefan de Valrey was one tough nut to crack. And my bad guy in this story? The husband of Princess Arianrhod of Dinefrw, the one woman, Blood Sword, Stefan de Valrey must have at all costs!
To celebrate the release of MASTER OF CRAVING, I’m having an 8 Days for 8 Knights of giveaways at my place, www.karintabke.com/blog, and my publisher, Simon & Schuster, has released A KNIGHT TO REMEMBER, a short story featuring one of the hotties in MASTER OF CRAVING as a FREE read. Here’s the link to download it!
Enjoy!
Oh, and before I forget, I’m going to give away a signed copy of WHAT YOU CAN’T SEE, to a lucky commenter!
Karin*
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Readers, don’t forget to comment if you’d like to win a copy of WHAT YOU CAN’T SEE.
Write on, all.
Kathleen Bolton
Therese Walsh
Ann Aguirre
Porter Anderson
Brunonia Barry
Carleen Brice
Sarah Callender
Keith Cronin
Anna Elliott
Jane Friedman
Robin LaFevers
Donald Maass
Juliet Marillier
Sophie Masson
Jael McHenry
Jan O'Hara
Debbie Ohi
Barbara O'Neal
Crystal Patriarche
Ray Rhamey
M.J. Rose
Chuck Sambuchino
John Vorhaus
Yuvi Zalkow
Sharon Bially
Anne Greenwood Brown
Tracy Hahn-Burkett
Suzannah Windsor Freeman
Kristan Hoffman
Jeanne Kisacky
Erika Robuck
Lydia Sharp
I loved REDEMPTION, but I will admit it was one of your darker stories. As a writer, we dig deep for our heroes and heroines, but tend to be a little more superficial with our other characters. Thanks for the reminder!
I still think of of the best villians out there is Hannibal Lecter (sp?) because as much of a whackjob he was, he was still ‘likeable’.
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Great post, Karin! I have to go with Margaret and pick Hannibal Lecter. In my wip, I have a female villain. My main characters all have tortured backstories, so I gave the villain a good family. She’s just overly competitive. She has to win, she has to get on top, and will do anything to make it happen.
There are people like that in real life, and that’s what makes her a scary person. I hope it works with other people.
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Great Post! I think one of the greatest villains is Peyton, played by Rebecca DeMornay, in ‘The Hand that Rocks the Cradle’. She had what she believed to be a good reason for revenge, and her villainous side was superbly played!
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the best villians are the high functioning ones, because they ‘seem’ so normal, and their ability to rationalize is quite scary.
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Margaret, I loved Hannibal Lecter. Probably one of the best all-time badest and most memorable villains in all of fiction.
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Edie I hope it works too! But remember she has to have a reason for being competitive. Maybe she was shunned by a parent as a child for coming in second. Maybe it’s been hammered into her by her father or mother that no one remembers who finished second. Or it’s not about how you play the game it’s about winning the game.
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Oh, Jamie she was bad bad bad! I forget her revenge story. Remind me, please.
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Thea, I could not agree more. The more intelligent the villain the bigger the threat. That’s what I found so facinating about Gabriel in Swordfish. The guy was a genius.
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She felt that the woman she was after caused her husband’s suicide and the loss of her unborn because the woman accused her husband of sexual harassment. She wanted not only revenge, but to replace the woman as mother of the family…Creepy but good!
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ah, perfectly diabolical, but understandable in a creepy twisted way. No wonder it worked!
Now I want to see it again. thnx jamie.
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Villain in fiction are no different than the bad guys in the real world. People are shaped by the events in their lives, and how they respond can turn them into victims or makes them stronger.
I agree with you that villains must have layers, they become evil for a reason and this lends credibility to their character and their actions.
Congrats on your latest novel, Karin!
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I so late! Sorry. But great post, Karin. One song/one depth villains are boring. Making the reader understand WHY he/she is doing whatever he/she is going makes the story so much richer.
Congrats on the latest novel!
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My bad guys are usually good looking and my CPs start to hope they can be saved. I kill ‘em off.
Actually I had one the girls insisted on saving.
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Lorna, right on. I usually don’t have to think too hard to dream up a villain. there are so many everywhere. I like the humanized villains, they just seem more real to me.
and thank you for the congrats. I’m very exited.
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Cyndi I’m late in responding tonight! I agree. Understanding what drives the villain is so important to any story.
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Mary! You kill them all?
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Great Post! I think one of the greatest villains is Peyton, played by Rebecca DeMornay, in ‘The Hand that Rocks the Cradle’. She had what she believed to be a good reason for revenge, and her villainous side was superbly played!
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Great post! I really liked the section of Ray Rhamey’s new writing book in which he talks about how, to write good antagonists, he had to give them the same complexity and motivations and humanity as his protagonists. This post really brings out the idea that there isn’t that much distance between a great (complex) villain and a great (complex) hero!
Congrats on the release!!
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