🦹 Inneresting #139 - My villain origin story
Was it one bad day, or did everything lead up to this?
We’ve previously linked to an overview with traits of unforgettable villains on the Writer Emergency site. This issue is all about drilling down on one question: Why do only certain characters become villains?
Some people live through moments that could turn a person bitter or cruel, but Annie Mueller reminds us that many people choose a quiet resilience. When facing a crisis, parts of daily life need to continue. David Roberts suggests luck has more to do with it than some people (especially very lucky ones) would like to admit. He pulls together an argument on how part of luck is the ability to self-regulate, which opens up more opportunities for luck and guides the ethics of a person’s future choices. Sindu Karunakaran asks if there’s something particular about Gen Z that makes them less interested in identifying characters as purely evil. She asserts that growing up encouraged to actively confront systemic injustice allows them to see antagonists as relatable, or at least having relatable intentions.
Is there something about how a person relates to others? Catherine A. Sanderson offers some thoughts on “moral rebels,” people who go against the herd and call out what they see as immoral behavior, even if there’s a social cost. Big Think gets together a set of psychiatric experts to consider how someone categorized as a psychopath may be well attuned to act in certain situations, because they are aware of the vulnerability of others.
What about a person’s relationship to the source of their moral judgement? Rosie Jackson connects the dots between the death penalty, Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience, Nazi guards, and David Hume’s explanation of the relationship between empathy and morality. She boils it down to the idea that people will do horrible things if they see it as a way to fit in with an established order or an authority they have sufficient faith in.
Robert Sternberg unpacks Albert Bandura’s work on the way people displace blame for their actions onto others to justify immoral deeds. Daniel Effron suggests that people are less concerned about punishment than they are about maintaining the appearance of being virtuous, and that people will find ways to justify their present actions by remembering their previous good deeds.
Looking at some examples, Swapnil Dhruy Bose digs into A Short Film About Killing, and how its parallel stories of a seemingly random murder and a state-sanctioned execution remain relevant and jarring. Thanks for Letting Me Share highlights the rules behind what makes Wile E. Coyote tick.
Finally, Steven Pressfield suggests what helps define a villain in a story is their commitment to their beliefs. If they evolve over the course of the narrative, Pressfield argues they’re no longer a villain. With Ted Lasso about to return for its final season, it’s worth a detailed recap of the rise and fall of Nathan Shelley, and the way success lit the fuse for his transformation into an antagonist.
You need a plan
When are you going to write next? What are you going to write?
Make a commitment to yourself by putting it in writing in this week’s Write Sprint thread for subscribers!
What’s a Write Sprint?
John wrote up an explanation, but here’s the short version: Set a timer for 60 minutes, close down all distractions, and do nothing but write until that timer goes off.
Shout out to recent Sprinters John Harvey, Shirley Wang, Aimee Link, Evan Nachimson, Micah Sherman, Dallas Now, and Brian Matusz.
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For Your Consideration: Weekend Read 2 Beta
The original Weekend Read made it easier to read screenplays on an iPhone. Now we’re preparing to launch a sequel!
Anyone with an iOS or iPadOS device can use TestFlight to download a copy of this app in progress. Your feedback helps speed up the process of getting the best version of this app to the App Store.
And you can test it out using a library of For Your Consideration scripts from this year’s Academy Awards nominees! You’ll find a library of these scripts under the Discover tab in the app.
Download the beta through TestFlight and let us know what you think!
Previously on Inneresting…
In case you missed it, in last issue’s most clicked link Chuck Wendig surveys the current online landscape for ways writers can reach an audience.
Other Inneresting Things…
Macej Ceglowski takes a deep dive into the story of how doctors discovered the cure for scurvy, then misunderstood why it worked and lost it before finally coming full circle and learning why the original cure worked.
Gabrielle Schwarz collects 20 photos dramatically exposing the climate crisis.
Maria Popova with a collage of thoughts on why people stay in painful relationships, and what keeps us from walking away.
Reading the room
And that’s what’s inneresting this week!
Inneresting is edited by Chris Csont, with contributions from readers like you and the entire Quote-Unquote team.
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🗣 Have ideas for future topics (or just want to say hello)? Reach out to Chris via email at inneresting@johnaugust.com, Twitter @ccsont, or Mastodon @ccsont@mastodon.art