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than others. Some villains are chilling enough to cause night-
mares; others merely cause yawns. Why?
Your book, of course, may not contain a villain at all, only
muddled people living at cross-purposes with each other. But if
you do have a villain, he or she will be much more successful if
self-justified. Villains that act out of pure unadulterated evil are
fun for comic books, but strong adult-fiction villains act out of
motives that make sense to themselves. Even Hitler was convinced
that he had a right to commit his horrendous acts. Show us your
villain's self-justification motives, beliefs, rationalizations and
he will become much more plausible than the stock "bad guy in
a black hat."
Consider, for example, Captain Queeg in Herman Wouk's
Pulitzer-prize winner, The Caine Mutiny. Queeg torments and
punishes his crew, finally driving one sailor to a mental break-
down and another usually reasonable officer to mutiny. But
Queeg is no power-hungry sadist. Instead, he is an inadequate
man hopelessly out of his league, who retaliates with petty bully-
ing. The bullying escalates as Queeg himself increasingly loses
control. Finally his men just can't stand it anymore. As a villain,
Queeg is frightening because he's plausible. Any of us could work
for him. And to himself, his appalling actions are fully justified
by his panicky need to whip this mine-sweeper crew into military
shape.
Sometimes the villain even becomes sympathetic, at least to
some degree. Nanike, the protagonist of Nadine Gordimer's "A
City of the Dead, A City of the Living," is a black woman living
in South Africa. In their small house she and her husband hide
an activist, a man with a vision for their apartheid-torn country.
At the end of the story Nanike turns the activist into the police,
who will almost certainly torture him. She does so from a compli-
cated mix of jealousy, resentment and neglect that she herself
doesn't really understand. But because we see her harsh daily
life, she becomes more to us than just a betrayer. She, too, is a
victim of her country's brutal politics.
Less subtly, genre fiction frequently includes a villain: the
murderer in mystery novels, the "wrong man" in romances, the
space conquerors or exploiters in science fiction, the corporate
90 BEGINNINGS, MIDDLES AND ENDS
raider trying to destroy a company in "glitter romances." These
antagonists will be both more convincing and more interesting if
you let us see how they regard their villainies. The murderer
may be motivated by a wrong once done to her. The cad may
believe that women are happier being dominated and used. The
aliens may be genetically hard-wired for violence (or they may
just be trying to show us we're their equal worthy of being
fought with). The corporate raider believes that destroying com-
panies is healthy economic Darwinism. Certainly you don't have
to convince us of the Tightness of the villain's motives (if you do,
he becomes the hero) but do give him motives.
If you don't know why your villain is causing everybody else
all this trouble other than if he didn't, there would be no plot
stop writing. Think about the villain until you do know his psy-
chology and motivation. Your story will be stronger.
An Encouraging Word on Middles
The major function of the middle of a story is to set up the
ending to make it a plausible, satisfying fulfillment of the im-
plicit promise. The middle does this by clearly dramatizing those
forces that will collide at the climax, including any potential
character changes. If you do this conscientiously in the middle,
you will find the ending much easier to write. Middles are hard
Dante was right but they're worth the effort. A middle that does
what it's supposed to can make the ending a positive delight to
write and, more important, to read.
MORE EXERCISES FOR MIDDLES
1. Choose a short story or novel you know well, one in which
the protagonist undergoes a significant character change. Con-
sider:
a. What did the character want in the beginning of the
story?
b. What did she want by the end?
c. Which experiences helped change her? List them.
Under Development: Your Characters at Midstory 91
d. How did the author show that the character was even
capable of change?
2. Repeat the above exercise for one of your own finished
stories. Do you see places where characterization is weak? Could
you improve it by adding a scene, or by supplementing existing
dialogue, thoughts, description or action?
3. Invent a character who wants something contrary to what
readers would ordinarily expect. Write a few pages of interior
monologue for this character in which he explains and justifies
what he wants, why he should have it, and how he's going about
getting it. Try to make him sound convincing and natural.
4. Using the same character, write a two-person conversation
in which he tries to persuade another character to join him in
whatever he's doing. The other person resists. Try to make both
characters' dialogue sound natural. Is there a story idea here?
5. Choose a story in the genre in which you want to write
(mystery, literary mainstream, science fiction, romance, etc.).
Pick a story that you recall as having a memorable villain. Reread
it. What is the villain's motivation? Is it clear? If so, how is it
made clear? If not, would this be a better story if the villain were
motivated by something other than pure nastiness? Given the
villain's circumstances, what might these motives have been?
CHAPTER 6
HELP FOR MIDDLES:
GETTING UNSTUCK
THERE ARE WRITERS WHO FIND writing middles exciting. These
authors feel that the hard part is now out of the way. They've
launched their characters; they've charted their plot; they're ea-
ger for the fun of midvoyage, skimming along under full sail.
Middles, the trade winds of writing, exhilarate them.
I don't know any of these people.
For me, as for many other writers I know, middles represent
a genuine psychological problem: We get stuck. We may be stuck
for a few days, or a few months, or as in the case of Harold
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