Attack of the Supermodels

Tags

akasha chronicles, attack of the supermodels, pretty boys, writer chat

I am sick of pretty boys. It started a few months ago when I realized an overwhelming majority of my books basically had the same love interest cloned over and over—tall, dark, striking eyes, drop-dead gorgeous, and ripped like Ares. Sure the authors threw in a few traits to make an effort at singularity—one was a vampire pianist, for example—but for the most part, it really felt like the same guy rehashed again and again.

(I’m going to stop right here and say I have greatly enjoyed many of these series. I can think of three off the top of my head that are actually on my Shelf of Awesome. If you enjoy writing or reading those kinds of heroes, don’t let what I or anyone else says stop you.)

Back to my rant.

Someone once said that we don’t fall in love with a literary character’s appearance, we fall in love with their souls. Thanks to overtly swoon-worthy descriptions of certain characters, I’m not so sure that’s always true.

One reason I love BBC is that their actors look—for lack of a better word—human. They aren’t the photoshopped, surgically altered, mutant derivatives we get here in the US. For example, when Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill) came onto Doctor Who, I was quite a little snob and thought he was rather homely. But as his character developed, Rory was revealed to be the most bad@$$, kindhearted, and awesome bloke on the show.

I think that’s what writers of books should strive for—to make their readers fall in love with their characters for their characters, not their mouthwatering descriptions. Maggie Stiefvater’s Sam Roth was a great example of a character who we loved for his soul. I know there are others, but I’m drawing a blank at the moment.

As a general rule, if a book blurb mentions “darkly handsome,” “alluring,” or anything along those lines, I tend to give it my “tired of this spiel” look. Though I might end up reading it anyway, because there are very few other YA fantasy romance books to be had. But who knows? I might end up liking the book anyway. That doesn’t change the fact I wish this pretty boy mania would stop.

Now, STAY evil!

Tags

chracter development, the key of amatahns, villains, writer chat

In the year of our Lord 2006, I was an eleven year old with too much time on my hands, a notebook, and an overactive imagination. I began to write a story and shortly after I had figured out who the heroine would be, the next step was finding the villain.

I set out to compile three characters—the Lord Argetallam, Lucan, and Malkalar—who were to cause as much hardship and difficulty for my heroine as conceivably possible. I had them be as bad as I could make them, giving them all a certain creativity when it came to nastiness and short tempers to match. Villains are, by their nature, villainous, right?

As I developed characters, grew as a writer, and explored the world, I ran into some trouble with the Lord Argetallam. He had a tragic back story and as I delved into the details of his relationship with my heroine’s mother—I found myself finding him to have an alarming number of not-bad qualities. But he was still a psychotic dictator and definitely a villain, so we were good.

When I went to write a prologue for the second book in the series—BOOM! All of a sudden, Lucan has a crush on the slave who’s nursing him back to health and feels guilty about the little girl he killed in the last book. Soon, Lucan was a boy struggling under the weight of his father’s and an entire race’s expectations, seeking approval through violence because he didn’t know another way—this was starting to get out of hand.

But at least I had Malkalar, right? The ethnocentric, genocidal bigot who wants everyone who’s not an elf dead. No way I had to worry about him getting any sympathetic qualities.

Then I started questioning his motivation for :SPOILER: rescuing the seeress Zeerla in The Key of Amatahns. :SPOILER OVER:. By the time I wrote a short story to explain that, my endeavor to create a purely evil villain had sunk like the Titanic.

The theme of relatable villains has become a fascination of mine and with the exception of some characters in a new project (and they don’t count because they are literally supposed to be the Devil and her—that’s not a typo—demons) one of my favorite parts in writing a new series is discovering all the little ins and outs of my villains. I often come to adore them as much as my heroes.

In other words, I have given up. No more purely evil bad guys. It feels sloppy now and I think a story feels more authentic if you feel sorry for the baddie *coughcoughKhanLokiRavennacoughcough* even as he/she is doing dastardly deeds. Besides, it’s just too much of a problem getting them to stay completely evil.