Yesterday I ran into one of The Eight by accident. We did the hello/idle chatter thing for a moment and she dropped a bombshell.
She works with law enforcement via the criminal court system. Intrigued by techniques the villain used to frustrate ballistics, she sought the counsel of a police officer. Interestingly, this was no vanilla beat cop. He’s on the SWAT team, and former member of the narcotics desk. The officer confirmed all the techniques the villain used would work, and caught a small glitch that while feasible, was inconsistent with the character. Based on the page he read, he wants to chat. I’m meeting with him after Thanksgiving. Sweet.
And there’s more from The Eight. A frantic IM came in last night from another pre-submit reader. He identified a separate inconsistency with the villain. It was tiny, but when he pointed it out, suddenly the problem flared like a bottle rocket.
Bottom line: The Eight rules. Oh yeah, and people like reading about criminals.
People love reading about criminals. That’s why Sherlock Holmes found such a great enemy in Moriarty. Sometimes you can even do more with your villains than you can with the heroes. Ask any Star Wars fan who they feel is a more interesting character, Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader, and most of them will say Vader.
The Eight sound like they’ve already gotten off to a great start. I refer to my own cabal of sources as “the encyclopedia people.” I think I mentioned them in one of my very first posts on my journal, over three years ago (still can’t believe it’s been that long). My father is retired from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), essentially the Canadian equivalent of the FBI, and a guy I’ve known since childhood is on the Metro Toronto police force. They’re great for any kind of police procedural or firearms information that I need. The latter is also a huge science freak, big into physics and forensics, which comes in handy all the time. These people are so important to us writers. Yes, we can find the same info in books, but the people always add that little personal touch that you can’t get from books alone. They’re like research texts if they came with audio commentary tracks like on DVDs.
With villains in fiction, methinks the trick is balance. Lecter is the most interesting character in Silence of the Lambs by far, and his “print share” is a fraction of the book. The film adaption reaffirms this ratio of villain to hero, Anthony Hopkins gets 22 minutes of screen time but his presence hangs over every frame, often overpowering Jodie Foster. I suspect this mismatch is the real reason she bowed out of the sequel, Hannibal.
Absolutely, people love reading about criminals. But what of books stepped in that perspective? Witness American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. All evil, all the time.
Though dark perspectives are a great escape, a villain is only as strong as the hero in pursuit. If Lecter went on a rampage and there was no investigator making meaningful progress, he would become less interesting; his considerable psychosis would drown out the story.
The converse is also true. A hero is only as good as the villain matched against them. Weak villain + weak hero = as Dr. Lecter would say, “Boring.â€
Balance is certainly key. And to not turn them into stereotypes or “comic book” style villains, which I feel is often the problem with many of Dean Koontz’s bad guys. They come off as cartoon characters, to the point where I’m always expecting a scene where the bad guy is shaking his fists on the top of some clifftop and laughing manically. I’ve always felt Koontz’s characters were the weakest part of his writing — the good guys are too good, bordering on a kind of New Agey/Christian outlook of doing what’s right, while the bad guys are so over the top that they’re almost laughable. A friend of mine has been re-reading all of Koontz’s old books, and he remarked that they seemed good at the time … when he was about fourteen. But they haven’t aged well. I still count Phantoms as one of my favorite novels, but I can also count a number of Koontz books among those I had to put down before finishing simply because I couldn’t get over the poor characterization or the blatant symbolism, which I know Koontz loves.
Balance is so important in characterization, and Harris understood that when he created Lecter, just as Stoker understood it when he created Dracula. The shadow of the monster always stands taller than the monster itself.
The shadow of the monster theory is a good one. Like that.
Re: Koontz, I’ve a theory on his work. Of the books of his I’ve sampled, they have few real highs or lows, convey very little emotion, and generally end with a predictable conclusion. If he’s trying to write the stuff people can open before bed, the sort of tale that won’t make them late for work the next morning because they stayed up late reading, and interesting enough that they finish it over a period of weeks, few do it better.
I believe his core audience likes reading, but does not enjoy thrillers. He constructs scenes filled with action, yet very little actually happens so this works with that crowd. His strength is consistency and flow. One can just roll with the paragraphs, secure that the rug will remain firmly beneath their feet. Knowing the ending beforehand is not a problem for many, and in fact, I suspect lots of his fans relish that they see it from the start.
The one thing that has always stuck with me about Koontz’s work, of which I have read quiet a bit, is that the characters have never stayed with me. I don’t remember a single one, except the super-intelligent dog in Watchers. That might say more about Koontz than anything else.
And there’s the beauty of Koontz: characterization is less important than the groove, the packaging and the premise. Mix’em together and it’s good enough.
I don’t remember his characters either, since they are virtually the same.