I would never make a good villain...

... or a thief or a mistress for that matter.  A heavy duty conscience and the need to be moral weigh too heavily on my soul to act with any sort of deceit or hurtfulness to pull anything like that off successfully.  It doesn’t mean I can’t fantasize though.

Part of the fun of being a fiction writer is the ability to be multi-polar – to have so many conflicting emotions going on at once that a normal person’s head would spin.  Not sure if that removes my “normal” moniker, but it is what it is.  Having to be in the head of so many different characters, thinking and acting for each of them, is a seriously convoluted and headache inducing task.  You have your heroes and heroines, your antagonists and protagonists and you have your good guys and bad guys.  You have your crazies, your perfectionists, your dyed in the wool patriots… characters will run the gamut from nuns to murderers, and you have to relate to them all.

It’s bad enough that your brain has to go in several different directions at once when plotting and writing dialogue, but to have to delve into their feelings, relate to why they are acting and speaking a certain way and then write it clearly and with as much feeling as each of the characters have… it’s a chore.  And it doesn’t mean that I have to have lived any part of my life as a thief or a spy or even a hero to be able to feel and relate to what they are feeling.  That’s where creative license comes in.  True, no one truly knows how a person is until they are in their shoes, but for general traits, one doesn’t need to be a genius to pick up the feel of a person.

You can go too far in the generalities, though, when basing your characters on research, especially if you aren’t familiar with the people you are writing about.  Characters start to sound clichéd and stereotypical, and then readers start getting very bored.  In my case with writing historicals, I can only go by research so I have to spice up the characters lives with offbeat plots and adding a little flair by giving them non-stereotypical traits.  Every angel has a dark side, and every demon has at least one redeeming quality somewhere in their black souls.  You just have to give it to them.  The more bizarre the better.  It could be something they do or say, something they wear... anything.  The whole point is to catch your reader off guard so they never see it coming.  One thing I hate, as a reader, is that “I knew it” factor when I get halfway through a book, then I don’t want to finish reading.  No author wants that.

On the flip side, you don’t want to go overboard either and with historicals, that’s often easy to do.  Earlier eras had strict rules and manners, each sex had their guidelines and limits in each societal circle.  You couldn’t just make someone a fiend and allow them to wander through your world as if nothing was wrong.  It never would have happened that way.  People would have noticed and consequences would prevail.  Of course, throwing someone like this into the mix will certainly spice up your plotline and give you plenty to cover, but you still have to follow the rules.  As is today, people can only get away with so much before the law or death catches up to them.  That’s just the way it is.

So in my worlds, I am God.  I dish out the sentences and force characters to choose sides.  I say who lives or dies, who falls in love and who ends up old and alone.  It’s all part of the fun of writing.  It allows you to live out your evil side even if you are an angel at heart.