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The first in a two-part series this week about Villains and their role in story. Suzy chats with Author Debbie Burke about her book The Villain’s Journey ~ How to Create Villains Readers Love to Hate. In part one, they talk about:
- What makes a villain?
- How is a villain different from an antagonist?
- How turning expectations on their heads creates exciting opportunities for villains to take center stage.
- Tracking multiple timelines to craft compelling and realistic villain arcs
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Podcast Episode Transcript (unedited)
114. Villains Journey Transcript part one
Suzy Vadori: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Show, Don’t Tell writing podcast with me, Suzy Vadori, where I peel back the layers of how to wow your readers with your fiction, your nonfiction. Anybody can bang out a first draft, but it takes a little more work to make your book as amazing as it can be. Join me as I share the step-by-step writing techniques you could apply to your writing right away, as I host successful writers who share a behind-the-scenes look at their own [00:00:30] writing lives, and as I live coach writers on their pages, giving practical writing examples that will make your own writing stronger.
Nobody is born knowing how to write an engaging book. There are real and important skills that you need to learn. On this show, I cut through the noise and get you all the info you need. I can’t wait to see how this information is going to transform your writing I get pitches to come on my podcast all the time from writers, [00:01:00] and I love, love, love seeing them.
But I wanna make sure that the writers that come on the podcast have a lot to tell us about craft and that you can really learn from them as listeners that tell us something about their writing life that’s cool or something about how we can write differently. And when Debbie Burks hit my desk, I was so excited because she’s written a book called The Villains Journey: How to Create Villains Readers Love to Hate.
And I just took a quick look at what she’d done, and her personality just shone through [00:01:30] everything that she does. I know you’re gonna love her today. We have so much fun talking about villains in this episode. So she self-professes, looks like a cookie baking quilter from Montana, but she hangs out with a tough crowd she claims.
In her award-winning Tawny Lindholm thriller series, she consorts with terrorists, scam artists, embezzlers, kidnappers, and killers. And her best-selling craft writing book, The Villains Journey: How to Create Villains Readers Love to Hate, delves deep into the desires, [00:02:00] compulsions, and the psychology that motivate memorable antagonists in books, films, and real life.
The Villains Journey is a finalist for the Silver Falchion Award for Best Nonfiction, and Debbie also writes for international news publications, teaches writing workshops, and does freelance editing. I can’t wait till you hear this episode Welcome to the show, Debbie Burke
Thank you so much, Suzy. It’s great to be here
Suzy Vadori: All [00:02:30] right, we’re gonna kick this off.
What is a villain?
Debbie B.: There’s a whole bunch of different kinds of villains, but basically I’d say the difference between an antagonist or, you know, villains are antagonists, but antagonists are not necessarily villains. And the difference, I think, between them is that villains are willing to do evil and do harmful things, hurt other people, where antagonists are just, you know, kinda [00:03:00] standing in the hero’s way of what they want to accomplish.
So but there’s all kinds of different vil- villains, and I’ve got in my book, The Villains Journey: How to Create Villains Readers Love to Hate, I’ve got a whole bunch of flavors of villains. It’s more than 31 flavors, I think.
Suzy Vadori: Oh, amazing. Okay, we’re gonna get to that. But what made you wanna write a whole book about villains?
Debbie B.: When I wrote a number of novels where I … They were mysteries with whodunit, you know, [00:03:30] whodunit mysteries with a hidden villain, and they were good enough to win some contests, and I got the attention of a couple of agents, but they kept getting rejected, and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. And finally, an epiphany hit me that I’d paid so much attention to building a really compelling, interesting, uh, likable hero that I’d kinda lost track of the villain, and I really wasn’t aware of what they were doing off screen.
And so once [00:04:00] I put myself into the villain’s head, then that, that first book that I did that, which was called Instrument of the Devil, that one won a couple of contests and was, you know, won a publication contract. So I think the, the difference was put- seeing the plot through the villain’s eyes with their motives, their desires, their lusts, their ambitions, and their [00:04:30] particular wounds and traumas that they, that shaped them.
So anyway, and also when I started looking for comparisons, there were lots of hero’s journey titles, but there were hardly any villain’s journeys. The one book about s- uh, that was focused on sci-fi and fantasy, but I wanted to do a more generalized one, uh, you know, that was kind of an overview of, of the many types of villains there can be.
And [00:05:00] I did a book proposal and sent it to James Scott Bell, who’s a well-known writing instructor, and he said, “Yeah, that sounds great. Go ahead and do it.” And I s- also sent it to Chris Vogler, who was the author of The Writer’s Journey, you know, the writer’s mythic structure, which covered the hero’s journey through a writer’s eyes, and- He said, “Oh, yeah, that sounds like a great idea.
Keep me posted.” And I thought, “Oh, okay, [00:05:30] he’s just being nice and encouraging me.” And so anyway, I went ahead and wrote the book, and had the opportunity to meet him at a conference in Florida a couple of years ago. And I figured, “Oh, he won’t remember,” you know, “He won’t remember me. It’s been a while.” And so I went up to him and said, you know, “Hi, I’m Debbie Burke, and I wrote about the villain’s journey.”
And he goes, “Oh, I’m so glad to meet you.” He jumps up and shakes my hand, and was just so [00:06:00] encouraging and supportive, and gave me a beautiful blurb, which just I-
Suzy Vadori: Amazing …
Debbie B.: I’m really proud of
Suzy Vadori: because- Well, you should be …
Debbie B.: that was sitting at the master’s feet there, and-
Suzy Vadori: Yeah …
Debbie B.: the master patted me on the head and said I’m a good kid, so.
Suzy Vadori: And that’s, yeah, but it means a lot, and I, and I, I love that we’re having this conversation. You know, we share a lot of behind the scenes things, and I’ll share something from my own journey because that’s the way I feel about how, the [00:06:30] writing that I teach. Because it was, it was that I didn’t find what I was looking for when I was writing my first novel 15 years ago.
Mm-hmm. And I started saying it in a different way, but the reception is what’s important, right? Like, you’ve sent it- Yeah … to people who know exactly what they’re talking about, and they’re excited too, and that’s, you know- Yeah … that’s what I find, is sometimes we can be afraid to share our thoughts and think, “Oh, there’s one way to do it.”
But this writing space- Mm … there’s a thousand ways to teach it. Yeah. And look at [00:07:00] it, and they’re all right. And you can’t follow them all. You know, you can’t do everything that every writing instructor has ever taught you, but pick a few things and do them well, right? Um- Amen.
Debbie B.: Exactly.
Suzy Vadori: So this is probably exactly what a lot of readers or writers are looking for and need to help them get through that.
Okay, so I actually, this was not planned. You just told that story about Christopher Vogler, and I actually pulled the quote that you open the book with, which is, “Many villains [00:07:30] don’t think of themselves as evil. In their own minds, they are right, the heroes of their own stories. A dark moment for a hero is a bright one for a shadow.
The arcs of their stories are mirror images.” And that is actually a quote from Christopher Vogler in The Writer’s Journey. So why did you start the book that way?
Debbie B.: Because I wanted people to look at villains as humans first. You know, we all come out of the womb the same way, relatively [00:08:00] unscathed, unless there’s been some sort of a trauma in the womb.
But generally, I mean, we all come out, we’re all a fresh slate. And because of different wounds and traumas and influences and good and bad things that happen to us, we take certain paths in life and adopt certain values. And villains adopt some of the same values, but then there’s something that just doesn’t quite click with them, and they can find ways [00:08:30] to justify acts that we think are terrible.
But to them, it’s, “Hey, this is, this is how to get it done. This is how I do my job.” And I think Carl Jung talked about the shadow side, and everybody has this dark side of the lusts and the shame and the kind of fascinations, you know, morbid fascinations that we don’t usually recognize. But we all have it- Yeah
[00:09:00] inside. And I think under the right circumstances, pretty much anyone is capable of anything Yeah.
Suzy Vadori: I love that
Debbie B.: And, and, and so I think that is the way I wanted readers to start out looking as vil- at villains as humans first, and then see where they veer onto a different path than the-
Suzy Vadori: Yeah …
Debbie B.: regular law-abiding, moral, upright, upstanding citizen does.[00:09:30]
Suzy Vadori: Yes, and of course, for those fantasy and science fiction writers out there, they may not be human, but we give them human traits for the most part, right? Yes. Anyway. It’s
Debbie B.: still the same. The emotions in any genre are still the same.
Suzy Vadori: Absolutely. Okay. So in your opinion, I mean, you’ve said, obviously you feel strongly that you agree with his quote, that they don’t, many villains don’t think of themselves as evil.
Yeah. But in your opinion, Debbie, in the work that you’ve done, who is it in [00:10:00] society or in books, who gets to decide who is a hero versus who is a villain? Who is it that decides that?
Debbie B.: That is a really good question, and that is, I think in each book, the author gets to decide with their set of morals and values and standards, and they can paint someone as either a villainous character or an anti-hero, or, uh, even an [00:10:30] anti-villain.
You know, they can, they can give them a lot of different nuances. They can be the really evil character, or they can be somebody who has a need for something that is, requires them to go outside the normal morals and, and, um, accepted standards of society. And I think that the reader is going to react with their own perception, and they may see somebody that [00:11:00] you’ve painted as a hero as a villain, and vice versa, because that depends on what their values are.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah, and, and so writers out there that are listening today, listen up because you need to make a choice, and if you don’t make a choice, it’s really difficult for the readers, right? Like, if we were to present two different points of view and you sort of don’t have an opinion, then it’s hard for the reader to know where to go.
Mm. So definitely make that choice. [00:11:30] You as the writer, that’s your prerogative to decide who is the hero and who is the villain.
Debbie B.: Yeah. And I, I try– One of the things I did with the first novel that was published was I put myself into the villain’s head, into his emotions, his secrets, his past, and looked at things through his eyes, and that, I think, is the key to making a really effective villain who’s not [00:12:00] just the Snidely Whiplash twirling his mustache and, you know, tying the heroine to the railroad tracks.
You know, you want somebody who’s more nuanced and more– has more depth. And, you know, villains aren’t necessarily all bad. I mean, look at Hannibal Lecter. He was a very charming, intelligent guy. He just had unusual- Yeah … preferences. I love it.
Suzy Vadori: And yet even just invoking his name gives me the chills, right?
Yeah. Okay, so I assume, okay, when you talk about getting [00:12:30] into your villain’s head, Debbie, and a lot of times we talk about writing process here on the Show Don’t Tell writing podcast, I’m assuming that you do that separately. I mean, that’s not something that you do exploring inside your pages or chapters.
You do it separately, and then you bring in the components? Or how, how do you do that when you get inside their head?
Debbie B.: A combination of, of several things. Um, in the book I wrote, I have a bunch of build-a-villain worksheets that are a bunch of- Yeah … prompt [00:13:00] questions that are intended to get people started on what is your villain’s origin story?
How did they come into the world? Were they wanted or unwanted? Were they, maybe their mother tried to abort them, but they survived anyway. What kind of environment did they grow up in? And things like this where, you know, you can kind of get a, a full picture of their lives and the things that influence them and the things that they consider [00:13:30] important.
What are their values? ‘Cause everybody has values. It’s just some of them are a little different from the rest of us, but- Some of them
Suzy Vadori: are, are a little different, and we might judge differently, right? Yeah. Okay, so yeah, I love the name, by the way, of the build-a-villain worksheets. I’m like, I’m like, I wanna go Build-A-Bear or, like, Frankenstein.
Like, I feel like building a villain is a super fun and tangible showing way to name that worksheet. Yeah. It makes me wanna go do it. [00:14:00] Okay.
Debbie B.: Yeah.
Suzy Vadori: Given that, and once you sort of know what your character’s backstory is and how they became the way that they became- What cues then do writers usually give or should they give to their readers to sway their opinion of who, whether what the villain is doing is hero behavior or villain behavior?
Are there any tips that you can give in terms of how, how do we know?
Debbie B.: Um, I think a lot of it goes to motivation. What is the villain trying to [00:14:30] accomplish? What do they want, uh, and how far are they willing to push it to get what they want? And so I think once you know, have a strong sense of what the villain’s motivation is, that makes it easier to give them actions and dialogue and behaviors that reflect this is a villain.
Yeah.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, I mean, regular listeners of the podcast are [00:15:00] gonna be giggling out there because it’s something I say all the time, and my clients who are listening, you’ll know. I’m like a broken record, but on the hero’s side, right? Like- Mm-hmm … what does your character want? Mm-hmm.
Because without that want, then they have no agency. They have nothing to do because they don’t h- they don’t want anything, and they’re kind of floating, and, and then the reader gets bored. So I love that you’re flipping this around and applying it to your villain and making sure that those secondary characters, I mean, I’m assuming that the villain is a secondary character, um, in most books.
It doesn’t [00:15:30] have to be. But yeah, applying those same principles and giving them things to do is amazing. Thank you.
Debbie B.: Yeah. And one of the things that, you know, has been happening in more recent books, look at, uh, the Wicked Witch, you know, from The Wizard of Oz got flipped on her head in that book, Wicked, you know, and the series and the, um, the movies and so on.
You know, that takes what every w- you know, generations of children have been terrified of this [00:16:00] Wicked Witch, and now she’s the hero of the sto- of her own story. You know, I think it, a lot of it depends on the approach that the author takes to present essentially the villain’s case in front of the jury of readers.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah, and I think there, there’s a lot of stories like that as, you know, you’re bringing out big ones and, and another one was the original concept for Frozen I’ve heard talked about as well because it’s, it’s the Ice Queen, right? Which is supposed- Yeah … [00:16:30] to be the villain and, and the consequences that come with her power, and so that’s a really cool one.
I think it ended up being more, like, I think there was some conflict and, you know, Anna kind of took over and has most of the songs, and yet the big song, Let It Go, was from the Ice Queen herself. And that is why it’s so powerful because that story was originally supposed to be that, right? Flipping it and saying, well, there’s a backstory and a reason why she froze the world, and it maybe wasn’t [00:17:00] intentional and all these things.
So yeah, it’s trying to give reasons for it, but when you look at it from a different lens, we don’t always see that, right?
Debbie B.: Exactly. I love those explorations. Yeah.
Suzy Vadori: Okay.
Debbie B.: Fun. It’s so much fun.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah. So okay, so you mentioned that your earlier works were passed over, being rejected, and until you realized that the villains had been hiding from you, right?
Like, your villains had been hiding, and you weren’t paying enough attention to them, and you pulled them out. And then what happened after that? I, I [00:17:30] know that then you won a contest, got a publishing contract, sure, all those things, but what happened to the story itself after you discovered that your villain was hiding and that maybe, you know, you had a twirling mustache villain or the equivalent of it, right?
Debbie B.: This was, well, this was a whole new book. You know, this was not one of the earlier ones that were mysteries, you know, that were whodunit mysteries. The first book and all my books since then have been thrillers where the reader knows often from [00:18:00] page one who the villain is. And so it’s, I just dig, dig right in, jump right in into the villain immediately or very soon after the beginning of the story.
And then the reader can see from their perspective why they are doing what they’re doing and what they’re moving toward. And so the villain is no longer hidden. I personally think traditional whodunit mysteries are much harder to write than what I do [00:18:30] with the, you know, with the known villain because you can’t telegraph that messages to the reader because they’re gonna guess the villain, and part of the, you know, part of the fun is puzzling through.
And so I think they’re very challenging to write, and I’m, my hat is off to anybody who successfully writes a good whodunit mystery with a hidden villain. But there are ways that you can, you know, give clues without giving too much [00:19:00] away and, you know, like, have lots and lots of suspects, and every one of them has a good reason for disliking the, the person who, you know, the murder victim, and every one of them has some backstory with the victim.
And so they all have plausible motives, and you just keep winnowing down, winnowing down, winnowing down until you get, you know, by process of elimination, you get to the actual murderer.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah. But again, you’re doing a lot [00:19:30] of exploration that is kind of peppered through the book if it’s used at all, right?
But you have to know as the writer- Yeah … exactly all of the things, and-
Debbie B.: Yeah, it’s kind of, I kind of make an analogy between the on-screen action and the, what’s going on behind the scenes off-screen. And the author, you know, the reader sees what’s going on screen, but the author has to know what’s going on backstage and keep track of it and know where their villain [00:20:00] is and what they’re doing next and what their next plan is, their next step.
Keeping two timelines works for me. You know, there’s the hero’s timeline and the villain’s timeline, and what are they doing at the exact same moment? You know, the hero might be, you know, going to meet a witness that the villain just killed, and the villain, uh, is just scooting out the back window, escaping at that same moment.
But you don’t see the villain getting out the [00:20:30] window. You only see the coming in. And then the villain goes and, oh, h- has already planted a, a gun with the hero’s fingerprints at the scene. So then the villain goes and calls 911 and says, “I think there was a, you know, I heard some shots fired, and I think somebody’s, uh, in there right now who may have killed someone.
You better get over here right away.” So then the villain’s doing this off screen, and the hero is looking at this [00:21:00] dead body going, “Uh-oh, what happened here?” And the cops bust in and arrest him and take him off to jail, and the villain is off screen chuckling and going out for a drink, you know, because they have, they’re s- they’ve sabotaged the hero.
Suzy Vadori: Exactly, and I think one of the questions that you ask in the book is, where is your villain right now? Right. And, and, and, and that’s a really cool thing to ask. And, and when I read that, I was thinking more like the, you know, I’m out having a drink, [00:21:30] or I’m having, walking my dog, or I’m picking up the laundry.
You know, like, there could be really boring things that your villain is doing as well. But you’re right, there’s also what are they doing while everybody else is discovering the crime?
Debbie B.: Yeah. And what, what actually prompted the whole book, what started it, was I’m a blogger on The Kill Zone, which is a educational crime writing site, and I wrote a post called It’s 10:00 PM, Do You Know Where Your Villain Is?
Suzy Vadori: Nice.
Debbie B.: [00:22:00] Remember the old public service announcements that used to come on TV with all the different celebrities saying, “It’s 10:00 PM, do you know where your children are?” And so that was ki- It’s
Suzy Vadori: terrifying that parents in the ’70s and ’80s and ’60s needed to be reminded- It is … about their children. Oh my goodness.
Debbie B.: But
Suzy Vadori: that
Debbie B.: was a very effective campaign, evidently. But that was kind of what, uh, you know, what kicked it off, is I wrote that post for The Kill Zone, and it got such a good [00:22:30] response, and people were saying, “Gee, why don’t you expand that?” And somebody, you know, somebody said, “Well, why don’t you make a book out of it?”
And so I said, “Gee, thanks. You’ve, you always, always give me more jobs to do that I don’t need and I don’t have time for,” but I’m actually thanking him now for, for giving me- Yeah … a kick in the butt. I,
Suzy Vadori: I like to say you don’t really know where these things are gonna lead, right? And hey, you and I would not have met had [00:23:00] that not been true, right?
Debbie B.: Totally
Suzy Vadori: true. And I think we, uh, I’ll just as an aside say that Debbie and I actually had this scheduled before, and I had to cancel. Um, we, we tried, but it didn’t work. My internet was really glitching, and it wasn’t, we weren’t able to record. And you sent me the nicest note, and you said, “Technology has its drawbacks, but if it weren’t for technology, we wouldn’t know one another.”
And it’s true. And, you know, like, the, the doors that writing a book, whatever that is, whatever you feel called to do, I say this [00:23:30] a lot, but listen up writers, because whatever it is that you’re writing, it’s probably not a craft book, a writing craft book. But whatever it is that you’re writing is going to open doors that you do not know yet to do it.
Debbie B.: Absolutely. I’m a huge believer in if there’s an opportunity in front of you, even though it’s totally unrelated to anything you’re doing, grab it and run with
it.
Suzy Vadori: If you want to, or don’t, right? Like, I, I- Exactly … follow a calling. No,
Debbie B.: but I, if it’s something that [00:24:00] catches your interest and you say, “Gee, I wanna look into that more,” go for it, because that has led me to meet so many people I never would’ve met otherwise, and led me into paths that I never would have done and opport- other opportunities that I never would’ve had.
One of the things that has come out of this, this book is I’m now doing a lot more teaching And I am teaching at conferences and the community [00:24:30] college continuing ed classes and, you know, giving talks to mystery writer groups, uh, all over the country, and I’m meeting all these people that I never would’ve met otherwise, and that never would have occurred if I hadn’t gotten the opportunity to write this book and then been invited to teach.
So grab those opportunities.
Suzy Vadori: Exactly.[00:25:00]
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