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Understanding the Villain

Who sees her as the bad guy? They’re two of the first terms you learn in the study of literature: protagonist and antagonist.  The protagonist is the hero, the schnook at the center of the story, the innocent in the middle of a hurricane.  It’s easy to sympathize with heroes.  Everything seems to happen to them and they’re created to be someone you like.  So it should be easy to guess who the antagonist is.  That’s the “udder guy”, the heavy, the louse who antagonizes the hero. Actually, an antagonist is simply whatever force that opposes the hero but some opponents go out of their way to make the good guy’s life miserable.  At any rate, it’s easy to see the tale from the hero’s point of view but when I was struggling with a story years ago I got some good advice from my husband.   “Never forget” he said, looking over the rims of his glasses, “No one sees themselves as the villain.” Bertha Mason before she went to England..Doesn’t look crazy, does she? “No one sees themselves as the villain.”  That observation holds incredible insight and it’s the mechanism that unlocked a horde of parallel novels based…

When Writers were Nice People too…
I know a Good Story / March 1, 2016

When I was a kid, I used to think Great Writers were also Great People. I mean, how could anyone with such a complete and tender understanding of the human race be anything other than nice? Then I read about Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald and O’Neill and revised my opinions downward. Great writers but flawed human beings.  REALLY flawed.  Worst Parent Ever level of flaws.  And Lillian Hellman proved lady writers could be just as bad. I fell in love with Hunter S. Thompson’s style, nerve and humor.  When I realized his gonzo behavior was a lifestyle instead of an act, I vowed to never go near him unless I was armed with a cattle prod. By the time I started this blog, I had done a 180 degree pivot from my childhood ideas and now assumed any writer worth admiring was really a rabid wolverine in human clothing. It took an unusual book to change my mind again.  Meanwhile there are Letters… gives me reason to hope novelists will be allowed to rejoin the human race. It’s the story of two 20th century storytellers who seemed to be polar opposites.  Eudora Welty was one the Southern Spinsters whose talent was recognized early…