Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens (writing rant #2)
Or, writing the unsympathetic main character.
If you decide to do this, prepare yourself for pain unlike any you've ever experienced during character creation. It's like medieval childbirth--even if you survive, there's the good chance you'll be carted off as a witch and burned at the stake and all that work will be for nothing. Writing an unsympathetic MC has been the hardest thing I've ever done in a book.
My current WIP, BLACK ARTS, which just got kicked back to sentence one, has an unsympathetic main character. This is largely the reason it got kicked back to plotting. I started out with Jenny being sort of nice, and that just wasn't happening. She's not nice. She's evil. Evilevilevil. Dammit.
People confuse unsympathetic MC's with antiheroes, I've noticed. Nothing wrong with antiheroes. They're a lot of fun to write, and thanks to Raymond Chandler, Clint Eastwood and others, widely accepted in this day and age and in some genres highly preferable to white-hat heroes. Truly unsympathetic MC's have a harder job. They have to be compelling yet evil, make readers recoil while they draw them closer. Lord Voldemort is not a UMC. Lord Voldemort is a villain. They're a whole other post. A better example of a UMC is Little Bill Dagget from Unforgiven. He doesn't fill the requirements of a villain, but he sure as hell is front and center for the entire film. Poor Will Munny, the ostensible hero, is relegated to narrator's eyes and ears. The Drifter from High Plains Drifter is another. (I reference a lot of Eastwood films because I watch a lot of them...if this example becomes tiring substitute your antihero film of choice.)
I don't claim to be any sort of expert on the UMC. I have Jenny do horrible things in BLACK ARTS like murder her sister's roommate for no more reason than she was a "self-absorbed cow" (and later bring her back from the dead, cruelly.) Jenny uses her sister Amelia to gain power over the Synod, a mage organization that is rather shady in it's own right. She is selfish, sociopathic and deadly. Yet I absolutely fell in love with her, so much that I gave her center stage. UMC's work, in certain cases, because they speak to our id. That's really the crux of the matter, I'm finding--if Jenny acts out my own worst impulses, I will have found that connection point with readers, who can hide their eyes and gasp but still be thinking "Yeah, I'd do that if I could get away with it." If they're just running around eating people's faces like Hannibal Lecter (also a villain, so HIS antics were okay) then they become tiresome, and we're glad when the hero stabs them in the eye with a fork or something.
I'm still at the point with Jenny that I have some choices--she can continue to be evil right on down the line, growing and evolving in the direction of Evil (to use a D&D reference) or she can reform/redeem herself or be reformed/redeemed and skew towards Chaotic Neutral/Good. The way the Threadstone Sisters series is plotted, there will have to be a bit of both, because Jenny is able to Save Teh World! because of her cynical and evil nature. Good is not always good, and bad is sometimes a viable alternative. The entire theme of the series hinges on a power of great good being abused for great evil, and how irredeemable evil can sometimes spell salvation in the face of beatific annihilation. Jenny begins as an abuser, and ends as a savior, and yet is not redeemed. And no, in case you were wondering, I haven't worked out the mechanics 100% yet. Won't that be fun!
I told you it was going to hurt. The only real advice I have for attempting this is DON'T. It's awful, and it hurts your brain. However, another thing that I've struggled with is 'unsympathetic' doesn't mean 'no feelings'. Jenny's beloved (eeevil) father is dead. She's young and alone in a hostile world full of magic. But she's still bad.
And let's face it, it feels good to be bad.
---
And no, in the words of the old man from Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail, I'm not dead! I'll have a detailed post on my editorial submission process in the next few days as well as a general life update for those of you who care. Thanks for being patient with my flaky writer behind.
Meantime, please check out Magical Minxes, Jackie Kessler and Richelle Mead's new succubus blog (Warning: NOT worksafe!) You'll be, ahem, happy you did.
If you decide to do this, prepare yourself for pain unlike any you've ever experienced during character creation. It's like medieval childbirth--even if you survive, there's the good chance you'll be carted off as a witch and burned at the stake and all that work will be for nothing. Writing an unsympathetic MC has been the hardest thing I've ever done in a book.
My current WIP, BLACK ARTS, which just got kicked back to sentence one, has an unsympathetic main character. This is largely the reason it got kicked back to plotting. I started out with Jenny being sort of nice, and that just wasn't happening. She's not nice. She's evil. Evilevilevil. Dammit.
People confuse unsympathetic MC's with antiheroes, I've noticed. Nothing wrong with antiheroes. They're a lot of fun to write, and thanks to Raymond Chandler, Clint Eastwood and others, widely accepted in this day and age and in some genres highly preferable to white-hat heroes. Truly unsympathetic MC's have a harder job. They have to be compelling yet evil, make readers recoil while they draw them closer. Lord Voldemort is not a UMC. Lord Voldemort is a villain. They're a whole other post. A better example of a UMC is Little Bill Dagget from Unforgiven. He doesn't fill the requirements of a villain, but he sure as hell is front and center for the entire film. Poor Will Munny, the ostensible hero, is relegated to narrator's eyes and ears. The Drifter from High Plains Drifter is another. (I reference a lot of Eastwood films because I watch a lot of them...if this example becomes tiring substitute your antihero film of choice.)
I don't claim to be any sort of expert on the UMC. I have Jenny do horrible things in BLACK ARTS like murder her sister's roommate for no more reason than she was a "self-absorbed cow" (and later bring her back from the dead, cruelly.) Jenny uses her sister Amelia to gain power over the Synod, a mage organization that is rather shady in it's own right. She is selfish, sociopathic and deadly. Yet I absolutely fell in love with her, so much that I gave her center stage. UMC's work, in certain cases, because they speak to our id. That's really the crux of the matter, I'm finding--if Jenny acts out my own worst impulses, I will have found that connection point with readers, who can hide their eyes and gasp but still be thinking "Yeah, I'd do that if I could get away with it." If they're just running around eating people's faces like Hannibal Lecter (also a villain, so HIS antics were okay) then they become tiresome, and we're glad when the hero stabs them in the eye with a fork or something.
I'm still at the point with Jenny that I have some choices--she can continue to be evil right on down the line, growing and evolving in the direction of Evil (to use a D&D reference) or she can reform/redeem herself or be reformed/redeemed and skew towards Chaotic Neutral/Good. The way the Threadstone Sisters series is plotted, there will have to be a bit of both, because Jenny is able to Save Teh World! because of her cynical and evil nature. Good is not always good, and bad is sometimes a viable alternative. The entire theme of the series hinges on a power of great good being abused for great evil, and how irredeemable evil can sometimes spell salvation in the face of beatific annihilation. Jenny begins as an abuser, and ends as a savior, and yet is not redeemed. And no, in case you were wondering, I haven't worked out the mechanics 100% yet. Won't that be fun!
I told you it was going to hurt. The only real advice I have for attempting this is DON'T. It's awful, and it hurts your brain. However, another thing that I've struggled with is 'unsympathetic' doesn't mean 'no feelings'. Jenny's beloved (eeevil) father is dead. She's young and alone in a hostile world full of magic. But she's still bad.
And let's face it, it feels good to be bad.
---
And no, in the words of the old man from Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail, I'm not dead! I'll have a detailed post on my editorial submission process in the next few days as well as a general life update for those of you who care. Thanks for being patient with my flaky writer behind.
Meantime, please check out Magical Minxes, Jackie Kessler and Richelle Mead's new succubus blog (Warning: NOT worksafe!) You'll be, ahem, happy you did.
