Villain as a PoV characters? Can it be done?

I’m having a character and plotting problem. I have an idea (not really a full plot yet – but November will fix that), and I have a place (the town I grew up in, of which I know every nook and cranny of), I have the backdrop people (nameless folks in the sidelines who’s sole purpose is to be killed off by the villain), and of course I have the villain (a nursery rhyme character gone comic book megalomaniac) and his evil minions (a traveling side show-circus of frozen ghosts).

My villain is well planned (I spent years creating him) and is life like and three dimensional. I know what he wants and what he’ll do to reach his goals. I know he’s about to land unannounced in this town and pretty much turn it upside down. I know that somewhere, somehow, someone (my hero/main character???) will come along and figure out how to defeat him.

And there’s my problem – I have no main character! I think I want three main characters (three best friends who for whatever reason take it upon themselves to defeat this guy), but I’ve yet to figure out who they, what they look like, or more importantly HOW they will defeat the villain.

I think as it goes now, the villain is going to be the point of view character, but than I wonder – CAN a villain be a PoV character? Stories should build up around the MC right? But does the MC always have to be the hero? My story is building up, but it is building up around the villain and as yet, no hero has come forward. Does that mean that my villain (and not my hero) is the main character?

Traditionally, the bad guy gets defeated at the end, and is no longer seen in the last chapter of a novel; the last chapter being reserved for tying up loose ends and showing the heroes living happily ever after (more or less). Can the novel be written through the eyes of the guy who will be defeated at the end? (He’ll still be alive at the end, the hero isn’t going to kill him off, just stop him from succeeding in his evil plan.) Can a novel end, not showing the hero riding off into the sunset, but rather showing the villain going off to sulk in his lair instead?

I know publishers always want the HEA (Happily Ever After) endings, but I’m just really not a HEA writer! It’s been the major stumbling block to my getting published, actually. Editor’s are constantly telling me: “This is great, but could you change the ending?” Are you crazy? Me? Change the ending? I’m not your sunshine and happiness writer! I don’t let my heroes get everything they ever wanted – heck, they are lucky if they are still alive by the time the book ends! I love Poe’s morbid endings, and I love writing Poe style morbid endings. I get sick of every book I read, ALWAYS having a HEA ending. I get to the end and I wish – just once, why can’t the bad guy win? Just once, why can’t the hero give up and say “To heck with it, save yourself.” Just once I’d like to see a stumbling block fall in front of the hero and he has to end his quest WITHOUT reaching his goal! ACK! Why don’t more publishers give us this? I mean, it’s not like us writers are not writing this stuff. Sure we are, we just can’t get publishers to publish anything without an HEA ending.

End rant.

Okay, back to my NaNoNovel of the year. Well, my novel this year, I’m planning to get published. By December I want to have a draft worthy of editing and polishing, so that by next summer I’ll have an MSS I can send out to publishers. Here’s my problem – I’ve done this before, but my endings are always either hero dies, bad guy wins, heroine dies and hero goes mad with grief, or some other such ending of gloom and despair. I LIKE writing endings like that, but publishers don’t want to publish those types of endings. So, I’m torn between writing what I’m good at or writing what publishers want.

Well, this year, my story, as usual, revolves heavily around the villain. It’s very likely that he’ll be the MC and the PoV character. It’s also very likely that he will defeat the hero and gain global domination. As it’s going right now (in this early planning stage) it looks like my hero is doomed to fail on his quest, and me the author is going to sit back and let it happen. In other words, I WANT MY HERO TO FAIL! No matter what he does or how hard he tries, I’m just not going to let him win. Is that bad?

Anyone ever seen the movie “Quarantine” (It’s a zombie movie that well, let’s just say does not go quite the way the hero expected.) or “Saw”? Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. Those kind of endings. Bad guy wins. No matter how many loops the hero jumps through – bad guy still wins – game over – hero loses. I like to call them *Twilight Zone Endings* because it happened so often, that the bad guy wins in The Twilight Zone. So, that’s the way my story is going.

Of course, it also looks like my plot is turning into sort of a zombie apocalypse here too. Whoops! I didn’t plan on that!

Can anyone recommend any books where the villain/bad guy is a PoV character? I’d like to read some to get an idea of how others have handled writing from the PoV of the bad guy, but so far I can’t think of any books writing from the villain’s PoV. Preferably stuff that makes you think: Quarantine, Saw, Poe, Joker, or Twilight Zone (since this is the way my story is leaning quite heavily at this point.)

I know Batman comic books are somethings written from the villain’s PoV and it’s not uncommon to see Gotham through the Joker’s eyes or to see the Joker taking the lead in the stories while pushing Batman into the sidelines. And of course, though he’s defeated in the end of the story, the Joker is never fully defeated, he always comes back a few issues later. But this is the only example I can think of, of a villain taking the lead, and a comic book is not exactly the same as a novel. Are there any novels that do this?

Is there any one else who has or plans to write using the villain/bad guy as their MC and PoV character?

So many questions, I know, but it’s just that I’ve never seen a novel written from a villain PoV before and outside of comic books I don’t know of any villains ever being used as a main character before. Let me know if you know of any, please.

Also I need to find my heroes (main characters???) but so far they are doing a good job of hiding from me. If any one has any ideas, I’d love to hear them.

Find Out More About My 2009 NaNoWriMo Project

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

———-
Editing and Drafts
Create a Fantasy Realm
Advice For NaNoWriters!
Creating Character Profiles
Are You A Renegade A Writer?
How To Become a Better Writer
The Top 5 Tools For NaNoWriMo
What Genre Is My Vampire Story?
Where Do You Get Your Ideas?
Improving your writing with what you read.
Have You Written Your Author’s Interview Yet?
How I Reached 50,000 in 30 Days and You Can Too!
———-

. . .

————-

>Villain as a PoV characters? Can it be done?

>

I’m having a character and plotting problem. I have an idea (not really a full plot yet – but November will fix that), and I have a place (the town I grew up in, of which I know every nook and cranny of), I have the backdrop people (nameless folks in the sidelines who’s sole purpose is to be killed off by the villain), and of course I have the villain (a nursery rhyme character gone comic book megalomaniac) and his evil minions (a traveling side show-circus of frozen ghosts).

My villain is well planned (I spent years creating him) and is life like and three dimensional. I know what he wants and what he’ll do to reach his goals. I know he’s about to land unannounced in this town and pretty much turn it upside down. I know that somewhere, somehow, someone (my hero/main character???) will come along and figure out how to defeat him.

And there’s my problem – I have no main character! I think I want three main characters (three best friends who for whatever reason take it upon themselves to defeat this guy), but I’ve yet to figure out who they, what they look like, or more importantly HOW they will defeat the villain.

I think as it goes now, the villain is going to be the point of view character, but than I wonder – CAN a villain be a PoV character? Stories should build up around the MC right? But does the MC always have to be the hero? My story is building up, but it is building up around the villain and as yet, no hero has come forward. Does that mean that my villain (and not my hero) is the main character?

Traditionally, the bad guy gets defeated at the end, and is no longer seen in the last chapter of a novel; the last chapter being reserved for tying up loose ends and showing the heroes living happily ever after (more or less). Can the novel be written through the eyes of the guy who will be defeated at the end? (He’ll still be alive at the end, the hero isn’t going to kill him off, just stop him from succeeding in his evil plan.) Can a novel end, not showing the hero riding off into the sunset, but rather showing the villain going off to sulk in his lair instead?

I know publishers always want the HEA (Happily Ever After) endings, but I’m just really not a HEA writer! It’s been the major stumbling block to my getting published, actually. Editor’s are constantly telling me: “This is great, but could you change the ending?” Are you crazy? Me? Change the ending? I’m not your sunshine and happiness writer! I don’t let my heroes get everything they ever wanted – heck, they are lucky if they are still alive by the time the book ends! I love Poe’s morbid endings, and I love writing Poe style morbid endings. I get sick of every book I read, ALWAYS having a HEA ending. I get to the end and I wish – just once, why can’t the bad guy win? Just once, why can’t the hero give up and say “To heck with it, save yourself.” Just once I’d like to see a stumbling block fall in front of the hero and he has to end his quest WITHOUT reaching his goal! ACK! Why don’t more publishers give us this? I mean, it’s not like us writers are not writing this stuff. Sure we are, we just can’t get publishers to publish anything without an HEA ending.

End rant.

Okay, back to my NaNoNovel of the year. Well, my novel this year, I’m planning to get published. By December I want to have a draft worthy of editing and polishing, so that by next summer I’ll have an MSS I can send out to publishers. Here’s my problem – I’ve done this before, but my endings are always either hero dies, bad guy wins, heroine dies and hero goes mad with grief, or some other such ending of gloom and despair. I LIKE writing endings like that, but publishers don’t want to publish those types of endings. So, I’m torn between writing what I’m good at or writing what publishers want.

Well, this year, my story, as usual, revolves heavily around the villain. It’s very likely that he’ll be the MC and the PoV character. It’s also very likely that he will defeat the hero and gain global domination. As it’s going right now (in this early planning stage) it looks like my hero is doomed to fail on his quest, and me the author is going to sit back and let it happen. In other words, I WANT MY HERO TO FAIL! No matter what he does or how hard he tries, I’m just not going to let him win. Is that bad?

Anyone ever seen the movie “Quarantine” (It’s a zombie movie that well, let’s just say does not go quite the way the hero expected.) or “Saw”? Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. Those kind of endings. Bad guy wins. No matter how many loops the hero jumps through – bad guy still wins – game over – hero loses. I like to call them *Twilight Zone Endings* because it happened so often, that the bad guy wins in The Twilight Zone. So, that’s the way my story is going.

Of course, it also looks like my plot is turning into sort of a zombie apocalypse here too. Whoops! I didn’t plan on that!

Can anyone recommend any books where the villain/bad guy is a PoV character? I’d like to read some to get an idea of how others have handled writing from the PoV of the bad guy, but so far I can’t think of any books writing from the villain’s PoV. Preferably stuff that makes you think: Quarantine, Saw, Poe, Joker, or Twilight Zone (since this is the way my story is leaning quite heavily at this point.)

I know Batman comic books are somethings written from the villain’s PoV and it’s not uncommon to see Gotham through the Joker’s eyes or to see the Joker taking the lead in the stories while pushing Batman into the sidelines. And of course, though he’s defeated in the end of the story, the Joker is never fully defeated, he always comes back a few issues later. But this is the only example I can think of, of a villain taking the lead, and a comic book is not exactly the same as a novel. Are there any novels that do this?

Is there any one else who has or plans to write using the villain/bad guy as their MC and PoV character?

So many questions, I know, but it’s just that I’ve never seen a novel written from a villain PoV before and outside of comic books I don’t know of any villains ever being used as a main character before. Let me know if you know of any, please.

Also I need to find my heroes (main characters???) but so far they are doing a good job of hiding from me. If any one has any ideas, I’d love to hear them.

Find Out More About My 2009 NaNoWriMo Project

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

———-
Editing and Drafts
Create a Fantasy Realm
Advice For NaNoWriters!
Creating Character Profiles
Are You A Renegade A Writer?
How To Become a Better Writer
The Top 5 Tools For NaNoWriMo
What Genre Is My Vampire Story?
Where Do You Get Your Ideas?
Improving your writing with what you read.
Have You Written Your Author’s Interview Yet?
How I Reached 50,000 in 30 Days and You Can Too!
———-

. . .

————-