I’ve noticed over the last few years that I’ve come to really like the bad characters in stories. In the fantasy trilogy I wrote a couple years ago, I started out hating all my bad characters and wanting everyone to hate them too. But as the story went on, I started to learn a lot about the bad characters, why they are the way they are and whether they have the ability to change. It was quite a shock to realize that I really, really loved one of my bad characters in those books, as much as I loved my two heroines (sometimes more). I sympathized with her over the things that had happened to turn her bad because she made me realize that anyone has the ability to be that way, but it’s the way we handle things that determine whether we will or not. I knew that she couldn’t change, she had already stepped too far into being evil to turn back and so she’d have to die in the end, which she did, but her death was both satisfying and upsetting to me. She made one heroine’s life miserable and wanted to torment as many people as she could, but I liked the schemes she’d come up with to get her way and I felt bad whenever she got pushed aside repeatedly by the men in her life.
I always want the good guys to win and live happily ever after, but this particular character I created made me realize how much more complex the bad guys can be.
On those thoughts, I think I need to do some more work to Emma’s book because I don’t really love the bad character Megan yet (on the other hand, in Libby’s book, I do love Angel quite a bit because I know why Angel is the way she is, but I haven’t figured that out yet with Megan). Megan’s not evil, just a stuck up sixteen-year-old girl who thinks the world should bow to her. In Kayla’s book, there isn’t a real bad guy. You see it from Kayla’s point of view and she thinks her parents and siblings are the bad guys, but hopefully you can see that she overdramatizes everything and is her own enemy.