Bad Boys (Whatcha Gonna Do When They Come For You)

In case no one caught my pop culture reference in the title, I give you the Cops Theme Song (and now that song is stuck in your head. You're welcome.)

Today I would like to talk about a subject near and dear to my heart: bad boys.

As you wish.

Yes, I know. Guys seems to think all girls want are bad boys, and nice guys finish last and all that. But let's table the real life discussion in favor of fiction. Jessica Page Morrell has an awesome book that talks about the different flavors of antiheroes called Bullies, Bastards, and Bitches that you might consider picking up if you're really into antiheroes like I am. 

So here we go. The word(s) of the day is the moral spectrum. As writers, we might not think about our character in terms of their moral spectrum and where they might fall on it, but it's usually something we at least have a feel for. If you ask a writer if his character would kick puppies or steal money if he thought he would get away with it, they can usually come up with an answer of what each character would do. But usually in a book you have the main character and all the secondary characters existing within the same spot on the moral spectrum.


I think it's sad that more writers don't play around with their character's morals. It's a great way to provide contrast and conflict between your characters. Usually the main character's morals only vary slightly from what the writer themselves would and wouldn't do. So the characters all seem to fall in that gray area between willing to kill to protect themselves, but not willing to kick puppies and push little old ladies into the street.

Whether or not you spell it out on paper or not, you might consider writing a character that acts wildly outside of your personal code of ethics.

Bad boys don't exist just so rabid fangirls can write uncomfortable fan fiction about them (lampshaded in this funny comic). They can really add some spice to your book without taking the entire plot over. They come in two main varieties: Bad boys and Dark Knights.

Bad Boys: These are the sexy lone wolf-types. They are normally rebellious pleasure seekers who enjoys breaking the law more than a regular hero. They are almost always charismatic, and the sort of guy your mother doesn't want you to bring home. They are normally slightly mysterious, with a vague and shady past. They break too many rules and flout tradition too much to be considered regular heroes. Within each category you also have a range. So Han Solo comes to mind, at the very top of the Bad Boy moral spectrum, while most of Vin Diesel's characters are at the very low end of this spectrum.

Dark Heroes: These guys are dark and brooding. They have a core of rage and pain, and almost always have a tragic past.They often have their own moral code, that is usually not in line with society's current moral standards. They are often rude and prickly to the main characters, and are the lowest on the moral continuum. Which means if they take one more step down, they become villains. Batman is the titular example. Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice fits this nicely, and in my opinion, if John McClane from the Die Hard movies was just a little less scrupulous with his bullets and explosives, he would descend into Dark Knight status. And if Prince Nuada from Hellboy II didn't want to kill all humans, he would be considered a Dark Knight. At the moment he's earned Tragic Villain status, so someone should tell his PR department to step up. 


Of course, these are generalizations, and there are no hard and fast rules. There's a lot of overlap, and like any category there are ways to break it. You don't want to make cardboard character regardless of where they fall on the moral spectrum. Bad Boys are a great way to shake up your plot and characters a bit, and a nice way to experiment with your writing. 

Oh, and for those of you wondering why I only talked about the guys, bad girls fall into different categories, because certain behavior is deemed more acceptable by society from a guy (i.e. sleeping around) than it is from a girl. So woman act in a different manner in order to gain "bad girl" status.

I have a secondary character in my WiP and he's definitely sitting in the Dark Knight camp. I am not sure I would want to know him in real life, but he's certainly shaking up the status quo between my more moral main characters. No matter how you cut it, conflict is fascinating, and nothing quite stirs the pot like a bad boy who refuses to toe the line.

Characters Who Need to Be Shot

Song Playing: Anthem by Kamelot

Happy Friday!

A quick note before I forget, I will not be blogging on Monday, Tuesday, and possibly even Wednesday next week. Instead, I will be at class for my massage therapist Continuing Education Units (CEUs). In order to keep my license I have to attend a certain number of accredited hours, and since I would like to keep my income, off I go. Normally this requires tons of money and taking time off to attend a weekend class here, and seminar there, but I lucked out and found a program that lasts four days and gives me more hours than I actually need. So from early tomorrow until Tuesday I will be attending this class, bootcamp style.

All that to say, I don’t know when I will be home and it will probably be only long enough to eat and then crash into bed.



So no blog posts. I know, you’re all going to be besides yourselves with grief. Feel free to caper about in the comments section while I am gone.

Also, there’s a squirrel outside the size of a terrier. Yes, Mom’s still feeing the squirrels. Since I live a few houses down from my parents, I assume this is one of the ambassador squirrels. Nutter Butter is what Mom is calling him after I told her about all of your comments about the squirrel whispering, and Michael Emeritz’s comment about Ambassador Nutter Butter in particular.



Today I have characters on the brain. Between revision and my WIP, I have been working with my characters a good deal, and I noticed I tend to have a diverse lot. Some authors seem to prefer to only write about terse men who smoke and drink too much, others prefer spunky heroines who mess up as much as they help the conflict, and still others prefer the tough, combat boot wearing female who doesn’t take lip from anyone.

A brief digression on those types of tough heroines: they get on my ever-loving last nerve. I am not saying they can’t be done well. I really enjoy that sort of heroine on TV or in books when she’s portrayed well, but I noticed a trend towards this type of female, and I always get the urge to smack her in the face more times that not. It’s like the author says, “Well, this is her flaw. She’s tough, masculine, and doesn’t like to wear pink. She’s one of the guys.” And said author goes on to write about the trouble the character gets into.

All of this is fine. That’s not the obnoxious part.

The obnoxious part is when said mouthy heroine acts out of character, or has no consequences to her character flaw. When she runs into the Big Bad Guy she doesn’t mouth off to him, even though every situation up to now points to she speaks first and thinks about it later, thereby breaking her character. But the author knows if she mouths off to Big Bad Guy, he would just shoot her in the head. End of story. So the author has her break character, and bite her lip. “I wanted to give him a piece of my mind, but I knew he would shoot me where I stand if I did.” The author also substitutes her mouthing off to the bad guy by having her glare at him too. All of this to cover up the fact that she just breaches character. I am not saying that your mouthy characters should be suicidal, but don’t show them mouthing off to everyone without forethought up to now, and then suddenly they have found restraint.

OR she does mouth off to Big Bad Guy and one of two things happens.
a) Big Bad Guy respects her spunk, and pats her on the head. No one seems to care.
Or
b) She mouths off to him, she and her comrades get tossed into the dungeon where they make a daring escape, and it’s back to business as usual. None of her comrades seem to care she can’t keep her mouth shut when it would be suicide not to, and no one even gets ANGRY with her. They just saunter off and congratulate themselves for a job well done.

HELLO?

If I hung out with someone who constantly got me into trouble because they couldn’t keep their mouth shut because “I don’t let anyone boss me around” I would drop them in a New York Minute (which is quicker than a regular minute).

Again, I am not saying there’s anything wrong with a tough heroine. I have several. I am not saying there’s anything wrong with having them act according to character, and mouth off to people they shouldn’t, if that’s the sort of person you’ve shown them to be.

I am complaining about character traits that magically go away or are inconvenient to the plot. And I see it most often with the tough heroine. People want her to be cool, but they don’t think about the real life consequences that sort of person would incur.

Okay, I am done ranting…for now.



I noticed in my own work that my characters run the gamut between out spoken and quiet, gutsy or mousey, cowardly or brave. It’s not intentional, I don’t say to myself, “Okay, I had an outspoken guy with authority issues last time, now it’s time for a mousey, shy girl who blushes when people look at her.” It just sort of happens. Mostly because I try to make the character directly relevant to the plot, but also because it’s just the character that pops into my head at the time.

I think if you’re only comfortable writing a certain character type, then there’s nothing wrong with that. I would recommend challenging yourself with different types of character once in a while, but that’s your call.

If I had to say, I have a slight preference for females over male, but only because I worry my male characters come across as too feminine and/or unrealistic. But I haven’t had any complaints and some of my best characters are guys, so there’s that. I am also the sort of girl who has more guy friends than girl friends, even though recently the number is balancing itself out, so I think that helps with the guy characters. And I don’t believe that guys can’t write convincing girls or vice versa. Hello, She’s Come Undone is one of the best books I’ve ever read, from the POV of a girl, and written by a guy (Wally Lamb is the author).

One thing I do struggle with is weeding out characters. Every time I start a book I have several characters that try to cram themselves into the work. So they all duke it out thunderdome style, until the winners crawl out and get to be in my book.



It doesn’t make cutting them any easier. I have read advice on combining characters when this happens, and I can manage that sometimes, but most of the time, I can’t. The characters have a specific job or race directly tied to their persona, and combining the two normally means the absolute death of one. This means I have a lot of characters lying around, waiting for their book to be up. I suppose it’s a good problem to have, but frustrating at times.

So what about you guys? How do you feel about tough heroines? Any character pet peeves in books? What about your books, do you have problems with over or under population? Any preferences for character types? Any worries about cross gender characters?

The Ramblings of a Sick Mind (and LOLCats)

Quote: none, I am on Nyquil at the moment

Song playing: Map of the Problematique by Muse

So, fair warning for you guys today: I am sick with the flu. Fever, body aches, nausea, the whole nine yards. Had to call out of work today, because I am not allowed to be around the clients when I am sick for some reason. Plus the fever makes me really loopy. So if I go on tangents more than normal today and my spelling is even worse, I blame the fever. I will be blogging about How to Write a Novel tomorrow, because I am in no state to tell someone where the kitchen is.

Why am I not in bed, you may ask with concern in your voice and honeyed tea in your hands (thank you)?

Because I’d rather be blogging and writing. Because I can only lie around in bed for so long before I get bored, and I don’t feel like watching a movie, or popping in one of my seasons of Criminal Minds. Because I feel like I should be writing since I am not at work (those are pretty much the two activities I divide my time with…oh yeah, and wasting time on the Internet. And my fiancé. Can’t forget about him). I’ll probably have to erase 90% of the stuff that I write today, but sometimes my over-heated brain produces something amazing when I am sick, so there’s always that hope. Not that I am advocating you all write while you’re sick. Stay in bed, and watch Criminal Minds. I am clearly insane.

I would like to know why when I get more sleep, I get huge bags under my eyes. I thought you got bags under your eyes from lack of sleep, not from sleeping in. Seriously, I have huge, puffy bags under my eyes. I could pack my entire room in them. Plus, I have an extremely fair complexion (I am 90% Irish, so I sunburn in ten minutes, no exaggeration. Sadly, the red head gene passed me over, I just got stuck with their skin tone and freckles.), so now I look like a zombie.



Anyway, in other news, Michael Emeritz revamped his blog, and it looks super cool, so you should go check it out. He has this bookshelf thingy there that I am insanely jealous of. He also wisely pointed out in regards to dialogue, it should be able to stand for itself. I intended to mention that, but of course, I forgot. So yes, good dialogue will stand without you having to use tags to tell us who said it.

I thought we could all do some sort of dialogue workshop, to help each other improve, but I am not exactly sure how to do that on a blog, so if anyone has any suggestions, I am all ears.

In other, other news, I had a shiny new idea yesterday while I was watching Hellboy II and pretending I wasn’t sick (I was just “taking it easy”). I would also like to know why when I already have too many projects going at once, I get really cool ideas, but when I am ACTIVELY looking for something to work on, it’s like tumbleweeds blowing around in my brain. Nothing catches my interest. I am in the middle of a serious edit, and developing another book, plus I have at least five other ideas nagging for attention, and my muse decides now is the time to drop a great idea into my lap. My muse is fickle, I guess. Or he likes playing head games with me.



I know, I know, you’re probably thinking, “Waaaah, Elizabeth, poor pitiful you with all of your ideas. Such a tragedy to befall you.” I know it’s a good thing to have ideas, but whenever I get a new idea I have to resist the urge to abandon what I am working on. We all know the best way to resist temptation is to give in to it. And I know by the time I do get to the idea, some of the new-idea luster will be gone.

So I am splitting the difference, and doing like I described in…one of my earlier posts, and developing the idea as much as I can before abandoning it to more concrete things. Basically, I try to get as much of what I find exciting about the idea on paper, and even think about the plot a little bit. This way, the idea is fleshed out enough that is has life, and more times than not, I will be minding my own business when two of the half formed ideas combine to make one new, SUPER idea.

One of the really exciting things about this idea is the characters.

Now, I write about all sorts of characters. I really do, not on purpose but it’s just what happens. I have characters of all ethic backgrounds, of different fantasy races, and professions. Some writers have a few personality types they like to write about, but mine seem to run the gamut. I have just as many embarrassingly shy characters as I do spunky and bossy characters. It’s just how I roll.

But these characters, specifically the guy, but the girl is too, are anti-heroes rather than heroes. This in and of itself isn’t new for me, I already have several anti-hero characters (actually the book I am developing at the moment has TWO), but this guy…he is just a few steps up from a straight villain. The idea of writing a character like that is frightening and fascinating, much like the character himself.


For those of you who don’t know what an anti-hero is, or you have a fuzzy idea but aren’t too clear, allow me to explain briefly.

Anti-heroes come in several different shades and flavors, but all of them differ from regular heroes in a few key fashions. The main difference is the level of morality. What a normal hero would consider morally objectionable, an anti-hero has no problem with. Superman is a hero, Batman (yay Batman!) is an anti-hero. Cyclops is a hero, Wolverine is an anti-hero. Anti-heroes do good things, but their motives are usually less pure than a regular hero. A hero might save the world because It’s the Right Thing to Do, an anti-hero will save the world because he doesn’t want to die, or because someone is paying him to, or because he’s trying to get back at the guy who wants the world to end. See the difference? Same results, just different reasons. And the anti-hero’s methods for saving the world will be less scrupulous than the hero’s.

Anti-heroes are much more flawed than a regular hero. A regular hero has a few flaws to show he is human, but is still undeniably a good, upstanding citizen. Depending on the specific type of anti-hero, the anti-hero might have just as many flaws as he does merits, or even more.

I find anti-heroes fascinating because they are gritty and realistic. Anti-heroes evoke a big range of emotion in the reader, whether it’s the “I can’t believe he just did that, what a jerk.” or “Wow, she is such a bad ass. I wish I was a bad ass.”

You have your anti-heroes who are gritty, your Han Solo type, who is essentially nice guy, but he enjoys breaking the rules just a little too much. You have your bad boys/girls (James Bond, Samantha Jones from Sex and the City), charming criminals (a la Ocean’s 11), and your dark heroes (Batman, Rambo, Ripley from the Alien movies, Prince Nuada from Hellboy II (although in this movie he serves as the antagonist, he really is a dark hero because of his motivations and backstory)). All of these characters have different shades of morality, going from generally decent people (Han Solo), to almost a villain themselves (Prince Nuada).

For my shiny new idea, my male main character is a dark hero seriously flirting with actual villainy.

The point of this ramble is to underline my point in my…earlier post about not pulling your punches (those pauses are me not remembering which post, and not having the energy to look it up).

See, the idea of writing a guy that is level of flawed makes me nervous. (or girl, I am not sexist, anti-heroes are both genders, this particular character just so happens to be a guy). I will admit it makes me squirm in my seat. I like to believe that people are overall Nice. But he isn’t nice, most of the time. He’s dark, and tortured, and does what has to be done, and gets his hands dirty with work that more traditional heroes can’t do because of their moral code. He and Batman would get along super well in the morality department.

I am already worrying about writing about a character like that. I worry I won’t have the skill to write him sympathicly (Is that even a word? Take that spell check!) enough. While I was thinking about his character, I kept having the urge to explain. You know that urge, the “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way.” “It’s okay that he’s rude to people, because he’s sad.” You want to explain away bad behavior, to justify it to yourself, so it won’t seem so bad. But that’s cheating, and we all know it. There might be an explanation for bad behavior, and he does have a brutally traumatic back story (*evil grin* I sure didn’t pull any punches there), but bad behavior is still bad behavior.

The other part of me is reveling in the idea of writing about people who kick ass and take names, and don’t apologizes for the lamp they just smashed. Characters this emotionally disturbed and complex are undeniably interesting to me, so I also feel pure joy at the idea of taking the gloves off, morality wise.

It’s going to be a challenge, to walk that fine line between good and evil, and I find myself frightened I will fail miserably, but it’s sure going to be fun to try.

I think some tricking of my subconscious is in order. Sometimes when an idea intimidates me, and I worry too much about it, I have to tell myself I am not really working on it. Like, right now I am working on developing a book called “A Dangerous Mind” while I am not editing. I am doing the prewriting stuff, the character development, research, and so on. I know I am working on this idea. But sometimes when you tinker with an idea in your spare time, you come up with some really great stuff, because you weren’t pressuring yourself. You didn’t feel the need to be awesome, or good, or funny, or talented, because you were just fooling around. And while you were fooling around with an idea, something great came from it.

Yes, I believe this is what I shall do. Just don’t tell my subconscious, or internal editor.

By the way, Jessica Page Morrell wrote an AMAZING book about anti heroes, villains, and matching the two up. It’s call Bullies, Bastards, and Bitches. Seriously, one of the best books I ever bought. She’s very thorough with the different shades of anti-heroes and villains. Even if you never plan to write an anti-hero, I would recommend getting this book just for her section on villains.

One method she mentioned for making flaws is to think about all the things that people do to annoy you, great and small. Does it bother you when people wear too much cologne? How about liars? She suggested exhausting this list, and from there, you have a great start for some good character flaws. So what about you guys? What thing do people do that get on your last nerve? Have you ever worked on a project that you worried you weren’t up to the challenge? What did you do to get over that fear? And where the heck is my Nyquil?

Okay, I think I have rambled enough. Time to go see if my alphabet soup will spell out a bestseller. Wait, I think I see a word…no, two…“y-o-u s-u-c-k”.

Drat. A magic eight ball my alpha bet soup is not.