By Nan Comargue (Guest Blogger)
Thanks to Lisabet
Sarai for giving me this opportunity to guest on her wonderful blog
today!
Romance novels don’t
require a villain. Often, the necessary emotional conflict is
provided by internal conflict, meaning that the characters themselves
are the biggest obstacle to the Happily Ever After (HEA) – think
about your prime witness to a crime heroine who’s been on her own
since was sixteen having to accept help from the hero police officer.
There’s nothing stopping her from falling for the sexy cop except
her own hang ups about being dependent on another person. And maybe
he’s got his own reasons for disliking her attitude. Sexual
attraction is masked as irritation and love grows out of proximity.
HEA.
But sometimes, you
want to write about an external factor that’s keeping the main
characters apart. Enter: the Villain. Duh duh duhhhhhh.
Villains don’t
have to be all bad. They can take the form of the girl who still
loves your hero from since they went out as teenagers. She’s
acting out of love when she does everything she can to sabotage the
hero and heroine’s HEA. However, the villain’s motive is rarely
so lofty. They can be acting to keep the lovers apart due to greed,
hatred, revenge, or any number of other reasons.
Wait a second. The
villain’s motives? You’ve spent all this time crafting your
heroine’s character, her personal history, her likes and dislikes.
You even know what size undies she wears! And you’ve done the same
for the hero as well. Why the hell would you waste time coming up
with motives for a third character?
Because, in a really
good story, often the villain is as interesting and important as the
protagonists. Hannibal Lector, anyone? Not to mention Kurtz from
Heart of Darkness or Voldemort from the Harry Potter series. Indeed,
the villain may even be worthy of titular notice, like Count Dracula,
who’s far more famous than the hero of the piece (extra points if
you can even remember his name).
So who is the
villain in a romantic story? Well, if you read Lucy Maud Montgomery
(author of more than just Anne of Green Gables) the ‘romantic
hurdle’ villain is often a family member intent on not allowing an
often younger relative marry a particular person, or even at all.
Typically, the dutiful younger child or sibling makes the promise and
sticks by it for many years, until the villain’s beliefs change
(sometimes on the death bed or even beyond) and the aged lovers
reunite. Of course, contemporary romance fiction may require an
extensive suspension of disbelief to envision such a dutiful young
relative nowadays.
This means we can
get more creative with our villains. Often, the villain in
contemporary romances is a sexual rival. An ex-spouse or lover who
pops back up just as the main characters are on the verge of finding
bliss. A would-be lover who still persists after several rejections
and whose bitterness causes them to intervene in the lovers’
plight, to their detriment.
In my first
published erotic romance, the villain was the Devil. Well, not
quite. It was actually just a demon, one of the dark lord’s
underlings, but just as evil and obstructionist to the protagonists’
(a pair of angel-warriors) HEA. It didn’t hurt that the demon was
gorgeous and virile, although he was still unrepentantly evil. To a
large extent, the demon’s motives revolve around the fact that he
is just evil, plain and simple, but to add a little complication (and
sex) to the plot, I made him fall for the angelic heroine. Ooo,
classic Good versus Evil with a hearty dose of sinful sex. Just the
way I like it.
Conflict is
essential to any good story and a villain ratchets up the tension
with their evil machinations. Your bad guy doesn’t have to be the
Devil himself but a little devilish behaviour can make life just that
much harder for your hero and heroine—and make the reader cheer
extra hard for them while at the same time booing and hissing the
villain.
About Nan
Comargue: I’m a romance writer with erotic tendencies. My
first two erotic romance stories were recently published with
Total-E-Bound
in April and May. The first is about a war between angels and demons
that separates an angelic couple. The second is about a woman who
returns home to the ranch where she grew up and finds herself falling
in love with both brothers who own it.
Books:
Captive
Angel and Country
Hearts
Twitter:
@NanComargue
