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Today I’m guest blogging at the Darkened Jade website.  I’m discussing what happens after you get the initial idea for a manuscript (which I really think depends on the type of person you are.)  Hope you’ll pop by.

Iago made the perfect Shakespearean villain. Evil to the core, he was determined to abuse Othello’s trust. He manipulates Othello and plots to destroy him.

Wow. My bad guys are murderers, but Iago would eat their lunch. But then, that’s Shakespeare for you.

What makes a really frightening villain? I’ve always found the calm, emotionless psychopaths in movies and literature to be terrifying.

What about the eerie “bad seed” children out there in books? They give me the willies, too.

Extremely capable villains are frightening. More than competent in their evil-doing, they match wits with authorities and win over and over—until the end of the book when they’re (usually) captured.

The British newspaper Telegraph did a piece last December on “The 50 Greatest Villains in Literature.” I thought that was a pretty provocative title, and sure enough, there were plenty of dissenters. Some of the greatest villains were a little odd, but the list as a whole was very interesting.

One interesting point they made was in reference to Moby Dick. Was Ahab the bad guy, or was the whale the villain? Interesting.

Here’s a recap of the Top 10. See what you think:

10 Vindice from The Revenger’s Tragedy, by Thomas Middleton

9 Mr Kurtz from Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad

8 Claudius from Hamlet, by William Shakespeare

7 Ambrosio from The Monk, by M G Lewis

6 Robert Lovelace from Clarissa, by Samuel Richardson

5 Voldemort from the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling

4 Iago from Othello, by William Shakespeare

3 Cruella de Vil from The Hundred and One Dalmatians, by Dodie Smith

2 Samuel Whiskers from The Tale of Samuel Whiskers, by Beatrix Potter

1 Satan from Paradise Lost, by John Milton

I’m feeling daring today, so I’m going to touch on one of the more difficult topics—religion. (Hope this isn’t one of those things where I wonder later what the heck I was thinking….)

Now, the books I’m writing are very secular in nature. We’re talking murder mysteries here. But I’m a Southern writer, and these books are based in the American South where life and religion are more naturally entwined. So the characters go to church meetings (where they, naturally, discover all kinds of clues to the murderer), attend funerals in churches….and even discover bodies there.

I’ve been reflecting that it seems actually more unnatural to ignore religion or spirituality in books that feature major conflicts. After all, these folks are having a rough time. In murder mysteries, people are dropping like flies and the characters may be endangered, themselves. Isn’t it stranger that they wouldn’t look for a little spiritual guidance? And in most fiction I’ve read, the protagonist is beset by a myriad of problems. But Eat, Pray, Love was the only book that I’ve recently read that included a spiritual quest (and it was nonfiction.)

The trick is to fit religion or spirituality into secular books in a non-preachy way. I usually use humor to make the reader more comfortable. And I try to weave my references in naturally. Because….I’m not writing Christian literature here. The church is the background, not the focal point.

Has anyone else dabbled in religion in their manuscripts? Why or why not?

So I was at Costco, buying a couple of bottles of wine (great prices there, by the way), and went through the check-out line. I have long hair, so my face was shielded while I rifled through my massive pocketbook (see previous post) for my debit card. The guy doing checkout said, “$45.67. And…I’m gonna have to see some ID.” Well, my head just bobbed right up in surprise. And then he said, when he saw my face–I will never forget this–: “Oh. Never mind.”

Let’s couple this episode with another one. This time I’m in the grocery store and I had just popped in for a couple of forgotten ingredients for what would pass for supper that night. I had some sour cream, some breadcrumbs, and maybe a container of chicken. So the bag boy bags them up prettily and says, “Do you need help to the car with that?”

Oh dear God, I thought. I look old and feeble! So I scampered to the department store and shopped in the Junior’s section for an inappropriate dress that will embarrass my children if I wear it out.

I will probably return this dress in a couple of days, because I no longer feel old. I realize that I was jumping to conclusions…at least with the bag boy. He probably had to ask everyone if they needed help. Maybe.

Mystery writers rely on their readers to jump to conclusions, too. One of Agatha Christie’s favorite tricks was “the unreliable witness.” She would introduce a character, usually a garrulous one, who would rattle off all kinds of nonsense. Then she would have them slip in some information that was a genuine clue. But because the reader has come to expect little of this character in terms of believability, the clue would frequently go unnoticed. A clue in plain sight.

I think other fiction writers could use the jumping-to-conclusions-ploy, too. Maybe you could have a character that the reader finds completely trustworthy because of some good behavior at the beginning of the book…but then they can become turncoats and start behaving badly. To Kill a Mockingbird had Boo Radley, who seemed like a terrifying person to the children in the book, but who ends up saving Scout from an attacker.

I love adding the element of surprise to a novel, and I think leading the reader astray by having them make assumptions is a great way to achieve surprise.

And now for something completely different.  This post is for writers like me who are impatient with clicking between open windows and open programs, or who want to quickly move through their manuscript. 

There are really dozens of such shortcuts, but here are the ones I find myself using most often. I use Windows, but there’s a link below for the Mac lovers, too.

 

ALT+TAB: Switch between open programs

CTRL+Z: Undo

CTRL and either + or – :makes text larger or smaller on websites for easier viewing on eyes that are getting older.

CTRL and click a website link :opens links in a new window

CTRL + TAB: switch between open windows that are all in a line

Useful Keyboard Shortcuts for Microsoft Word:

CTRL  N :quickly opens a new document (great for those times you want to jot down a note, but keep writing on your current scene.)

CTRL end :moves the cursor to the end of a document (when you suddenly want to change your ending)

CTRl home :moves the cursor to the beginning of a document (when you suddenly want to change your beginning.)

These are shortcuts that I find the most useful for me, but there are tons more.  If you’re interested, there’s a shortcut list for Word and one for Windows in general.  If you’re on a Mac, their website lists some helpful shortcuts, too.