It’s been a while since my last update. Summer always tends to get away from me. I can’t believe it’s already August!

 

Yes, August, that most blessed of times known to man as Shark Week. From the time I was seven years old, I’ve never missed a single Shark Week. Every July, I sit glued to my television, watching the same shows they’ve played for twenty years, and spending that night terrified to go to the bathroom in case one of those massive Great White Sharks is swimming in my toilet. That’s the great thing about a phobia – its complete lack of logic.

 

Shark Week combines two of my greatest phobias. Sharks, obviously, and water. If there was a way to work clowns into the mix, it would be the Unholy Trinity of Terror.

 

I love to swim, but I’m terrified of water if I can’t see the bottom. I have never been swimming in a lake (and never will) because that greenish-brown water could be hiding God only knows what. Alligators, snapping turtles, dead bodies, zombies (they don’t need to breathe, you know). All of that and more might be just below the surface. God help you if you happen to be near me and something brushes my leg while I’m in the water. I’m going to climb you like a cat climbs a tree with the dog hot on its heels.

 

I have been swimming in the ocean. I love the beach, and someday hope to have a little cabana right on the water. With a cabana boy, but that’s another post. I can deal with the water better there because its blue, it looks cleaner, and you can see deeper into it. Still, every time I go into the water, I see the flailing legs in that great underwater POV scene where Jaws first attacks Amity Beach.

 

It doesn’t help that I’ve had my own Amity Beach experience. There’s nothing more frightening than looking up and realizing you’re the only person in the water as far as you can see up and down the coast while the lifeguard is frantically gesturing at you.

 

You might be wondering what all this has to do with writing. Well, I’ll tell you. Phobias can be a writer’s best friend. Take Shark Week for example. I’ve been terrified of sharks since the first time I watched Jaws. That damned shark tormented me for years, haunting every puddle and nightly bath of my childhood. Just hearing the theme song was enough for me to have a week’s worth of nightmares.

 

I read somewhere that a therapy for dealing with fears involves exposure to said fear. People fear the unknown and what they don’t understand. I certainly didn’t understand sharks, so I began researching them. A naturally curious nature never hurts here. I started out with books, as I often do, and then with the Discovery channel. Sunday nights in our house were always planned around church and the National Geographic program. When I discovered a whole week dedicated to sharks, I knew I’d hit the jackpot. The more I learned about sharks, the more they fascinated me. Truly one of God’s marvels, this creature is evolution at its finest. Pared down to its most necessary parts, it functions on an instinctive level that humans can only admire. It swims, eats, and procreates, and does it in a way to make itself the most feared animal in the ocean. I learned through them about keystone predators, how important a creature can be to its ecosystem, and in turn how that ecosystem affects the rest of the planet. Not to mention that sharks are just freakin’ cool. If sharks were people, they would be Al Pacino, James Dean, and Robert Mitchum all rolled up into one person. They’re that badass.

 

Am I still afraid of sharks? You bet. But now it’s not so much an irrational fear as it is a healthy respect for a creature that owns its nature the way few other animals do. I’ve also learned they are not soulless killing machines, but merely animals doing what animals do – surviving.

 

It doesn’t keep me from imagining those flailing legs every time I get near a body of water, but now I know the shark isn’t actively trying hunt me down. It merely thinks I’m a fat seal, which is enough incentive to get my butt on a treadmill. Proving that conquering your fears can be healthy in more ways than you think.

 

Writing through fear is something most writers, well, fear. Be it sharks, fear of commitment, fear of the unknown, or those daddy/mommy issues you’ve wrestling with since childhood, examining what we don’t understand makes us break out in that cold primal sweat.

 

That’s a good thing, really. Nothing speaks more clearly to the human soul than fear. It’s what kept our ancestors from becoming dinosaur food. It’s why horror stories and scary movies continue to be a part of our lives, even though deep down we known vampires and zombies are silly.

 

Writing from the gut takes guts. It means looking hard and honestly at the things that make us scared and uncomfortable. Every square inch of it. It means taking the thing apart, seeing what makes it tick, putting it back together again and watch it scare the bejeezus out of us. Not an easy task even for the bravest of us.

 

What we learn from that fear, though, far outweighs what it costs to examine it.

 Give yourself a cookie if you know where I got that title. If you guessed country music, get yourself another cookie. If I haven’t completely turned you off yet, keep reading. There’s some good stuff ahead, I promise.

 

The title, aside from being a good song by the Highway Men, begs an interesting question. Why do we have a fascination with bad men? From vampires to mafia dons, we love those who walk on life’s shadier side, and no where is that more greatly realized than on celluloid and between the pages of the biggest bestsellers.

 

My first encounters with treacherous villainy came from monster movies. I had the best babysitters. Christopher Lee, Vincent Price, Lon Chaney. I’d sit up late at night with Mom watching the Hammer classics and any monster movie we could find back when it was still known as the Superstation TBS. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was carrying on a family tradition. My mother sat up late at night with her dad, also watching those same film stars sink their teeth into virginal throats or tramp through foggy graveyards at night. I rooted for them against the stalwart hero. I always found the good guys bland, as wholesome as American cheese and just as boring. No thanks. Give me something rich and preferably European, something with a little bite to it.

 

My first true love affair with a villain came from a not so humble movie titled Die Hard. Maybe you’ve heard of it? I grew up on two types of movies. My mother imparted her love of all things dark and scary – so monster movies were a staple of my youth. My dad loved action movies. The first movie I remember seeing in a theater is Invasion USA, starring Chuck Norris, although I’m told I was quite riveted during The Karate Kid. I’m really dating myself here, aren’t I?

 

Anyway, I saw Die Hard when I was thirteen, on a bootleg VHS. I couldn’t believe it. As a child of the 80’s, most action movie villains were of the egomaniacal, insane terrorist variety. They were always out to either take over the world or destroy it, and mowed down their own henchmen just as much as they seemed to take out random victims designed to pluck the audience’s heartstrings. But here, in Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber, we had a villain who was not only sane, but also realistic. No James Bondian plans to destroy the world here. (Spoilers ahead!) Just an elaborate plan to pull off a bank heist. That’s it. Throughout the movie, he was calm, collected, and thinking not only one step ahead of the hero but apparently everyone in the city of Los Angeles. And that accent. Who couldn’t love an accent like that? Even at his most evil, Hans Gruber could make sweet, sweet love to you with that voice.

 

Ahem. Anyway, getting back to the point. It was nice to see a smart villain for a change. They have the best clothes, the best sidekicks, and all the best toys. So why were they all affected with the dreaded Stupids? Die Hard was the first movie I saw where a bad guy didn’t accidentally help the hero kill him off.

 

I suppose that was my first blueprint for a bad guy. If he’s a pansy, then the hero really isn’t so heroic, is he? And face it; you’re only as interesting as the people you surround yourself with.

 

I think that’s a big problem with today’s movies. I really haven’t seen a movie where I could honestly say the bad guys seemed awesome. I’m instantly suspicious of computer-generated baddies. I feel they’re off-putting at best. Part of the attraction of the best baddie is the intimacy they bring. Dracula is a great example of this. He literally implores you to ‘look into his eyes’. You have to get pretty up close and personal for that.

 

The best baddies draw you into their world. They take you in and, in their own special way, make you a part of their diabolical deeds. Hannibal Lecter, anyone? Under that charm and wit lies a psychosis that’s mind-boggling, but he lures poor Clarice Starling and the audience to his side. While we’re horrified when he eventually escapes, a small, secret part of us is gleeful, even if we’re terrified to know he’s out there, somewhere, and probably eating people.

 

A writer or an actor has a lot more room to play with a villain than they do with a hero. Think about it. The things we love about our bad guys would send us shrieking through the night away from the hero. I just can’t imagine too many people getting behind a hero that likes to snack on the brains of innocent bystanders while he plots to bring the Villain to justice. (However, if you can make that scenario work, do so with my blessing. There’s nothing better than a well-written anti-hero. That, however, is a blog for another day.)

 

A good villain has more room to walk around than the hero does. Heroes tend to be good to their mothers, good to the women in their life, drive the speed limit, pay their bills on time . . . you know, all that boring stuff we do without having the baggage that we mere mortals often carry around with us. Bad guys say, “Screw that,” to all of those things, and while we’re horrified, we secretly admire them having the guts to throw off society’s conventions and go at it their own way. A villain is an individualist at heart. Think about Dracula. He refused to die.

 

A villain should be more complex than the hero. One note bad guys (“I’m going to nuke New York City because I am eeeevil!”) need to have their villainy card revoked. They also need to have their feet sunk into cement bricks and be tossed off a bridge, preferably by their own henchmen. Just like the Hero, Villains should have a personal stake in the way things turn out. Even Sauron, the omnipotent, ultimate evil of Tolkien, has a personal stake in getting the One True Ring.

 

Tortured villains are also tricky. “Woe is me, for I am so evil” really grates my last nerve. Vampires are especially bad for this. They have immortality, the strength of ten men or more, they’re practically invulnerable to harm, and they have the ability to make people do their bidding with just a whisper. Yet they moan about the fact they never get to see daylight. (Sorry, but its way overrated.) Sorry, emo kids, but get over it. If you have the balls to be bad, have the balls to enjoy it, too.

 

I think this brings up another interesting point, for anyone who’s stuck around long enough to see where I’m going with this. Most bad guys don’t realize they’re bad. Maybe they do, deep in the darker pits of their crusty black hearts, but they probably think of themselves as misanthropic at the worst. Remember, most terrorists refer to themselves as Freedom Fighters, and who the terrorists are largely depends on where you are in relation to the bombed out hovel.

 

So what does all this mean? It means that a writer has an obligation to spend as much time on the bad guy as the hero or the love interest. It means no matter how charming, brave, strong, good-looking, or great-in-bed your hero is, unless he has a super-awesome villain to clash against, we’re honestly not going to care. If nothing else, the villain has to seem insurmountable. There has to be no earthly or otherworldly way the hero can overcome.

 

Then he does.

 

That’s the kicker. After dealing with the Ultimate Evil, despite traitorous sidekicks, duplicitous love interests, a crippling injury, no support from the Good Guy Network, and an apparently sadistic author who has no sense of decency or compassion, the hero has still conquered all. Through courage, cunning, and human spirit, your hero has won the hearts of the readers by doing the impossible. Now that’s a hero I can get behind.

 

That’s why angels love bad men.

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