Heart Of Darkness

I recently stumbled upon a writing group in the St. Louis area.  Although calling the St. Louis Writer's Guild a "writing group" is probably a major faux pas.  But I digress.  I was very excited to find such a group here where I now call home and I was able to attend their May workshop last Saturday.  The theme of the workshop was "Inside The Heart of Darkness:  Exploring and Creating the Layered Villain" and the speaker was a local author and vice-president of the Guild, David Alan Lucas.

In the workshop, he challenged his fellow writers to come up with a villain that was not paper thin.  At one point, we had 30 seconds to write down as many villains as possible.  I thought that would be pretty simple but when the timer started counting down, I could only come up with these five:

 Dracula - I chose him mainly because Mr. Lucas was wearing a Dracula t-shirt but also because I had a deep-seated fear of vampires as a kid.  Although the Twilight series has definitely helped to dull the edge of fear that the vampire once presented, I still think of Dracula as the grandaddy of all villains.

 Hannibal Lecter - again, a no brainer.  I'll admit I saw "Silence of the Lambs" and never read the book, but I did read "Hannibal" and through that novel, I think Hannibal became less of a villain and more of an anti-hero.  But the reason I chose him is because he's charismatic, intelligent and most importantly scary as hell.

Mother Brain - that's right, from the Metroid game series.  She's just a giant brain in a jar but I'll be damned if she didn't pop into my head during the exercise.  I tried to examine why and I think it comes down to the evil of logic - the idea that only one way can be the right way and those who are not right must die!  Maybe I'm over examining this but she was my number three pick.

Lestat - Anne Rice's vampire with the golden mane was a character of fascination for me in high school and beyond.  Although he really was only a villain in "Interview With The Vampire" and later became an anti-hero in her following books.  But, he was a sassier version of Dracula - probably better looking to.

The Devil -  He probably should be at the top of the list since he is the ultimate villain and while he debuted in such memorable books such as "The Bible" or "Faust", the idea of the devil for me is that little voice on your shoulder telling you to do bad things.  He is the evil in all of us and so to call him a villain is in a way saying that we are all villains, right?






Lucas talked about the duality of the hero and villain and cited Batman and the Joker as a prime example.  But I was stuck on another idea and that was the anti-hero.  At one point, another writer brought up the TV series "Breaking Bad" and how we watch Walter White descent into villainy.  I almost cried foul since that series was on the tip of my tongue.  Anyway,  I kept thinking that his story featured the same hero and the same villain namely Walter White.  It was the epitome of the line from The Dark Knight "you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain".  Certainly not mind blowing stuff here but I wanted to share my thoughts on the subject.

If anyone has thoughts or other villains they'd like to share, I'd be interested.