The Foolscap Method Step 4 Heroes & Villains
Channel: Steven Pressfield
Date: 2023-06-07

The hero and the villain.

This may seem simple and straightforward but it’s important to really look at what you’re doing and figure out who or what this really is.

Sometimes it’s straightforward – in Jaws the villain is the shark, the hero Sheriff Brody.  In Alien – the alien villain, Ripley hero.

But the villain does not have to be a person, a creature or a character.  The villain can be a societal force,  the villain can be injustice, the villain can be death.  It’s easy to want to make a character the villain, but it’s important to spend time really thinking about this.  At the depth of what you’re writing, at the heart of the business you’re setting up, who or what is the antagonist?  What wrong needs to be corrected?

Let’s take “To Kill A Mockingbird” for example.  We may want to assign the role of villain to Bob Ewell.  But I think it’s much deeper than that.  Racism is surely one of the villains of this story. But I think, even deeper beneath the surface, that is the tendency that each of us have to judge our fellow human beings according to one diminishing criterion and to dismiss them and render them less than human.  

If you remember the very end.  Boo Radley the neighbor that the kids are afraid of, saves Jem from Bob Ewell.  The man who was the “outcast” seen as less than human saved him.  Later Atticus bring Boo Radley into their home and introduces him to Scout as Mr. Arthur Radley.  Seeing him as a human being, acknowledging him by his name vanquishes the antagonist.  See that. 

The last thing about this is that the hero and the villain must clash in the climax.  Again in Jaws that’s easy to see.

So to recap til now:

1st thing on the foolscap – item 10 – the climax
2nd. The genre
3rd  Very short Act 1, Act 2, Act 3, and
4th The hero and the villain