Black and white, but mostly Grey

We want things to be simple. Black and White. An absolute dichotomy. Of course, life is not like that. And that's what makes writing fun! 

I got tired of evil villains a long time ago. No one was purely evil without being insane! As the expression goes, no one is the villain in their own story. We all think we are the heroes! So when I write, I work hard to find those ‘real’ villains who have depth to their story before bringing them in to interact with my protagonists.

I was doing up a little ‘what I do’ vs ‘what I don’t do’ (see below!) and I realized I didn’t do villains who were just evil. The closest I came was the demon in Dragon’s voice and even HE considered himself very reasonable and his cause (self-preservation and research) just. Son of No Man series had antagonists, not villains, and in some cases, I couldn’t tell who I was cheering for!

I started to think this philosophy was impacting my ability to write middle-grade or maybe even young adult novels. I thought maybe the idea of the shades of grey, without a clear right or wrong, isn’t conducive to that audience.  But the more I thought about it, the more books I could recite that DID have complicated antagonists. It was so pervasive that I had all but overlooked it. 

So you won’t see me writing the ‘evil wizard taking over kingdom’ books. That’s ok though; there are plenty of people who will! There’s a place for those stories! It’s just not what I’m going to write. No different than my love of bittersweet endings that are happy, but with farther-reaching consequences. Or how I avoid overpowered characters (as cool as it is sometimes to read about them). I did have to take romance off the list of things I don’t do. His Last Name broke that trend. And I suspect the 'Chosen One' trope will show up... but it'll be twisted when it does!
 
Sometimes, we all want the simple answer; there’s a hero and a bad guy. But for the times in between, I have what I do; a mix of people with opposing goals that cause conflict. What do you prefer?

(Promos below- get them before February ends!)