All posts by David Todd

goals, Writing

New Year, Old Goals Revised

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We arrived home about 8 PM last night, after 10 days and 9 nights on the road. How nice to have time last night in my own reading chair, and at my familiar work station in The Dungeon. How nice to sit up till 1:30 AM reading. Today is the day our company decided to have for New Year holiday, so I’m home. My wife and mother-in-law are still in bed as I begin to write this, though both have stirred at times in the last four hours.

I was up at 8:30 AM, tired of the prone position, and ready to drink some coffee and read. So I’ve been doing that. My mind thought to the new year. I’m not one to make resolutions, though goal setting is always possible. I thought about my writing career, and what I would like to accomplish. So I wrote some goals, quickly, without giving a lot of thought to exactly how achievable these are. I used to post monthly goals on this blog, but gave that up early last year. I will, however, post the goals I wrote on the last page of my current journal notebook.

  • Finish In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. Currently at 15,000 on its way to 85,000 words, it’s well along but far from done. I will consider finished to mean having the book completely written and having gone through one round of edits.
  • Finish A Harmony of the Gospels. The harmony is done, and I’m working on passage notes and appendixes. This goal is definitely achievable.
  • Write 100 articles for Suite101.com. This might be a stretch. I have 116 written and three started. This is a good goal, one I should try very hard to meet.
  • Continue writing for Buildipedia.com, with a goal of earning at least $2000 from articles there.
  • Finish the Bible study I’m currently researching, To Exile and Back. This has turned out to be more involved than I originally expected. In a vacuum it would be easily achievable, but with other writing to do I’m not sure.
  • Plan, research, and write a small group study Essential John Wesley. This has been on my mind for some time. I’ve been mulling over what I would consider to be essential of his writings, and may even have a few notes somewhere.
  • Work on my small group study book Screwtape’s Good Advice. I began this three years ago because I had a publisher in mind for it, and prepared a detailed outline and four sample chapters before meeting with that publisher at a conference. When, after a considerable delay, the publisher said he wasn’t interested, I let it lapse. But it’s a good idea (if I say so myself), and so would like to follow-through with some more of the chapters.
  • Develop the Bible study Good King, Bad King. I began this a year or two ago, doing two lessons in it, but then didn’t find time to work on it further. I’d like to at least know the length of the lesson series, have an outline of the lessons, and know the research needed prior to writing. The actual writing, if the planning proves there’s really something worth doing here, is most likely a 2012 project.
  • Blog at least 120 times. Only 119 to go.

So there they are: 2011 writing goals, with some justification added and some thoughts on how achievable they are. I may check in from time to time on what I’m doing on them.

miscellaneous

New Year Wishes

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We are still in Oklahoma City, at our daughter’s and son-in-law’s, and it looks like we will be here through tomorrow at least. I’m anxious to get home, and I think we are suffering from the discomfort of an uncomfortable bed, a crowded house, and the rigors of intense potty training boot camp of a 2 1/2 year old. But all in our travelling party don’t see it that way, so I guess we’ll stay. I don’t want to force the issue.

Of course, since our kids aren’t financially able to have cable TV on the salary of an inner-city pastor, and since only one of the New Year bowl games is on broadcast TV, we will miss all the bowl games today. There’s no place to read in the house that is not subject to the noises of everyone else, so it’s not really possible to read or write. After lunch I may just put on my two jackets and go for a long walk. Of course, it’s about 30 degrees here, so maybe that won’t be possible.

Happy New Year everyone. At least the economy is looking better right now. We were given back some of the salary cuts we lost in 2009, so I’ll start out 2011 at a higher salary. And I made payout at Suite101.com last month, barely, but at least I made it. A little bit of silver lining.

Christmas, Genealogy, Writing

Holiday Withdrawals

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That’s one good thing about the holidays: They give you a chance to withdraw from life, if only for a brief time, and forget the normal things and think of and do different things.

This Christmas we left home on the 23rd and drove to Meade, Kansas. A little more than 7 hour drive, north to Joplin then across southern Kansas to the beginning of the high plains. The route is beautiful, through quaint little towns like Baxter Springs (on old Route 66), Chepota, Wellington, Medicine Lodge, and Coldwater. The landforms are varied, with the vegetation gradually thinning the farther west you get, along with the houses, and grain elevators becoming the dominant man made feature, other than the asphalt our tires hum on. Ranch land and farmland alternate. The winter wheat looks good this year. We saw lots of evidence of harvested cotton, which is a crop changes from years past.

Once in Meade, our Internet service was rather short lived, due to a computer failure of the wireless Internet service we used. So even brief checks of Facebook and e-mail became impossible. I had to delay my blog post, wasn’t able to track my page views and income on Suite101 (which, as it turned out, didn’t matter due to massive computer failures there that left the writers unable to access statistics for several days and which still isn’t fully rectified). So I just partook in family activities. Ate too much. Played lots of Rummycube. Attended church services. Talked with relatives. Drove past places of my wife’s childhood. Visited the museum. Ate even more. Talked even more. Alas, saw no football this last weekend, since neither the cousin or her mom had a sports package with their Direct TV.

Through all of this, I didn’t think too much about writing, except when Lynda’s brother kept asking me about the next version of my biography of their great-grandfather. We toured his ranch on Monday, first time I’ve been there in 35 years. We visited with the woman who now owns the spread, and she wanted to buy a copy of the book, Seth Boynton Cheney: Mystery Man of the West. Actually, she wants two (one delivered, and one to be printed). This is my first “book”, self-published on company copiers with relatively simple graphics, plastic comb binding, and lots of genealogy tables and information. But it was nice to have someone express some interest in the book. I’ve given away about 20 copies to relatives, maybe even 30 copies, and before this the only ones to express any interest in it are Lynda’s brother, one cousin in California, one cousin in England, and the local museum curator. Everyone else I’ve given it to has said absolutely nothing. Not one word of feedback.

Of course, that’s what I’ve come to expect from relatives and my writing. Almost no one is interested. One of Lynda’s cousins asks, every time I see her, if I’m still writing poetry, but never asks to see any. It seems to be more of a courtesy thing than real interest. And no relative, knowing I write novels, has ever expressed an interest in reading them. That is, until this trip. Two in-laws of that same cousin said they’d like to read Doctor Luke’s Assistant. So I’ll print and send them the latest version, and see what happens.

Well, I don’t want to exaggerate. My cousin Sue read Doctor Luke’s Assistant serially as I was writing it. She is a writer too (and a regular reader of this blog, I believe), and she expressed interest. Although, I’ve never bought a copy of her book and read it. So maybe I shouldn’t be too hard on relatives.

But it was nice to leave the pressure of office, writing, stock market, and all things regular for a few days. Here I am now, in Oklahoma City at my daughter and son-in-law’s house, where computer access is easy, checking Suite 101 and e-mail and firing off blog posts. I’m still ignoring most of my normal life, though a little football would be nice. We’ll head home more likely Saturday. Thus we’ll be on our normal Sunday schedule. I’ll be back to writing. I’ll be able to watch all the football I can stand.

But I’ll think fondly of our week away from the routine, and hope for something similar next year.

Christmas

Thoughts of Christmas Present – The Death of the Christmas Card

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I’m currently in Oklahoma City, at my daughter and son-in-law’s house, getting a good dose of playing with Ephraim, and reconnecting with the Internet. From Dec 22 to 27 we were in Meade, Kansas, staying at Lynda’s cousin’s house. She has only a direct connect modem. Her mom, who lives next door, has a wireless network, and we could connect to that. I was planning on making a post on Christmas day, but her computer decided to go on a permanent vacation that day. Apparently a cable modem and wireless router are not enough, and we lost Internet service. I suppose I could have gone to the truck stop the next day, or to a hotel parking lot, but we were too busy playing Rummycube and Scrabble and visiting an old ranch and other such things. So here I am, a couple of days late, taking advantage of Ephraim taking his nap to fire this off.

This year we sent out 76 Christmas cards, not including one to each other. I think five were distributed personally, not mailed. Another two could have been as well. Two cards we sent last year were not necessary this year, due to deaths in the family. We dropped a couple of others due to many years of not hearing back. That total is down from about 125 cards a decade ago. Glad to save the postage, but it started me wondering.

What really set me wondering, however, is the lack of cards received. Granted we hadn’t received mail since Dec 22, but I think we had received a total of 16 cards up till then. That includes the one from my company and two from fund raising organizations to which we contribute. I’d like to see what the final count is, and when it’s in I’ll post a comment to this. I suspect it will be around 25 incoming, maybe as many as 30.

Is the Christmas card dead? Or almost so? Sometimes I wonder if Lynda and I are the only ones who still bother with this old tradition. I remember my parents getting cards in the 1960s. Dad stretched red ribbon up and down the secretary in the dining room and clipped the cards to it. When he ran out of room there, he put them on string stretched in the wide archway between the living and dining room. When he ran out of room there, he put them somewhere, or maybe just in piles on a table. Of course, back then postage was 5 cents, and cards probably 15 cents or less.

So what’s happened? We now have many more ways to keep in touch. Telephone is cheap. It used to be a long distance call cost so much that you saved them for holidays only. Now we can talk to a loved one every day and never feel the cost. We have twitter and facebook and skype and e-mail. We are more connected than ever before. We don’t need to wait for an annual Christmas card with a quickly penned note, “We are all well. Uncle Theo passed away in October.” Now we know about Uncle Theo within moments of his passing.

I guess I don’t regret the loss of the Christmas card. Getting 76 done is a whole lot easier than 125. It’s been 27 years since we left Saudi Arabia, and I guess it was inevitable that we’d lose track of all those people sooner or later. Lives seem to be busier, though lots of it is self-generated busyness. We couldfind time for Christmas cards if we wanted to, but don’t.

I think next year I may chop the number down to about 65 cards, pocket the change, and put it towards a new laptop.

Christmas

A View of Christmas Past – the Christmas Tree

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Last night we saw most of A Christmas Carol on TV, one of the recent renditions, the one where Patrick Stewart played Scrooge. Can’t say that I liked it all that much compared to various other ones, but it was good to see it, the only time so far this year that we’ve seen the Dickens story that became the first of his many Christmas classics.

That got me thinking about Christmases past. Long past? No, my past. Specifically the Christmas tree. I’m thinking of those years when I was between 8 and 10 years old, maybe up to 12. About two or three weeks before Christmas, on a Saturday afternoon or evening, Dad would say to us three kids, “Let’s go get the Christmas tree.” Each of the five of us in the family—three kids and two parents—would bring forth 20 cents from our allowance, and Dad and the kids would set off on foot, leaving Mom behind to do whatever she was doing. We walked south on Reservoir Avenue, just three or four blocks. There we found three Christmas tree lots. Normally empty lots during the year, at Christmastime they were transformed. Now, of course, the land is too valuable to let them sit idle eleven months a year, and they all have a building. But wait, this is about Christmases Past.

We went immediately to the back of the lot, where the trees of lesser quality were, trees that could be had for a dollar. Dad always picked one that was too tall for our house, and would have to be cut at the bottom and maybe even the top. It was never a great tree. The branches would be far apart and thin. But we bought it, paid our ten dimes, and carried it home. Normally we had to cross Reservoir Avenue with the tree. It was only four lanes back then, with lots less traffic. North a few blocks we walked, then on to Cottage Street, four houses down the left side, and put the tree in the garage.

The garage, you ask? Yes, for in proper British tradition (well, I think it was British; for all I know it could have just been us) the tree was not installed and decorated until Christmas Eve. So it stayed in the garage, in a bucket of water, for a week. We kids used to go out there almost every day to check it, why I don’t know. About a week before Christmas Dad moved it to the basement.

The basement, you ask? Yes. Dad felt that the tree should have a week to “get used to” the warmer temperature of the house. Plus at this time he did whatever trimming needed to be done. So we kids made our daily visit to the basement to check the tree, make sure it had plenty of water, and that nothing had gone wrong with it.

Finally on Christmas Eve, Dad brought the tree upstairs. We all helped rearrange furniture in the living room. Once on its stand, with iron weights on the legs, Dad first put the lights on. Not the miniature lights that we use today, nor all the same. No, we used a mixture of lights, probably six or eight different shapes and almost as many colors, probably acquired over many years. The bubbly lights we our favorite. Dad took lots of time to get the lights just right, clipping each one to a branch, making sure all parts of the tree were equally lit, both those parts close to the end of the branches as well as in the interior.

Then we kids did the ornaments. Following Dad’s instructions, we made sure to spread then out, keeping like ornaments scattered and hanging them near the outside as well as inside of the tree. Then came the icicles. No, not the tinsel. We had what we called icicles, a solid, shiny metal piece twisted into a spiral, with a thread on one end. We hung these on the branches about two inches from the end. They were heavy enough that they would cause the branch to droop if hung too close to the end. Then came the tinsel, always the stuff left over from years of being on prior trees and salvaged at the end of a dozen previous Christmases Past. I still remember the white box it came out of on December 24 and went back into on either January 2 or 7. At the bottom of the tree, a cloth skirt of some kind, I think red, and then a lighted snowman and Santa. On the top, not a star or a bow but a spire, made like a glass ornament but designed to fit over the upward-reaching top branch.

The tree stayed up until New Years Day or, if Dad thought it was not getting too dry, until the end of the twelve days of Christmas on Epiphany. As the years went on we could no longer get a tree for a dollar, and we each had to chip in a quarter to get a tree. I think we could still get a marginal one for that price the year Mom died. Traditions didn’t change too much after that, though the price of the tree kept climbing. The tree still was bought three weeks before Christmas and decorated on Christmas Eve and taken down on Epiphany. The same strings of lights went on with the same care. The same ornaments—less the one or two that broke every year—were carefully dispersed. The tinsel came out of and went back into the same white box year after year, a little bit more mashed and clumped.

The trees of those years had no theme. Their theme was that this is Christmas and we should have a tree. It should have lights—pretty lights, and pretty decorations. It should be festive rather than beautiful. It probably wasn’t beautiful, but now, with fifty or so Christmases Past gone by, those trees remain beautiful in my eyes.

Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Writing

Hate the Villain

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Since some readers of my blog might not click on the comments, they might miss out on the discussion I’ve had with my friend Gary concerning villains. This has to do with posts I’ve made previously about what I’ve learned in writing classes (at conferences) about heroes and villains. The conventional wisdom is that fictional heroes must have faults that they overcome, and fictional villains must have some amount of virtue lest they become cardboard characters, someone who is not believable. I began this discussion because of my observations of Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter series, a villain who seems to have no virtues, and thus successfully defies the conventional wisdom.

I have concluded that the experts are wrong. The hero does not have to have any virtues. The villain must simply be someone the reader dislikes, even hates. As Gary said in a comment to an earlier post, let his/her evil traits be very evil, exaggerated even, so that we can see our own negative traits in contrast to his/her. “Yes, I have my faults, but Voldemort is much more evil than I would ever be.”

So now, what do I do with my villains? In In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People I have two villains: Tony Mancini, a New York Mafia Don, and Colt Washburn, a Chicago Mafia Don. Both have their eyes and hooks into the protagonist, Chicago Cubs pitcher Robo Ronny Thompson, a naive farm boy who breaks into the Big Leagues. I have Mancini as being too nice to be a Mafia Don. He grew up with some refinement and a distaste for violence. He dislikes having to resort to killing as a business solution. Yet Thompson’s success could mean his downfall, and so he sets in motion things that are evil, while hating doing it.

Right now I don’t really have anything in Colt Washburn’s character that would mitigate his evil. But Thompson’s success would mean his success. He would win his eight figure be with Mancini, bringing about his downfall and possibly take over his turf. So Washburn, who was a Chicago street thug who worked his way up to be the head of the Chicago rackets, employs the evil powers he has to try to guarantee Thompson’s success. The twist is that the nicer Don is doing all he can to bring about an evil result, and the more evil Don is doing all he can to bring about a good result. Well, if you consider the Cubs beating the Yankees in the World Series a good result, which most of America would.

So what to do? I’m only 15,000 words in to a planned 80,000 word novel. I could easily change either Mancini or Washburn. I could find a virtue for Washburn, or I could make Mancini more evil than he is. I guess I’ll think about it some over the holidays, and maybe get back to work on the novel in the New Year.

miscellaneous

Fighting the Bah-Humbug Attitude

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I can’t remember if I’ve written this on this blog before, but for the last 20 or so years I’ve had a somewhat bah-humbug attitude towards Christmas. The main problem is the busyness that comes with the season. First there’s decorating the house indoors and outdoors, a chore of carrying boxes up from the basement, finding the right stuff in them, and getting it the right places. A lot of work. Given that Lynda likes a thematic Christmas tree, and I don’t (I prefer mixed light colors and styles, mixed ornaments), and I’ve given up fighting her on it, I don’t really enjoy the tree, with its one color and style of lights and its coordinated colors and styles of ornaments. Yuck.

Then there’s the round of Christmas parties that start the first weekend of December and seem to go non-stop until a week before Christmas. The office, the department within the office, the church, the Sunday school class within the church, the support group within the church, the ladies’ group within the church, the writers guild, the civic club, etc. The last several years it’s been better. We blow off some of these parties. With the kids grown we don’t have rehearsals for children’s Christmas program. And since we don’t participate in organized choir any more, that’s dropped from the schedule.

Then there’s the Christmas cards and letter. I normally draft the letter from scratch, and Lynda improves it. She sends it to the kids to make sure we get their info correct. Then comes the printing, two sides of a sheet, with misfeeds, smudging, wrong number of copies, folding, stuffing, etc. Signing the cards, labeling the envelops, finding the stamps we made a special trip to buy, getting them to the post office in batches, remembering to hold out those to weigh for overseas postage (not many of those any more). This isn’t hard work, just one more cog in the wheel.

Then there’s preparing for the trip to Meade Kansas. We’ll be there four days, I think, and will swing by OKC on the return trip. Oh, did I mention the usual sudden tasks that crop up at work in the days immediately preceding your vacation days? Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned shopping. Of course, we don’t have much of that any more, and I can usually duck it and let Lynda have charge of something she loves to do. Although, since everything about Christmas seems designed to drain the checkbook and savings account, there’s still stress and worry attached.

Normally by the time Christmas comes I have mellowed out. The main activities are behind me, and I can enjoy the day with whatever family we have around. I have time to reflect on the reason for the season, to read the story as many times as I want, and to recall the work of Jesus in my life.

This year, it hasn’t been so bad. We went to a couple of parties we skipped last year. I served a group of 112 women at church on Monday night. We’re going to the company’s management party tomorrow night. The Christmas letter (my part of it) will be finished tonight, and probably ready for printing this weekend. The cards, at least most of them, will go out before the 25th. Our schedule for the Meade trip is set, even some extra visits I’m planning to make with Lynda’s brother. Yet, with the activities, the stress of the season hasn’t seemed as bad this year. Maybe I have somewhat learned how to deal with this and not let it get me down.

So as we near the day, I’m in a good equilibrium. I’m not worried about producing much writing. If I find the time, I’ll get an article or two done, or maybe a thousand words in a novel, or maybe a couple of passage notes or appendix paragraphs in the Harmony of the Gospels. I might even get to read Dicken’s Cricket on the Hearth this year, which is the next one of his Christmas stories I’m scheduled to read. At least this year I’m not sick with pneumonia. My rheumatoid arthritis isn’t acting up and I’m not on steroids. ‘Tis the season to be jolly. Well, I may not quite be jolly this year, but at least I’m not stressed and depressed.

Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Writing

Still Thinking About Literary Villains

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In response to my post about literary villains, my friend Gary left some comments. The gist of what he wrote was the people like to dislike the villain. If you give them some virtue, the reaction will be that they feel sorry for the villain. Then they won’t hate him enough. Then their enjoyment of the literary experience will be reduced, because they will not be able to hate the villain enough. At least, I think that’s an accurate summary. Gary, feel free to comment if I didn’t get that right.

Part of this all must be the role the villain plays. In fact, perhaps the word villain is part of the problem. Take Scrooge for instance. He certainly starts out as a villain, but goes through a character arc that has him come out the hero. He is the protagonist who goes through a transformation. Darth Vader is the same. He is the antagonist who goes through a transformation from bad to good—or actually from good to bad to good when all six movies are considered. He is certainly villainous, but ends up good.

Voldemort fulfills a different function. He is a villain who stays a villain throughout the seven books, and in fact seems to get more villainous as the story progresses. In the back story, it’s clear he wasn’t always a bad guy (again, I’m basing this on the movies only, since I haven’t read the books). I understand he doesn’t go through a bad to good transformation, so remains a villain to the end. We hate Voldemort in the end. We love Scrooge in the end. We sort of love Darth Vader in the end, though he has less time to make amends than Scrooge did.

This all brings me back to my beginning point: Is the conventional wisdom, as taught in the writing classes I’ve attended, correct? Must we give our villains antagonists a virtue or two, to flesh them out and not be cardboard characters? I’m still working through that. Maybe I can leave Colt Washburn, Chicago Mafia Don in In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, as a bad dude and not worry about giving him any redeeming qualities.

content writing, copyright, plagiarism, Suite 101

The Plagiarism Posse

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The writers at Suite101.com have become more active lately at fighting plagiarism and copyright infringement of their articles. Of course, that’s happened to me twice (that I know of): once at a site called gogreentoolbox.com, and one recently at a site called Market Mentalist. I’ve seen a number of my articles listed at news aggregation sites. These are sites that simply provide a link to an article found elsewhere, and maybe display the first 50 words or so. These are harmless, and the links may actually help a little to give your article “Google Juice”.

After my last event, which was more or less simultaneous to similar circumstances of other writers, we formed the Plagiarism Enforcement Posse. I lobbied for a name change, since we are fighting not only plagiarism but also copyright infringement (the two overlap but are not identical), but lost that argument. About 25 writers have signed on. The goal is to band together whenever someone on the site posts to the forums saying their articles have been swiped. We hope that with quick and overwhelming action the site owner will take the articles down, or the host will disable the site, or Google will de-index the site, removing their source of income.

Today another writer found a site that’s stealing articles, consolidate-debt-easy.com. Once he posted, the Posse was alerted. We began making comments to the stolen articles, saying they were stolen. Someone found the site owner’s e-mail address, in a country with abbreviation MD (not Maryland), and some of the posse e-mailed him DMCA violation notices. As of about 3:00 PM today, the four articles listed by Posse members as stolen were all removed.

Then the original writer, who just joined the Posse when this happened, just posted to say articles of seven other Suite writers are posted at this site. The theft is a curious thing. The articles are all posted saying the author is Danielle Nelson, but then at the bottom of the articles the name of the copyright holder is given—the original Suite101 author. And the site has no ads. Normally the site of an article thief is covered with ads. That’s the whole point: steal articles, keep the site with fresh content, hope to score well in search engines, and hope those who come to the site click on an ad. Or possibly they have ads that pay “per impression” rather than “per click”. If that’s the case readers don’t need to click on the ad for the thief to make money. But this site has no ads. What’s the point of stealing articles and plagiarizing them if you aren’t trying to get ad revenue?

So it looks as if the Posse is being successful this time, though much more work lies ahead with this one site. I wonder, though, if we are on a losing effort. The criminals are like the cockroaches we used to be plagued with in Kuwait. Every morning we went on roach patrol, killing those who came up through the drain the in the night into the sink and couldn’t get out. No matter how many we killed there were as many more the next morning. Same with copyright thieves. We’ll stamp out one today and find three more tomorrow and five the day after that. That’s the bad news.

But the good news is that these sites have a very low ranking with Google and the other search engines. The don’t score very well on search engine results pages. So maybe they aren’t taking much revenue away from us. Still, having your work stolen is disheartening at first, maddening second, and angering third. I hope the Posse rides on, into the night, through the day, finding the thieving cockroaches, capturing them, and herding them to the gallows. Cyber capital punishment is fitting, I think.

Don’t worry Neil, Damien, Joseph, Jim, Nick, Victoria, Asa, Brenda, Jennifer, and anyone else at Suite101 whose articles this site has stolen. We’ve got your back. Ride/write on.

Doctor Luke's Assistant, fiction, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Writing

Literary Villains: Is the Conventional Wisdom Right?

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Attend any class on writing fiction and before long you will hear this mantra: Your heroes must have some faults and your villains must have some good traits. You can’t make your heroes so ooey-gooey nice and perfect that they are unbelievable. And you can’t make your villains so absolutely awful that there is nothing redeemable in them. Well, you can, but your novel will be the worse for your doing so.

This was news to me when I first heard this in a fiction writing class at a writers conference, but it kind of makes sense. Fictional characters ought to reflect real life to some extent. Few people in real life are totally good or totally bad. Actually, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say no one is totally good or totally bad. Even if a novel is fantasy, and doesn’t include humans at all, we human readers judge the novel by our human experience, and the non-human characters must be believable and real based on our human experiences.

But in literature, is this true? Do successful writers always give their heroes faults and their villains virtues? For heroes, I think this is probably true. A big part of any heroes’ quest is to overcome obstacles, both those that the world throws at them and those that are within them. But for villains, is this so?

I’m thinking of the Harry Potter series, and of Harry and Voldemort. Now, I must preface this by saying I’ve not read the books! I intend to, and will be doing so within a year, I think. I’m basing this on the movies. I’ve seen all seven, and those who have both read the books and seen the movies indicate the movies are fairly faithful to the books. Harry has his faults. We easily see this in his movie portrayal. But does Voldemort have any virtues?

I looked hard for Voldemort virtues in the movies, and haven’t found any. I suppose you might say he has a virtue of making an accurate assessment of his chances in a fight against Harry. He says he could not overcome Harry’s wand and that Harry has a type of wizardry, provided by Lily Potter, that he, Voldemort, needs something more to overcome. He doesn’t pump himself up by ascribing his failure to kill Harry to bad luck. But that’s a pretty small virtue, I think.

We might be able to have some sympathy for Voldemort based on the circumstances of his birth and parentage. But sympathy and virtue are not the same.

So, as I write my fiction and flesh out characters, I wonder just how much virtue I should add to the antagonists, the villains. What good characteristics should I give to Tony Mancuso, the Mafia Don who wants to prevent the success of phenom pitcher Ronny Thompson, the hero of my In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People? Should I add a couple of good characteristics to Claudius Aurelius, the corrupt government official who want to stop Luke from writing a biography of Jesus in Doctor Luke’s Assistant? I’ve worked hard to give these villains some redeeming qualities, but I’m wondering if it’s a waste of time. Perhaps readers like their villains to be really, really bad—to hate them thoroughly, not to feel a smidgen of sympathy for them. Certainly, if Voldemort’s abject villainy contributes to the success of the Harry Potter books, one would think that is the case.

What say you, my few readers? Do you want the villains in the novels you read to have a virtue or two? Do you want to feel some sympathy for the antagonist, and think, “Oh, if only his parents had treated him better he wouldn’t have turned out so bad.”? Or do you just want to hate the villain and love the hero?

An inquiring novelist wants to know.