Issue #8 - Be Your Own Villain (10 min read) / EPOCH Pitch Doc
Welcome to issue #8! I tried a new angle on my antagonist this week and thought it would be worth passing on in case it sparks a new idea for you. There are also links to things I found inspiring, enlightening, or cool. Thanks, hope you enjoy it!
Be Your Own Villain (10 min read)
One of the guiding principles of my life for the past twenty-five years has been, “Action is character, character is destiny.” The choices you make on a day to basis, the actions you take, those are the things that reveal who you truly are and shape the overall "arc" of your life.
If you view yourself as the hero of your own story, when you’re faced with adversity or difficult decisions, or even just navigating the day to day challenges of life, you can ask yourself, “What would this character do in order to achieve their goal?” Longer term, it's asking, "Who do I want to become?" then taking the corresponding actions.
It works for me.
Mostly.
In one of my first newsletters I talked about the quote from John Yorke’s book Into the Woods that says, “All great characters are subconsciously at war with themselves.” I think the same is true for us. But while I spend a lot of time (or naturally gravitate toward) putting the best of me into my protagonists I don’t really ever consciously dig into the worst of me for my antagonists. I think that’s been a real missed opportunity.
I like to think of myself as somebody who gets along with everybody but over the years there have been a handful of people who just got under my skin for one reason or another, or who became, in my head, a genuine nemesis. As I got older and more self-aware I realized that for many of them, what I disliked most was that they reflected or brought out things I disliked about myself.
“We’re not so different, you and I,” is a cliche for a reason.
This past week I was working on a new idea and struggling to define a character’s emotional story and point-of-view. I asked myself the questions I mentioned in that earlier newsletter. “What is the facade they’re showing the world? Who are they really?” And then for some reason (looking for inspiration) I turned those questions on myself.
That's... an uncomfortable thing to do.
Again, I like to think of myself as a genuinely decent human being. Hopefully we all do. I prize empathy and patience. I find joy in being of service to other people. The older I get the more I try to meet people where they are and give them space instead of trying to force my idea of who or what they should be (or believe) on them. I’m honest, but it’s not blunt force honesty, it’s done with care. I strive to be kind rather than nice.
But…
I’m also prone to jealousy and driven by ego. I'm competitive. I can be petty and vengeful. If you dig beneath the surface I have a stack of chips on my shoulder and when I do tap into “Darkside Mickey” I can go pretty nuclear.
The earliest memory I have of Darkside Mickey is when I was in elementary school and the kid in front of me would not stop leaning his chair back against my desk. It was so irritating, I couldn’t concentrate, and every time he did it there would be this little “clack” that shook my desk. Instead of asking him to stop I waited until his chair was leaning against my desk, resting there, then I scooted my desk back the slightest little back, causing him to topple over backward and bang his head.
He started crying, the teacher came to ask what happened and I pretended it was an accident, that I was trying to get out of my desk and it shifted. I LIED on top of the petty, cruel thing I did that gave this kid a knot on his skull. I immediately felt terrible about it and it clearly made an impression on me because I still remember it to this day.
A few months into quarantine Julie and I took Ellie for an evening walk to watch the sunset in one of the really nice neighborhoods on the mountain overlooking Glendale. When we got back to the car it was dark and there was an older gentleman, probably in his 60’s, shining a flashlight around my car and into the windows. I asked him what he was doing and he said, “Sorry, we’ve had some suspicious vehicles around here lately.” I could feel my temper starting to rise. I told him I thought it was a public street and he said, “It is, but the police told me if I saw any suspicious vehicles to call them because there have been some burglaries and drug dealing.”
That “got my red up” as we say back home and I just started trying to make him feel as much like an asshole as possible. “So you came out here with a flashlight to snoop around a legally parked car that’s been here for a half hour?” He apologized and tried to explain again but I couldn’t let it go for some reason. Actually, I do know the reason. One of the chips on my shoulder, maybe it’s an Appalachian thing, is “You think you’re better than me?” So I kept pushing and forcing him to explain himself and apologize.
Finally, we ended the conversation and we got in the car to drive home. Like the kid and the desk, I felt terrible. I knew I WAS THE ASSHOLE. Maybe part of it was the pent up stress and anxiety of the pandemic but part of it was just — me.
My nature.
I’ve thought about that guy a lot since that night. I was a villain in his story that day, a stranger who came to his neighborhood and when he was trying to keep his home and his family safe, I accosted him and made him feel bad for doing it. (I’m characterizing this from his POV — whether or not he was justified is a whole other debate.) It got me to start asking questions about the parts of me I could use for my current antagonist.
So often when we’re coming up with antagonists we go for grand ideas for their motivation. They want money or ultimate power. They want revenge, or they want to destroy Earth, or snap their fingers and kill half the universe to save on resources. We’ve seen so many examples of heroes and villains being thesis and antithesis. Harry Potter and Voldemort, Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, the list goes on and on. Maybe that's why my instinct is usually to search for "the dark side" for my antagonists "out there," like they need some larger-than-life mythic reason for what they're doing.
But there are so many simple human motivations for why people do bad things and the most immediate resource we have to draw from are the flaws in our own nature.
Think about the stories where you’ve been the villain. Think about a past nemesis. What did you do, or could you have done, to hurt them? Why would you do that? What’s the ultimate goal? If you really wanted to, could you have ruined their life? What would your “bad guy plot” have been?
If I’m pouring my dark side into my antagonists then it makes sense that they’ll act as antithesis to the better angels of my nature (the thesis) that I’m putting into my protagonists. That conflict in my nature becomes the conflict in the story. And maybe testing my hero (who is often me in some other form) by holding up the worst parts of them (also me) will give me a road map for how to deal with those parts in real life.
Action is character, etc.
EPOCH pitch document download
Here's another deceased project pitch if you're interested in checking out the structure and how I format them. This forms the basis of my verbal pitch, it's just how I do it. Take what works for you and leave the rest behind. There's no one path.
Dropbox - EPOCH pitch doc 10252019v2.pdf - Simplify your life — www.dropbox.com Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring your photos, docs, and videos anywhere and share them easily. Never email yourself a file again!
Weekly Yodas and Other Cool Stuff
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Jim Henson and Frank Oz improvising as Fozzy and Kermit during a camera test is the purest form of play.