Creating Victoria

Villain Number One of Without Villains

Creating Victoria

Below is the introduction to a main character in an unfolding story. Read it here:

I knew I needed to create a free leader for the October Sky Trilogy, but I wasn’t certain what that needed to be until I had several combative conversations with Drama Llama. She’s my teen who must have drama. She can’t breathe without it.

She’s my husband’s oldest, and she entered my life when she was six years old. She and her mother have a rough relationship, and I helped as much as I could. However, the breaking point over the holidays—as I was reaching a similar breaking point at Day Job because, why not?—was when I helped her devise yet another solution to yet another problem and she just… gave up. She just quit.

I broke the fuck down and screamed. Seriously. I gripped the wheel of my car, slammed on my brakes on an icy backroad and just screamed, “Why?! Why is it acceptable for you to quit while others are forced to carry your weight so they can move?” Like, OMG. I fucking broke. After kicking that kid out of my car and telling her to do whatever the hell she wanted to do because I didn’t have the energy to fucking care anymore, I went home, ranting and raving to myself like a possessed person.

I apologized to her afterward, and she continued to do terribly. Her grades plummeted. Her attitude found new bathroom bowels of lowness, and the house “walked on eggshells” because of my temper.

I finally admitted what I’d done to my friends, these amazing women I recently found and can never give up, and they didn’t shame me. Instead, they supported me. One of them actually said, “Good for you,” and I just about balled my eyes out.

I’d found myself at a breaking point, giving everything I could to this kid, and being told that wasn’t enough. I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t caring and supportive enough. I wasn’t doing enough.  The people who were closest to me told me to break myself further for this kid who wasn’t going to make any effort to save herself.

My friends reminded me that I had to care for myself in order to help others and if Drama Llama couldn’t figure out how to save herself after I shown her how, then maybe she needed to fall and figure out how to pick herself back up again without my assistance.

The Birth Of Victoria

That’s when I realized that Drama Llama does—and always done since she was tiny-tiny—this thing where she creates villains so she can rise above them and look like a hero. She makes villains out of most people who stand beside her long enough, anyone who tells her no or doesn’t give her what she wants. She’s nice enough to their face, but she’ll turn people against them in a heartbeat to get… I don’t know, new shoes and clothes, new widgets, the brand-named food she wants, getting out of chores. Whatever.

But that’s also how she thrives. Her grades improve when she has a villain who she rise against. I mean, a healthy villain. There’s a line there that shouldn’t be crossed, but she needs someone she can crawl over to be better than.

As I studied those around me, I realized she’s not the only one. We’re creating generations of people who haven’t had to deal with certain types of hardships. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying the world isn’t violent. What I’m saying is that we have generations who have spent a lot more time being virtual heroes than IRL people. They see certain values in themselves that don’t translate the same in the real world and it’s frustrating them. And they’re being shown that the only way to matter is to be someone big. Small people are NPCs, and you can kill them without thinking about it.

These are very broad generalizations. There are unicorns everywhere that don’t fit this mold. I have unicorns in my house, too. However, the realization I made is that…

Not all villains are horrible. They’re simply necessary.

Victoria had come into being almost a year before any of this had happened, but I’d only seen her through October’s eyes. I saw this formidable woman who would do whatever it took to get the job done, even if that meant crossing a few lines. October has a Protagonist personality type, and her ideals are pretty high and mean a lot to her. That’s part of her struggle and her character arc. She doesn’t meet her own standard.

But through this interaction with Drama Llama, I realized that maybe Victoria wasn’t evil. Maybe she was simply necessary.

Crafting A Woman I Am Not

Thanks to my studies with Real Indie Author and my work with other authors, I was able to delve into a personality types I’ve never successfully written before. I’d tried. OMG. I’d tried. I write natural introverts, not extroverts. Extroverts experience the world through people. I experience the world inside my head. So, the entire narrative had to shift. I had to learn how to write through people outside of my control.

I learned a lot, like how I’m not nearly as a great a reader-of-people as I’d thought. I have triggered responses to micro-reactions, but I’m not necessarily reading people.

The other part of Victoria that is wildly outside of my wheelhouse is her strength and confidence. Because she’s an outside-in person, when something happens that she doesn’t like, she reacts. She’s the type of person who thinks before she speaks, but she does speak.

Like when Wendell burst into her office, she kicks him out. He’s her boss, and she has the strength to draw the boundary and have it respected. When he comes back in, I love-love-love this exchange:

He waited for the door to close and ran his hand through his hair apologetically. “I get so excited, I forget.”

“Imagine if everyone did that.” Victoria folded her hands on top of her yellow business skirt and waited. “Especially to the men in this office.”

“That’s so uncalled for. You know I respect you and all the women here.”

“I know you say you do.” She leaned forward. “What are you really here for?”

She’s not in his face about it. She just states the truth out loud and then moves on, allowing him to chew on it in his own time.

The Blooming Of A Villain

I’m a pantzing plotter, which is an odd mix, but this story has no plotting. I have no idea how we’re getting to the finish line. I know where we’re going, but I have no clue how we’re getting there. I have the handful of details I have to maintain that were published already in October Eclipse, but outside of that?

I’m enjoying living in the skin of this amazing, formidable, challenging woman who is making a visceral impact to the world around her, and I can’t wait to see her through new eyes as I continue October’s story. I know where she’s going in her future, and I think experiencing this story is going to be wildly more impactful.

Victoria is a woman I aspire to be more like. I hope I do her service.