Regency Villain? http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/historical-fiction/threads/48412 phantomlover17 Anyone got any good ideas for a villain? I am writing a regency era novel and need a good Villain, which is one thing i can’t seem to come up with? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Mon, 26 Dec 2011 02:24:50 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/historical-fiction/threads/48412?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1000570 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/historical-fiction/threads/48412?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1000570 Lady_Indis_Dress In the Regency period you can do all kinds of things with a villain. He can be a despoiler of women, a cut-purse, a murderer, an embezzler, a spy, an enemy soldier. He should be a liar above all, and the better he is at it, the more effective he'll be. A double life could help, and would certainly make it harder to pin his misdeeds on him. You can have your villain be perfectly fashionable, or appear hopelessly out of date and harmless. Age is negotiable. Wealth can give a man more opportunities for evil-doing but isn't completely necessary. A villain can be anything or anyone. But he must be intelligent, otherwise he'll get caught too soon and the plot will be over. He could also be not so much outright evil as entirely self-interested. If making money is the most important thing in the world to him, it will hardly bother him if he destroys a few lives in the process. Any of this helpful? Mon, 26 Dec 2011 22:19:12 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/historical-fiction/threads/48412?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1001800 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/historical-fiction/threads/48412?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1001800 thecandiedmango Does it have to be a male villain? I started a Regency romance that turned into a murder mystery in which the villain is a (formerly) well-to-do matron who <em>might</em> be a budding serial killer. Her primary motive was to help her family become wealthy by removing potential competition for inheritance/marriage, but it gets a little out of hand. The first concern, in my opinion, is what you need your villain to do. Kill someone? Provide romantic competition? Treason against the monarchy? Steal stuff? ...lots of other stuff. From that action you can ponder motives. Murder: jealousy, needs to cover up a scandal, get competition out of the way, wants to be first in line for an inheritance, is severely mentally unstable, SCIENCE!, etc. Romantic competition: needs money and wants to marry into wealth, etc. Treason: genuinely dislikes the government, is being coerced, needs money Thievery: so many reasons. SO MANY. I think the bottom line is that your villain should do THINGS for REASONS that suit their character, rather than creating a character that does things to suit the story. Two podcasts that I recommend for story mechanics are Writing Excuses and StoryWonk Daily. They're both very good at discussing writing techniques and structure without binding things to a specific genre. Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:19:58 +0000 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/historical-fiction/threads/48412?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1105622 http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/historical-fiction/threads/48412?page=1#forum_thread_comment_1105622