{"id":7118,"date":"2020-03-13T08:12:22","date_gmt":"2020-03-13T12:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/?p=7118"},"modified":"2020-03-12T22:14:21","modified_gmt":"2020-03-13T02:14:21","slug":"im-not-a-monster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/im-not-a-monster\/","title":{"rendered":"“I’m Not a Monster”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The conventional definitions of the words show us what distinguishes a monster from a villain. A monster is a frightening and destructive creature, while a villain is a person who commits evil deeds.<\/p>\n

They both have their place in fiction. Just don’t mix them up. If your hero really needs a villain to oppose, but you provide a monster and\u00a0call<\/em> it a villain, there will be imbalance. Remember, the villain is the hero of their own story. Another way to think of it is that a villain is an actual character, with a complex interior state. Good villains have a powerful drive, and are capable of emotions besides inchoate rage and savage glee. But, let’s give the monsters their due. A powerful and relentless foe, something that doesn’t need a reason to want the hero dead, can create a lot of tension if properly cast.<\/p>\n

Enough with the theoretical stuff. Why bring any of this up right now? So happy you asked!<\/p>\n

Our read-through of the Music Series is getting close to done. We just passed the middle of book three, and there are exactly three books in the series, so. Getting close!<\/p>\n

As we might have mentioned, we’re really pleased with the state of all of these books. One of the points of pride is that the adversaries take a variety of forms. There are villains, and there are monsters. There’s even a villain who repeatedly denies being a monster. (While demonstrating so eloquently that sometimes people can be both.)<\/p>\n

What type of adversary does your protagonist need? What kind of tension will keep your readers turning pages?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The conventional definitions of the words show us what distinguishes a monster from a villain. A monster is a frightening and destructive creature, while a villain is a person who commits evil deeds. They both have their place in fiction. Just don’t mix them up. If your hero really needs a villain to oppose, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[317],"tags":[289,484,290],"class_list":["post-7118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-characters-setting","tag-music-novel","tag-sibling-of-music-novel","tag-son-of-music-novel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7118"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7119,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7118\/revisions\/7119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runeskelley.com\/skelleyverse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}