Yeah, my secret’s out of the bag, I can’t really think of anything to blog about this month using my own words, especially with humor. So, I’ve taken parts of blogs and an article from other writers.
#DONALD #MAASS
(Taken from): http://maassagency.com/
Acting in ways honest and human is what psychologists—and literary critics—call being authentic.
Realism is necessary in order for readers to participate in a character’s story, experiencing it “as if” it is their own experience. By contrast, poor motivation and forced actions create stories that aren’t believable…what WU contributor David Corbett calls Plot Puppets—may obey their authors and fulfill the requirements of plot but do not connect with readers.
Stories impose on characters’ problems beyond the ordinary and complications more plentiful than we readers endure even on our worst days. Protagonists must make mistakes, do wrong, be shadowed by past shames, and have flaws to overcome. Where we may avoid our own ugliness, protagonists must face it.
(Taken from): https://www.standoutbooks.com/doubling-doppelgangers/
A storytelling tool as old as time, the doppelgänger is a literal double of a character. They fulfil the same societal niche, they often look the same, and something about that makes them a dire threat.
In fiction, the doppelgänger is a double so exact that they draw a character’s individuality – even the validity of their soul – into question. The most famous use of the doppelgänger is probably from Dostoyevsky’s The Double, but this device occurs in more fiction than you might think.
In doing so, the doppelgänger reveals their double as a fraud and, fulfilling their purpose better than the original, slowly begins to take a character’s place in the world. This might sound incredibly specific, but it doesn’t take a lot for us to see someone as a better version of us, and the doppelgänger appears in everything from horror and high drama to sci-fi and comedy.
#KATHLEE #McAULIFFE
(Taken from):This Is Your Brain on Parasites
https://www.livescience.com/55447-book-excerpt-this-is-your-brain-on-parasites.html
Visceral disgust—that part of you that wants to scream ‘Yuck!’ when you see an overflowing toilet or think about eating cockroaches—typically engages the anterior insula, an ancient part of the brain that governs the vomiting response. Yet the very same part of the brain also fires up in revulsion when subjects are outraged by the cruel or unjust treatment of others. That’s not to say that visceral and moral disgust perfectly overlap in the brain, but they use enough of the same circuitry that the feelings they evoke can sometimes bleed together, warping judgment.
Psychopaths—whose ranks swell with remorseless cold-blooded killers—are notorious for their lack of empathy, and they typically have smaller than normal amygdalae and insulae, along with other areas involved in the processing of emotion. Psychopaths are also less bothered than most people by foul odors, feces, and bodily fluids, tolerating them—as one scientific article put it—with equanimity.
Interestingly, women rarely become psychopaths…
#JASON #EVANS
(Taken from): Writing Great Villains
https://rmfw.org/writing-great-villains/
(A) weakness equalizes the villain and protagonist…It doesn’t matter that Superman is faster and stronger, has heat vision and can fly. Superman, as smart as he is, isn’t smarter than Lex.
Give your villain power your protagonist doesn’t have.
A good villain must be more powerful than the protagonist. Sauron is always going to be more powerful than Frodo and Sam. It brings tension to the story when our plucky hero has to face someone they shouldn’t be able to defeat. But how can you establish this without making the hero look like a weakling or the villain like an unstoppable force?
You change the type of power the villain wields.