M.L. Guida’s Friday Villains
Villains. You gotta love them. Star Wars would not exist without Darth Vader. His famous line—I am your father—has become legendary. Darth Vader had a motivation on why he performed such atrocities. He wasn’t evil just to be evil. He would have become a flat character.
The best villains all have a purpose that makes sense to them. It’s not just to kill for the sake of killing. Even Thomas Harding’s Buffalo Bill had a purpose of why he killed and skinned large women—he was making a woman’s suit because he’d been denied the transsexual operation. Gross, but motivating.
I’d like to explore other writer’s villains and the motivations on why they commit the atrocities that they do in their books. So, I’m going to start inviting other authors to my blog on the second and fourth Friday of every month.
This month, I will start with one of my favorite villains, Gryffin Drake, in my soon to be released novella, Dark Promise. Gryffin is a dragon demon and likes to torture creatures. Other demons fear him and he wants them to fear him. The other dragon demons are growing dark, including our hero, Eric Wyvern, because the Golden Tree is dying. Without the Tranquil Song of the Golden Tree, dragon demons turn to their savage nature.
However, Gryffin was dark before the tree started dying. He doesn’t want the tree to be healed because he wants to carry out his atrocities and to accomplish this he needs the tree to whither and die. The king listens to him and he is encouraging the king to conquer the other demon kingdoms and then attack Earth. He will have an abundance of victims to torture.
His goal is not to be king. He prefers to be in the shadows and perform his dark tortures. The hero threatens his position and Gryffin urges the king to allow him to torture his son to stop him from saving the tree.
Dark Promise is the first book of three where Gryffin will appear. (At least, I hope so.) He develops new and darker goals in the next two stories. One will be a novella and the other a full length book.
What kind of questions do you have about villains? Who are you favorite ones? I’d love to know so I can ask authors these questions.