This is a question I ask myself every time I start a new novel. Giving reasons to a character for their behavior can be complicated. As the author, I need to justify why any of them do the things they do. But when they’re a louse, it needs to be double-justified. “Just because” doesn’t cut it. So bad guys can be tough.
And then there’s the fact that usually in each book the villain is new. It’s not a familiar character. Arriving at the who, what, and why often takes time and can be a problem. So I try to be methodical and logical. First I start with the dastardly thing I need them to do for the story. Kidnapping? Extortion? Theft? Murder? All of the above? When they are rotten to the core, I have them extend their evil intent to an animal. I DO NOT, however, allow any negative actions done to any animal in my books. It is intent only. I write Cozies. And this is one of the reasons why.
In Death Runs in the Family, Book 3 of the Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries, I have the villain catnap Baba and Tugger (the two cats belonging to Lee, the protagonist), with the threat of harming them if Lee doesn’t stop her investigation. This may have worked well for the book, but it did not work well for me.
I was interrupted by an urgent family matter and had to stop writing for three days directly after the villain put the cata in the back of a station wagon and started her journey to Las Vegas. I woke up in the middle of the night several days later distraught about these cats having no food or water for all that time. It didn’t matter they were fictional. It didn’t matter I was dog-tired. Excuse me, cat-tired. I leapt out of bed with a “No, no, no, no, no. I can’t stand it!” A shocked husband demanded to know what was wrong. I told him I had to rescue the cats NOW or I would never get back to sleep. Knowing me after decades of marriage, he merely nodded, rolled over, and started snoring again.
I sat down at the keyboard and for the next seven hours typed my heart out, only stopping now and then to stretch my legs and have more coffee. The storyline continued with Lee finding out where the station wagon was going by the microchips embedded in the cats (modern science can be a glorious thing). Lee then flew to Las Vegas to coincide with the arrival of the station wagon. Once there, she was joined by a fellow investigator. Together they rescued the cats from the back of the parked wagon while said villain was in a casino whooping it up. By now I hated this scumbag.
As it had only been a matter of hours in fictional time and not an actual three days, the cats were not starving or dying of thirst, but merely scared half to death. Thus, once Lee and the cats were reunited, there was a lot of hugging and purring. Then food and water for the felines and pizza for the protagonist. Peperoni. As Tugger and Baba were alright, Lee could concentrate on capturing this monster who not only catnapped her pets but, coincidentally, murdered somebody.
Did I forget to mention that? Anyway, by now this had become a very personal issue for Lee. Steal and threaten to hurt my cats, will ya? There is nothing like a hopping mad protagonist determined to bring a villain to justice to move a story along.
Back to me and that event. Late that morning, after I was satisfied that everyone in the story (except the villain) were happy, I went back to sleep. But I learned a valuable lesson. All my characters live in my head 24/7. I need to remember that. I need to be careful. I can only have my villains do so much before I start paying for it. They are part of my being. And for the record, this villain, a young woman in her mid-twenties, had all kinds of reasons for behaving the way she did. I wound up feeling sorry for her. But that didn’t stop me from putting her in prison for a very long time. After all, murder is murder.
Ladies of Mystery 