Choosing the perfect villain

Your old villain quit over creative differences, so you've put yourself in charge of hiring a new villain for your novel. What questions do you ask? What does the new villain's resume say? Write this scene as if it were a job interview.
Source

Okay now that we've put you through the wringer, so to speak, hahaha, do you have any questions for us before we pack up for the day? The recruiter should reach out to you in a couple of days, we have one or two more interviews this week and we'll be all set.



Could you tell me more about the last person in the job, and why they quit?

Sure, sure of course! So we had a classic mythological monster evil person sort of situation, you know the type, and since the novel was situated in Kathmandu, and it's also their place of origin, we thought they'd be most culturally suited for the role. They would be the most identifiable to the readers and be able to reflect the culture's concerns and uhh you know deepest fears. So that's how we started out.

As the novel grew, it evolved into a sort of piece where they were doing all the evil things to get ahead career-wise within the novel, but the marionette they had chosen to manifest themselves through, we discover they're quite bloodthirsty themselves. The...the fall guy so to speak, the human who was supposed to have been a normal guy who's put through intensely traumatic event was supposed to have bad things happen to them as a result of the stress and be forever affected. As it turned out, they began enjoying the evil tasks right through them, didn't even have the good manners to wait until the controlling master was gone before fully manifesting out that side of them. And started committed evil tasks on the side, with no prompting or guidance whatever. So from the reader's point of view, this human who they were maybe supposed to identify with turns out to be the real villain you know. Because a mythological monster you can tell by looking at them they're evil, it's expected out of them. But an innocent young man who's a loser and doesn't have much else happening... well maybe you do expect them to do...uh other evil things but not necessarily be a serial killer and murder people for fun. Which is what happened. So they turned out to become the true villain of the story. Our original mythological monster was not happy with that, not okay with living a side role and asked for a renegotiation but where we were in the story that was unlikely to work out. We asked them to wait at least until the next novel but they said they had other offers on hand and quit.


I see, so would my position be on the side, and I wouldn't be the main villain of the novel?

Great, that's another great question, you're doing great keep those coming. I can see that you're starting to see yourself in the position and care about being proactive about it. So with regards to if you would be the main villain or not, since the original person in this position quit, the story has taken a different turn. As I told you earlier, the protagonist sort of took the role of the villain. But now we still want to humanise them, sort of a flawed hero situation, and show that while humans can be evil in a boring sense of the word, the supernatural creatures around can be much more evil. SO we're thinking torture, blackmail murder of near and dear ones. A punishment of sorts for the evil acts commited, if you will. Of course, your ultimate goal will be much larger and complicated but that's where we'll be starting off from.


Okay, that's great to know, yeah since I'm just starting out in the industry was hoping to find that perfect role that takes me to the next stage and it seems like this could be it! Another queston, do you think this is going to be a one-off thing or is there a possibility of a sequel?

Excellent question! SO we are aware that this is the era of sequels. But to put resources into a sequel you have to make sure the first work is a big hit, so I'd say a lot of that depends on you and how much potential you show for future works. If we can successfully titiliate the readers and give them a taste of horror and comeuppance then I'd say at least two or three sequels following. And we could change worlds and go into the monster realm and that'd be its own thing so I could imagine a whole long arc happening. Sooo. Yeah!


Great, I've been asking you a lot of questions, and this is going to be the last one. So how do you foresee my role evolving. I ask because you mentioned the person in the earlier role and how he became more of a sympathetic and less villainous as the story evolved. DO you foresee something here too?

No, no worries these have been really revealing questions, impressive really. As I've alluded to earlier, no, this villain is not going to go mellow as things go on, rather we're thinking of just escalating things, taking them to higher demonic realms and turn this into a horror story completely. So no, that wouldn't have to be a concern.