Hi Folks,
Thought I might post this here and see if it’s of interest to anyone. I dashed it off in an hour after looking back on some of my old writing. It doesn’t have much to do with the ‘furry’ part of this forum, but it does tie in with the ‘writers’ aspect.
Feel free to cut me apart and criticise any and all things. This is more to get some discussion going than anything else.
If enough folks show interest perhaps we could start up a thread with short essays on the mechanics of writing and plot?
No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Die: Thoughts on The Bond Villain Speech
Why they do it, why it’s bad, and why I’ve done it as well
We’ve all seen it. The hero is captured by the villain, and the evil mastermind who until this point has been at least reasonably competent takes a good five minutes to explain – sometimes in excruciating detail complete with graphics, charts, and computer animation – their plan.
Why in all the gods’ names do they do it?
It’s most commonly noticed in Bond films, but it can be seen everywhere, in all genre that have Villains. Its even gotten bad enough the Pixar parodied it in their movie The Incredibles. “You sly dog, you caught me monologuing!”
So why does it happen? Why does a perfectly good Villain stop dead in their tracks, often when they have the hero in a vulnerable state, and explain their master plan?
The answer, sadly, is often quite obvious. Stories typically follow the hero. Heroes are fun, heroes make us feel good when we watch their trials and tribulations. Villains – as a general rule – aren’t nearly as fun to watch. Think of Star Wars. The vast majority of the film follows Luke, Leia, and Han. Sure we get cutaways to Vader, but he doesn’t get nearly as much screen time. There are two reasons for this. One, as above, the heroes are why we’re watching. But two, the Villains are often up to something, setting a trap or creating a doomsday weapon. Following them too closely would ruin the suspense.
This creates a problem. How do you flesh out a villain, make them evil and detestable enough to kill off at the end, if they’ve gotten a grand total of ten minutes screen time? This is especially troublesome as much of that time is often at the beginning of the film to help set up the conflict.
Well, there are two main ways. The better is to keep the villain front and center throughout the story. This can work well when your plot allows it, say the hero and antagonist being trapped in the room together. But many types of plots just can’t support that kind of interaction. Imagine what Star Wars would have been like of Luke never got more than fifty feet from Vader.
The next way is to give the hero – and the audience by extension – a conveniently timed plot dump. Hence why so many stories have a third act face-to-face between the two before the final battle. We can’t hate someone we don’t know, and neither can the hero. Let the villain capture them. That adds some suspense as much of the work done up until then is lost, and it gives the antagonist the opportunity to gloat and act like a (and this is a technical term) complete prick.
Done well it can be almost invisible. Part of the flow of the narrative, we only need to fill people in to the few finer points of the Villain’s plan that might be a bit hazy. Done poorly the audience doesn’t even know why the hero is fighting until the last act. It comes off as cheesy, as cheap, and just plain tacky.
I used to think poorly of the Bond Villain speech… right up until I started writing my own stories. Then I came to realize why people use it. It’s not that we’re being lazy (okay, perhaps a little bit) but it can be a real challenge to spoon feed the hero enough data over the course of the story to tie things up without a plot dump.
I’ll take two examples. One from my first story The Hunters, and one from an unreleased story We Don’t Just Fade Away. Spoilers are abound as we’re obviously talking about things that happen in the climax.
The Hunters was the first full length story I wrote, with all the good and bad (mostly bad) that entailed. The antagonist VanderHoom doesn’t even appear until the last quarter of the book, mostly because I hadn’t come up with him until then. Sure I knew the general thrust the story was going to end on, but I was mostly flying blind. VanderHoom materialized into existence the moment the main characters walked into that meeting room, something like a Schroedinger’s cat who’s state is undecided until you observe him.
So, now I’d come up with the final hurdle in the story. The hard part was explaining the genocide that the main characters had been fighting. Sure I knew why the evil businessman was killing people off by the hundreds, but the hero didn’t. And, more importantly, neither did the reader. I had less than fifty pages not only to write the climax, but also tie all the plot threads together.
So what did I do? Not one, but two Bond Villain speeches. Yep, I’m a pro.
The first speech came from the villain’s lips not seconds after he first appeared. A bit of a plot recap of what had happened so far, it mostly served to make him evil. He’s the bad guy and I wanted everyone to know it. It also helped me as the author. All my other major characters had a good half dozen chapters to ground themselves. VanderHoom needed to get set up, and fast. I took the easy way out.
His second speech came up not two pages before the end of the story. In a bit of a flip from most Bond Villain speeches, he was pleading for his life as the main character decided what to do with him. I’ll admit I regretted this one. It tied up all the plot threads, but it also pointed a light at a lot of the problems the main plot had, and my desperate last minute effort to explain them away. The only advantage to putting it so late in the story was to act as an unexpected sequel hook.
Now, on to a later story. We Don’t Just Fade Away was written more than a year after The Hunters. I hardly qualified as a master wordsmith, but I was head and shoulders beyond where I had been while writing my first book. WDJFA was an oddity for me, being my first story where every few chapters I slipped in a small section from the villain’s point of view. These were really, really hard to write. The whole premise of the story revolves around the family relationship between the antagonist and one of the heroes. Having to never quite spell it out was a true and honest pain.
And that was why I once again needed a villain speech. This time to set off some minor fireworks at the end of the story and put the final act into motion. The hero needed a reason to sacrifice himself. Finally revealing the last piece of the puzzle, how to break the curse, gives him the push he needs. While still not my finest hour, this is a case where I felt the villain speech works. There was a large piece of plot critical information I needed to get across to the reader in no uncertain terms. It changes the whole way the story is perceived, and in this case puts the villain in a surprisingly kinder light, rationalizing his actions. There’s no better way to get it out than from the villain’s own lips.
So, after that surprisingly long and rambling essay, what’s the takeaway? Long story short, Bond Villain speeches are generally bad things, signs that the writer is trying to patch holes that should have been addressed earlier in the story, but they do have their place. If you’re explaining a basic piece of the plot, especially something that gives the hero a reason to fight, then it’s likely better moved earlier to the story. If on the other hand you’re just filling in the cracks, or providing information that you were purposely withholding, it might be the right tool for the job.
Or, just possibly, I could be over thinking this!