On Parents and Evil Villains

It’s so easy to make someone seem worse than they are. It’s so much harder to make them better.

Like that quote? I just made it up. I’ll probably work on paring it down and making it more concise, but for now, the message stands. If you’re a writer, I assume you’ve written both good and bad characters. Which is easier? I’d much rather write a scene with a completely evil bad guy, instead of the good MC. It’s so hard to make a likeable MC, someone that pretty much every reader will identify with, and so much easier to create an evil villain.

I came up with the idea for this post this morning when my mom was giving me a slight talking-to. If I was writing that scene in a story it would be so easy to make my mom into a villain. I’d just need to use a couple well chosen words and my mom would seem like some monster who’s constantly nagging me to clean up my room and who’s paranoid that there’ll be drinking at a party this Friday and who doesn’t trust my driving. How many teen books have you read with parents like that?

The thing is, my mom isn’t at all like that. She’s not a nag. She’s not paranoid (at least, not more than any good mother should be) and she trusts my driving. She’s the best mom ever and I love her so much… but with words I could make her out to be something terrible without even exaggerating events (much).

 

That’s just a little scary, isn’t it? It’s so easy to give the wrong impression. And it’s so easy to be negative. When you write a story, how many evil/annoying characters do you have? Are the parents portrayed as paranoid and restricting? Are the ‘Mean Girls’ just another cliché clique? Is the bad guy a faceless evil?

The impression we get of your characters completely depends on the events that you decide to show. If I only told you about the times when my mom was annoyed with me then she’d come across as a nasty person, but I’d be skipping the 90% of the time when she puts up with me being annoying to her. To give a fair portrayal of my mom, I’d need to show her as loving and sympathetic most of the time, and whenever I showed her in a ‘worse’ light I’d have to explain that really, she’s probably justified in ‘nagging’ me to clean up my room.

If you have a Mean Girl in your story, why not try giving her one short scene where she does something nice for a change? Maybe your villain actually has a weak spot, or the evil stepmother turns out to love birds…

It’s your choice. Just remember that characters are more interesting when they’re not completely bad. 

Homeschooling Q&A

Throughout the years of I’ve had so many people ask me questions about homeschooling. It’s about time I answered these questions in public form. Please note that these are just my answers; other people may do things completely differently. Here’re a couple of the most common:

Do you do your school in your pyjamas? Believe it or not, this is the number one question from other kids. My answer is No. I don’t see what’s so appealing about the idea of doing school in my PJs. PJs are great but I find that I do my best work whenever I’m all dressed, hair done and completely awake. For some reason it’s easier to slack off when you’re wearing pyjamas.

One of my best friends (left)  and me (right)

Do you have friends? Right now, yes. I have so many amazing friends both here on PEI and in Ontario. The thing is, it hasn’t always been this way. Up to my teen years I didn’t have many friends and I was always trying to find a real ‘kindred spirit’ (to quote Anne of Green Gables). This is the problem of having a small homeschool group; there simply aren’t as many people to be friends with. That being said, our homeschool group is fairly small as homeschool groups go, and it's rapidly growing. My younger sisters and my friends in Ontario have no trouble finding friends in their homeschool groups.

My Mom (and teacher!) and me

Does it feel weird to have your parents teaching you? Well, no. That’s the way it’s always been.  My mom has been teaching me for as long as I can remember. By the time I hit junior high I was doing most of my schoolwork from textbooks, so I was actually teaching myself. It was a bit different to learn from professors in University but I didn’t find it hard to adjust (probably because all my professors are amazing.)

Do you think homeschooling prepared you for University? Definitely! Even though I’m just 17 I’m taking three second year courses and one third year and keeping up fairly well with all the work. I’m not saying this because I want you to think I’m some sort of super genius or something, because I’m certainly not. This is just proof that homeschoolers do well in University. All the work I did by myself in my highschool years prepared me for hours of study in Uni. Most of all, homeschooling taught me to love learning. I can honestly say I look forward to going to class every day.


Hopefully I'll be posting more of these Q&A sessions on future Saturdays. If you have questions of your own, please to post them in the comments. As for any fellow homeschoolers, feel free to elaborate on anything I've said. I'm interested to hear what you do differently.