The Villain's Story
W hat is a story? There are several different ways to look at a story. How we perceive a story helps us to set our goals when writing a story. One way to look at a story is as the actions of the villain as told by the lead . We often think of the story as being the lead’s story, but when we consider how much of the lead’s life we ignore we might question that. However, when we look at it as the villain’s story it begins to make sense. Look at the story of Cinderella for example. Her father is gone. It isn’t clear why. The storyteller may throw some reason in there, but it doesn’t really matter why he is gone and yet that would have been a very important event in Cinderella’s life. The reason we don’t put much emphasis on that event is because it has very little to do with the story we’re telling. Stories are about disturbances in the lead’s life, so that’s why it becomes the villain’s story as told by the lead. If we take all the stuff that villains do to a particular person and bind ...