One of the quirks of my fiction so far is that I've deliberately avoided writing villains. For one, I'm trying to world-build a place where aggression and banditry of all sorts are rare. For two, I find situations of man vs. nature or man vs. himself much more interesting, personally. I love writing about intelligent people faced with a difficult problem figuring out how to overcome and succeed, and I felt like those sorts of situations were better ways to introduce and develop characters, rather than having some obvious evil for them to rail against.
On the other hand, in the novel I'm writing right now, there is definitely a villain character. I felt like it was time. And, in spite of myself, I found myself having a lot of fun writing him. There's a wonderful extra layer that's unlocked when two characters have different bodies of knowledge, and they're both trying to prevent the other from learning anything new or useful while trying to pull something useful out of them. It's a fun dynamic.
I just finished the tenth chapter and I'm probably around one-third to one-half way through my first draft. Yes, I got sidetracked a bunch in the last couple of weeks and didn't make a whole lot of progress. But! It's always gratifying to come back and put some words on paper. Gotta try to remember that motivation.
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