09: Dan Wells: Monsters, Sociopaths, and Other Sympathetic Characters

Tonight Dan Wells told us about the secrets of creating sympathetic villains, heroic sociopaths, and many other things he learned as the author of I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER, MR. MONSTER, and the soon-to-be-released I DON'T WANT TO KILL YOU.

When he's not writing, Dan also co-hosts Writing Excuses, a weekly writing-advice podcast with Brandon Sanderson and Howard Tayler.

Among Dan's advice:

• A humorous sociopath with a lousy life who wants to be good will evoke reader's sympathies
• A good villain will be flashy and/or relatable and/or fascinating
• Villains need a believable goal--if they want to blow up the world, they'll be just as dead as everyone else if they accomplish it, so it might be a tough sell to your readers
• A villain can have a try-fail cycle, too--if you're careful

**Warning, this call contains spoilers for I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER**

As always, you can listen to the call here:


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Thanks to Dan and to everyone who called in!