2 Crime authors and their villainous creations
Throughout the ages a popular genre of fiction has related to crime, and particularly in Britain there has long been a lot of interest in detective stories, as Andrew Marr suggests in this excerpt from the BBC OU co-production, Paperback fiction, Sleuths, Spies and Sorcerers.
Transcript
Activity 2 What makes a good crime drama?
In the video you have just watched, Andrew Marr suggests that such novels are a storytelling machine. What do you see as being the central elements of that machine or what is it about these stories that keeps you reading? For instance, an antagonist who has redeeming features, an intriguing setting, or a side-kick who provides comic relief might appear in some stories. Are there particular things that you feel could make a good detective story even better?
While many different genres of fiction will include villainous characters, crime fiction is a genre in which villains are often central to driving the narrative of the book, or even a whole series of books. In the following sections you will meet several crime writers who will tell you about how they created villains in the books that they have written. After you have watched the videos in which the authors outline their different approaches you will be asked about the different approaches of the authors.
These interviews were recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, and so were recorded over video conferencing.
As you watch the videos make a note of anything that strikes you as interesting.