2.2 Lin Anderson

Yeah, how do I create a baddie and how do they emerge in my imagination? I don’t normally pre-plan the villain. I come to a realisation of who the villain is via the evidence of the crime that’s been committed. As this is examined, a picture builds up of the character who may have committed the crime.

On occasion, I’ve had the perpetrator’s point of view running through a book as in Sins of the Dead and Follow the Dead. This was very interesting to do as they evolved, as I wrote, just as your protagonist does. Character is shown by what we do in the circumstances that we are presented with.

None of us know what we are capable of until we are put in difficult and sometimes terrifying situations. My favourite quote here about that was from a former principal at Napier University. Come to speak to the school I was teaching at. And she said, a woman is like a tea bag. You don’t know her strength until you put her in hot water.

So in terms of Rhona McLeod, my protagonist, I always try and remember that. And then I learn something new about her. I think the same is for your villains.