I'm 10k words into my story and I'm a bit worried about this. A quick run down, My story starts with the antagonist deliberately crashing a school minibus, murdering all the boys on board and kidnapping the two girls (one of whom dies soon after). His motivation is purely to kidnap the girls and my idea has been that he is completely unfeeling towards boys but not girls. I feel the writing is going well, but the last couple of days I've been worrying that it seems a very convoluted way to kidnap two teenage school girls. I'm also worried about the motivations of my antagonist and whether they justify the crime; the idea being he murdered the boys to leave no witnesses as he has no empathy towards them. What do you guys think?
I tink it's more a matter of explaining... when commiting a crime the criminal goes either systematically about that, having a plan or e doesn't. Say he wants to kidnap the girls he's probably going to make a plan for that. Tha would include: - weighing the risks of doing so - weighing any risks while doing so Kidnapping an entire school bus is exceedingly high risk - school busses drive in public places and broad daylight, they have many stops and therefore a lot of possible witnesses not actually being in the bus. Crashing the bus to kill all witnesses inside is exceedingly high risk: a car crash can easily get out of hand, especially when it's supposed to be fatal for so many people... How would your villain ensure he isn't hurt? How would he ensure the girls aren't hurt or even killed? If I was to read it, I'd ask myself the following questions: - Could he have done it a different way? - If not: why not? If so: why did he do it this way? - What's the gain of all the risk? So I guess the trick in making this not over the top is to make it sound smewhat waterproof - it has to fit his character, his means and opportunities. Edit: if you'd make him delusional and the kidnapping a thing in the heat of moment, the success would be somewhat lucky for the villain, but it'd safe you the explaining
It's easy for people who lost a pet to be in denial and kidnap someone else's thinking that it's the same. Maybe he's insists on them being his dead daughters after supressing how he murdered and burried them. He's just taking them back and making them "remember their real father". More likely to get caught, but also easier to get away by showing photos and claiming an honest mistake or insanity. He would probably use internet to stalk them while pretending to be a silent classmate and get tailed by an undercover police after his first failed attempt. Then he has to kill the undercover police when confronted.
Wow some great ideas. Part of the plot is that he always wanted girls and has a son who he mistreats, but I love the idea that he has had daughters that have died. Maybe he didn't murder them, but maybe he was to blame for their deaths. Got me thinking, thank you!
Lacking empathy is not so much of a problem for me. But the problem is more his motivation and how realistic the incident is. What does he gain from killing the boys? Why did he want to kidnap the girls in the first place? Why crash the minibus just to kidnap two girls? There must be an easier way, I mean police, ambulance will all get in involved. There might even be an investigation into the cause of the crash. Would your villain want that kind of publicity?
These are my concerns. I think I've justified it by just having the antagonist as a complete psycho but that's seeming more and more like a cop out. I think I may need to scale it down to maybe a car crash that he causes or something similar.
I'll probably easier for you to get to his motivations in detail if you scale the plan down a bit. It could be done and not sound over te top, but it's very complicated and you'll have to be really in the detail with his mind for the reader to understand the plan and why he does it. If you simplifie it, it just may end up easier to understand his motvations and make for an even better story
Yes definitely. I'm now thinking there may have been a drop off for most of the kids so the kidnapping plan makes a lot more sense.
