How to Write Killer Prose (14)

Being Villanelle

           

We often talk about 'identifying' with a character, but what does that really mean? Does it mean temporarily becoming that character? Living in their skin? Looking through their eyes? Is this what we really do when we attach to a fictional being? Is this what we ask and expect of our readers? As writers, we absolutely need to have this straight in our minds. We're story-tellers, obviously. But story-telling isn't the whole story. We can present imaginary characters and worlds, and if we do that well, people will enjoy it. They will suspend disbelief, and hopefully 'identify' in the way I've described above.

            If you can do this, brilliant. But it's possible to do more, to push your readers' identification to the next level, and to achieve that you have to become someone you might not quite recognise in the mirror. You have to split yourself into two different creative beings. One is passionate and instinct-driven, ready to take joyous imaginative leaps. The other is icy, forensic and manipulative. You have to become like a spy, or more accurately like an agent runner: empathetic on the surface, but always questioning, always probing. You have to raise your shadow side, because it is your reader's shadow side that you will be engaging with.

            I'm sure most of us, on meeting someone foxy, charismatic, gorgeous etcetera, have had the experience of asking ourselves the following question. Am I sexually and psychically attracted to this person, or do I actually want to be this person? It's a question that can be difficult to answer, so let's look closer. If the former, it suggests that you want to be with them - talking, kissing, having sex, watching movies, eating thin-crust pizza - and for the two of you to remain essentially distinct people. If the latter, it suggests that you see something in the other person which you need and want as part of yourself. You don't want the other person to be separate from you, you want them to be part of you, and you to be part of them.

            OK, running with this idea. As a writer creating a character like Villanelle, you have to draw a similar distinction. Am I going to create a character that my readers are going to be straight-up attracted to? So that they move alongside her on her journey, being amused, aroused and appalled en route? Is that the identification you're looking for? Maybe it is, and most readers and writers would consider that a pretty good deal. But it's not, as it were, the full Monty. You're offering an experience which, while entertaining, is only skin-deep, and is going to be displaced in your reader's consciousness by the next diverting thing to come along.

            In life, the realisation that you're not so much attracted to someone as wanting to be them is a red flag: this thing, this relationship, is probably not going to work. But as an author, that's exactly the kind of vibe you're looking for. If you're a detached and appreciative spectator of Villanelle and her adventures that's great, but I might not be reaching you in the way I want to. What I'm really hoping is that there's a Villanelle-shaped gap in your life. That the exhausting business of living - of getting through the day, the week, the month - has chipped away at the wild, vengeful, greedy and sexually voracious you, and that although you don't want to derail your entire existance, or indeed change any part of it, you miss that aspect of yourself, and want it back in another form.

            That's what next-level identification offers. It's not a gendered process; Villanelle's characteristics are not female-specific. It's about taking what you want from the text, and reshaping Villanelle's mayhem to fit your own psychic and imaginative needs. From the contact I've had with Killing Eve readers, I know that they're brilliantly adept at this.

            So when you're reading Killing Eve, I don't want you to desire Villanelle, so much as to be her, to dissolve her into yourself. For as long as you're reading, I want her to complete you. To lend you her strength, her voraciousness, her utter lack of restraint, and return to you that glorious, terrible part of yourself - the shadow side - that life has taken away. That's the identification I want you to feel.

            Writers, that's your challenge. Perhaps think about it like this: although your readers live very different lives from yours, there's a good chance that, deep down, you've got plenty in common. When you're creating your characters, identify and interrogate your own shadow side. Find the secret part of you that life encourages you to suppress. That's the gold seam. Mine it.