She visited the Philippines a number of times when her father served in the Peace Corps in Mindanao. She especially enjoyed traveling around the beautiful countryside, and fondly remembers the graciousness, creativity, and generosity of the Filipino people.

A consultant, speaker, and award-winning producer/director, Pamela Jaye Smith has over 30 years experience in features, TV, music videos, commercials, documentaries, corporate and military films, and games.

Smith is the author of “The Power of the Dark Side,’’ “Inner Drives,’’ ‘’Beyond the Hero’s Journey’’ and coming in 2010, “Symbols and Images: The Secret Language of Meaning in Media.’’

In this interview with Students and Campuses Bulletin, Pamela shares with us the tips and techniques that can transform static story characters into the most evilly exciting and enticing literary bullies, bastards and blackguards.

STUDENTS AND CAMPUSES BULLETIN (SCB): What should a teen writer know about crafting bad guys or anti-heroes?

PAMELA JAYE SMITH (PJS): The best baddies will be complex and will change during the course of the story. Here are some pointers:

1. Complexity. Unlike the unusual phenomenon of The Joker in “The Dark Knight’’ or “The Terminator,’’ both of whom only wanted chaos or destruction, the most fascinating villains are complex, like Hannibal Lecter or Michael Corleone of The Godfather.

Give the reader some hint of the villain’s world-view and how it affects their actions. What’s their religion or philosophy?

Were they born bad? If not, how did they get that way? Even if you don’t go into great detail, knowing that back story helps you write richer dialogue and come up with actions that have more integrity to that character.

Somewhere in your story, we need to learn what it is the villain truly, deeply wants - and why. You can have the villainess state it herself or someone else can reveal it to the hero. Which one you choose will depend on how much suspense you need to build up before revealing it to the hero.

Sometimes it’s more suspenseful to have the reader know before the hero knows; sometimes the impact is greater when we both get the revelation at the same time. Mostly it depends on the pacing of your story. A slower paced story can have the audience get the info before the hero; in a faster paced story we typically all get the information simultaneously.

2. Villains change over the course of the story. Sometimes the baddie gets deeper into the dark side, other times they repent and are redeemed.

One of my favorite ever-changing bad guys is Spike from the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer’’ TV series. He’s a vampire, then he gets a transplant that won’t let him hurt humans, then he falls in love with Buffy.

In the classic film noir “Double Indemnity,’’ Fred MacMurray gets lured into the dark side by the sexy Barbara Stanwyck. It starts out with sexual attraction and ends up with murder. The same plot-line plays out in the ‘80s hit “Body Heat.’’

GOOD GUY/ BAD GIRL

SCB: Anti-heroes is also a very interesting category. What are the things to keep in mind when creating an anti-hero?

PJS: Anti-heroes typically arise from over-regulated, corrupt, declining societies. They uphold the true ideal which the rest of society now just mocks or ignores. Anti-heroes often arise in apocalyptic, sci-fi, and action-adventure settings: Mad Max, Road Warrior, Thunderdome, Waterworld, and The Fifth Element. One of the best is the swashbuckling yet sensitive Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) in The Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

Then there are somewhat bad people who kill evil people to save others, like the scruffy Catholic twins in Boondock Saints assassinating murderous mafia guys, or outlaw Vin Diesel slaying evil necromongers out to take over the universe in Chronicles of Riddick.

SCB: What kind of research should a beginning writer do to craft a truly great villain’s character?

PJS: Read. My books “The Power of the Dark Side’’ and “Inner Drives’’ offer suggestions on how to specifically research different character types and how to get under-the-skin of a particular portrayal. My suggestions generally fall into four categories:

1. Read about it. For instance, if your villain is a corrupt policeman then read up on high profile court cases and investigative journalism reports as well as fiction and non-fiction books about it [Joseph Wambaugh’s novels and Dr. Philip Zimbardo’s books and famous experiments].

2. Watch the media. See the films Prince of the City, Internal Affairs, LA Confidential, the Bad Lieutenant, and Training Day. Also see the TV series Hill Street Blues, The Wire, and The Shield.

3. Interviews. Interview in person, on the phone, or via email someone in the police force, a professional journalist, or a sociologist who specializes in that field. Get them to describe the worst police people they knew or knew about. Ask them about motivations, how best to go up against someone like that, et cetera.

4. Experience it. If possible, spend a day and a night in a police station watching what happens. Also, see if you can do a “ride along” or “walk along” and accompany an officer on their rounds as a media observer. Take lots of notes on their styles of speech, special phrases and jargon, how they react in different situations, and how people react to them.

Use all the information and insights you gather to make your settings, your villain, their dialogue and actions, their motives and their means as realistic as possible. Don’t be afraid to exaggerate from the truths that you learn in your research. By definition, art is an exaggeration of real life.

SCB: What are the characteristics that a bad girl/bad guy should have in a story to make it a compelling read?

PJS: 1. Complexity and reflection.

When a bad girl/bad guy has a complex personality and internal conflicts they are ever so much more interesting. Where are they alike? Where are they direct opposites?

Typically there is some issue of pain that is behind a bad guy’s actions. Who hurt them? Did life in general disappoint them? Were they abused as a child? Were they spoiled? What do they think of others in the same situations? Do they feel pity or are they indifferent? A few scenes or lines of dialogue to reveal these aspects of your villain will go a long way towards creating a complex, interesting character.

2. It is very effective if the villain can reflect some aspect of the heroine.

The villain’s goal should be something that endangers the heroine on at least two of these levels: physically, emotionally, professionally, romantically, her family circle, her friends, her environment (town, countryside, planet), or spiritually (a crisis of faith, needing to do evil herself to prevent
evil being done to others).

One reason we find villains compelling is that they often personify our own internal rebel, the one we aren’t courageous enough to be. They challenge our standards and beliefs about proper behavior. Think about the iconic cover art for romance novels: the pirate guy with the mainstream girl. It’s that old attraction-of-opposites.

Also, villains give your heroes a chance to be saviors: our good heroine will redeem the misguided villain.

SCB: How different is characterization for building a male villain as against a female villain?

PJS: Generally speaking their drives are different, their motives are different, and their means are different. Not that both genders can’t also manifest the typical aspects of the other gender.

Typically males will be more direct, more physically forceful, and less emotionally involved. Conversely, females will typically be more devious, will use more subtle weapons (e.g., poison versus a gun), and may be emotionally expressive before, during, and after their acts of villainy.

Then you have all the exciting exceptions to these rules where female villains wreak amazing physical havoc (Lucy Liu in “Kill Bill’’) and male villains are astonishingly subtle and devious (John Malkovich in “Dangerous Liaisons’’)

A male villain may be more inclined to brag about his exploits with no thought for what others may think. The female villain may be more inclined to explain herself to others in order to get their approval, or at least their understanding.

But again, playing against those ordinary-life stereotypes can create fascinating and really scary villains of either gender and every variation in between.

HOW VILLAINS GET THEIR NAMES

SCB: Is there such a thing as building empathy for a villain in a story for a writer to look into? Or does the villain have to be really a hateful character?

PJS: Sometimes no, sometimes yes - it depends on the theme and type of your story.

No, if your story is a “battling demons’’ theme or a horror theme then you do not need empathy for the villain as they are typically a non-human, non-reasoning, non-emotional thing, machine, or creature. There is no aspect for the heroine to interact with other than physically, so there’s no need for empathy. This is typical of action-adventure and horror-thriller genre stories. “Alien’’ and “Terminator’’ are these types. Just make your villains as scary and hateful as possible and we’ll love that.

Yes, if you have any other type or style of story it is generally much more effective and dramatic if we have some empathy, however slight, for the villain. We should define empathy as understanding… we may not agree with what they do or why they do it but we understand it.

Your audience wants to know why the villains do the things they do. What turns faithful spouses into adulterers, honest people into thieves, and innocent babies into mass murderers?

What is it in your character’s past that haunts their present? A dead wife like in Lethal Weapon? A failed rescue like in The Guardian? A mother’s tragedy over the loss of a child like in Sophie’s Choice? Though these were the protagonists, the same type of thing can certainly apply to your antagonists. Just think of the injury that scarred the Phantom of the Opera.

Everybody has something they regret doing, or something they dearly wish had not happened. To increase suspense, reveal this motivation slowly throughout the story, and be sure it fits. Losing a kitten isn’t likely to create a serial killer; losing a mother might. What will bring balance and peace for your character? Do they accept it when offered? Or are they so identified with their suffering they refuse to let it go?

In “The Dark Knight,’’ The Joker made fun of our tendency to search for some traumatic event behind a villain’s behavior, but that only worked because we typically do search for the reasons why.

AMAZING VILLAINS

SCB: Are there special devices to come up with a really cool villain nickname or alias?

PJS: An effective and much-used device is to go with a foreign language name that describes what the villain does or a characteristic he embodies. In the “Star Wars’’ sagas for instance, Darth Vader is a Teutonic variation on Dark Father. An evil duke in the “Dune’’ stories is named Fenring, which is based on wolf in Old Norse. The Orcs in “Lord of the Rings’’ were named after Orcus the Roman god of Death. In the first “Battlestar Galactica’’ series of the ‘80s, the evil Count of the Cylons was named Iblis, an Arabic word for the devil.

I have a Dictionary of 26 Languages that gives simultaneous translations so I can look up a word and find 25 other versions of it in other languages and select what sounds best for that character in that story. For instance, when recently consulting for a new character for a games company, we used a Hungarian version of a word that described what the heroine did.

SCB: Who are your favorite villains in myth, literature and in the movies?

PJS: Myths give us some amazing villains. In some traditions, Lucifer and the other angels were to serve God, then God created humans and demanded angels serve mankind. This demotion rankled, and Lucifer refused to turn from his first love to serve the puny usurpers. Harsh words flew and war in heaven ensued.

Some hold that Lucifer (which means “light bringer”) is the good guy bringing humanity knowledge and freedom via higher consciousness, while God and his angels suppress us with ignorance and fear via organized religion. Philip Pullman’s trilogy of novels His Dark Materials follows this idea; the movie “The Golden Compass’’ was made from the first book in that series.

In literature, the writer has the opportunity to create villains of great depth and complexity. The tragic villain and villainess of “Dangerous Liaisons’’ are very well-drawn complex characters for whom you manage to feel some sympathy even as you loathe their actions. Briony in “Atonement’’ is a complex bad girl because she is in denial about her bad deeds and convinces herself she is right even as she knows she is wrong.

Movie villains need to be very well crafted since the time allotted is so short, but TV series offer the luxury of more time for character development. Any time Alan Rickman plays a bad guy, I love it. He’s a fabulous actor and brings real richness to all the characters he portrays, be it “Die Hard,’’ “Prince of Thieves’’ “Dogma’’ or when he’s a good guy as in “Love Actually.’’

SCB: Please tell us more about your writing projects.

PJS: Thank you for asking. Currently I’m working on a third book for my publishers, Michael Wiese Productions. “Symbols and Images: The Secret Language of Meaning in Media’’ will be out in 2010 and is meant for writers, directors, and designers.

Like many writers, I’m also working on a couple of novels, one an espionage drama set in Singapore and the other a speculative fiction adventure series set around the world - with the first one taking place in the Philippines. With co-writer Monty Hayes McMillan I’m marketing our screenplay, “The Cuban Circuit’’ set in Havana in 1948.

Visit Pamela’s websites for updates on events, classes, books, and specials. www.mythworks.net, http://innerdrives.webs.com.