Well, one day this nightmare employee left the store unattended to go hang out with her girlfriends in the food court.

And naturally, she was fired.

This nightmare ex-employee immediately blamed my friend for her being fired of course. It had nothing to do with the unattended cash register and wall-to-wall shelves of pocketable merchandise. In her fury, she decided to take her revenge against my friend like some honest-to-god supervillain.

The next day when my friend left for work, she discovered her car had been smothered in Crisco and frozen peas.

CRISCO AND FROZEN PEAS, PEOPLE.

In the middle of the night, this villain was down there gooping up her hands with fat fistfuls of Crisco, ripping bags and bags of frozen peas open with her teeth, and sprinkling them across the Crisco like confetti.

“MAUAHAHAHA I AM TOTALLY GOING TO SHOW HER. SHE’LL RUE THE DAY SHE EVER MESSED WITH ME.”

 That night we had our very own neighborhood Wiley Coyote with her ACME frozen produce, twirling her mustache.

And even crazier yet, this girl must have sat down and been like, “How can I get her back for wronging me? OH MY GOSH. I know what I’m going to do. But first I’m going to need a giant can of Crisco and four bags of frozen peas. TO THE ACME GROCER!”

(In my mind, everything this girl said or did was in all caps.)

A trip through the local car wash pretty much erased the lingering “Muahahahas” and we all laughed till we about peed ourselves. Best. Story. Ever.

The lesson here is that most villains are not Lex Luthor. They aren’t planners or schemers. They’re emotional heat-of-the-moment bad guys with a grudge or a greed. They want to hurt someone or they want to gain something, but mostly they’ve got about ten bucks in pocket change and a healthy fear of getting caught.

And that’s ok. Not all villains are out to destroy the world or take over the moon or organize a new interstellar slave trade or become Emperor of The Universe for Always Times Infinity*. Sometimes they just want to get revenge on someone who made them feel bad about themselves or fulfill some need that has otherwise eluded them.

As the Crisco and peas girl taught us, sometimes the more emotional the villain’s motivations, the better the story.

*Besides, this is my title.

It seemed important to him that he waited for us and I’m very grateful. I wish we’d gotten home a little faster so he wouldn’t have had to wait so long.

I miss him more than I know how to say. I’m not religious, but I hope wherever he is there are lots of new and exciting places for him to sleep.

That being said, R.L. Stine had this thing he did with his books where every chapter ended on some crazy cliffhanger. The heroine’s alone in her school’s theater and she hears someone on the catwalk above her. There’s a snap! And she looks up to see a sand bag falling for her head! OH NO! The murderer is coming after her next!!!

Turn the page to Chapter 8 and ….the sandbag stops a few feet from her head and the theater tech geek looks sheepishly over the side of the cat walk and apologizes for letting it slip. No harm, no foul.

Now, when I was young enough, I fell for the cliffhanger every time. Of course, as you read more of his books and discover his pattern, they become less worrisome. You just know the footsteps behind the heroine in the alley are really her best friend trying to catch up with her. The sound coming from her kitchen is really a window left open. In R.L. Stine books, there aren’t many real stakes.

Stakes are one of the most important things we can give our books. I’ve only known one book to kill the main character close to the end (and it was FANTASTIC, surprisingly) so you rarely ever go into a book thinking the main character is going to die. But if the character can’t die, everything he/she  cares about has to be up for possible execution. If the hero loses everything, the heart of the character can be lost and that is sometimes even more devestating than their actual death.

When readers turn the page, there has to be this ribbon of tension that threads from beginning to end that something terrible might happen on the very next page, the next chapter. There must be a reason for the reader to worry for the hero.

I think nothing demonstrates this more than The Death and Return of Superman. When DC Comics decided to kill Superman in 1992, it was a beautiful and gutsy  move. The world was shocked, but they were also ready for beautifully written, emotionally satisfying storyline that gave a gratifying and well earned end to America’s favorite hero. We were going to be made sad in a way that only happens when someone in literature dies.

There was something fulfilling about finally coming to The End. Superman’s was a life well lived.

Until, practically the next day, they brought him back from the dead.

It felt like a money move – nothing sold as well as the death of Superman arc. It breathed a new life into a questionable market. The unintentional aftermath, however, rocked comic book world forever. DC Comics introduced the “fake” death of a character, and the fake death card was pulled for everyone from that moment after. And at first, we fell for it. I was one of the first people in line to buy the Funeral for a Freak comics when Deadpool supposedly died. Others have also fallen victim to the fake death and always they come back. We don’t get too worked about about the death of a comic book character anymore because if Superman can come back, so can anyone else. DC Comics, with that one event, took the stakes away from the story forever. We’ll never be completely sold on a character death. Ever.

That’s really heartbreaking when you think about it.

And that’s a problem. If the reader doesn’t believe you’ll follow through with your threat, your story loses its guts. There’s nothing sadder than a gutless story. There’s also nothing less worth reading. If a character loses their family, they have to be changed by it. If their heart is broken irreparably, it shouldn’t be easily repaired. Raise your hand if you called shenanigans when Willow hooked up with Kennedy less than half a season after Tara’s death. I rest my case.

In the wake of the new Chronicle movie (which I will talk about at length in 2 weeks during SUPER WEEK here on Tell Great Stories!!) a wonderful YouTube video hit the streets detailing the trouble The Death and Return of Superman brought to comic book storytelling. This video is what originally gave me the idea for the post. I hope you enjoy it. It’s kind of long but WELL WORTH the insight into the analysis of a story and its stakes. It also talks a little bit about BAD plot devices and why you should avoid them (told with great humor.)

(Warning: There’s some swearing and some dark humor involved in this analysis. If you don’t like to laugh, don’t watch this video. You have been warned!!!)

• Books, Reading and Pinterest
• Doing the A to Z Blogging Challenge in April? Want some tips on how to wing it?
• Author Courtney Summers (THE AWESOME COURTNEY SUMMERs) guest posts over at Nova Ren Suma’s blog talking about her turning point when she didn’t think her dreams were going to come true. Awesome post.
• How much do you think of food in your writing?
• Kody Keplinger speaks out about the weight of the word “Skinny”
• Melinda Lo on writing about lesbians when you’re not one
• Oh, the cliches!
• Championing worthwhile books
• Vic Caswell continued the conversation about lost climax endings, and she even mentions me! I love when she does that because I feel like some kind of rock star.
• Kiersten White blogged about finishing a 60,000 word YA book in 7 days. It puts my 7 day writing trip to Vegas into perspective, you know?
• Because we all know how much I love covers, Caustic Cover Critic did a huge post on the covers of Ralph Steadman. *love* His art style freaks me out.
• A really great Insecure Writer’s Support Group post on attending writing conventions.
• A book review for a book I’ve never heard of that I really want to read and also am terrified of. I mean, check out the cover…HELLO NIGHTMARES. It is apparently book two in a series – the first book’s cover is this one only not so frightening and more Eyes Wide Shut.

*Sorry about the short update. Ended up spending a lot of time at the kitty hospital today. My cat is home now though with a cone over his head and a catheter. He’s back to the vet hospital tomorrow but they have high hopes he’ll make a speedy recovery. You can read more about our kitty trials and tribulations earlier this week.