I've been signing into and off of the Young Writers' Program website the last few days as only a expert procrastinator can do (and this despite the fact that I have the kind of schedule this week that, for example, just now I got out of bed and will not have an opportunity to get back INTO bed or indeed enter my house at all until 33 hours from now), and so every time I see the welcome page the Dare Machine challenges me to new heights of absurdity.
Many of the dares are random and relatively silly, though definitely a good trick to get you jumpstarted if you're stuck. One of them, however, has come up a few times and I really like it:
"We dare you to devote a chapter to your villain's morning routine."
Unless you're writing a first-person narration where this kind of information would be EXTREMELY tricky to wedge in, I think this is an awesome idea. (And even in a first-person narration, I imagine you could have someone give them the information for some plausible reason.) I've been doing it for my villain as a prewriting exercise. If you're writing a modern-day story with an antagonist in the form of a sibling, classmate or mean adult, this exercise will help you keep them human in your mind's eye. How much can you REALLY hate someone who's still using Winnie the Pooh toothpaste, after all?
And if you're writing a sweeping fantasy epic, the morning routine can be either a great chance for lightness and humor (Xokor, Lord of a Thousand Hells, squinted into the obsidian mirror and frowned. There was no doubt about it. His hairline was definitely receding. He'd need to order AT LEAST four executions before he'd feel better about this.) or a chance to infuse more horror and terror into the situation by showing that the villain is even more powerful, evil, or heartless than your heroes thought. Maybe his morning routine involves killing the servant who brought him his breakfast, just because. Maybe his morning routine involves looking in his crystal ball -- where he can see and hear EXACTLY what the heroes are up to.
Happy writing!
Of the two you've mentioned, my favorite remains writing a character who appends "of doom" to everything, but this dare does sound like a fun challenge and I may have to try it, modified somewhat because I don't have a villain. But I have other characters who might benefit from a morning routine. Actually even my heroes would probably benefit from me knowing their morning routine, similar to the idea of writing a brief sketch of their bedroom and that sort of thing. Who are these people in just a normal sense when they're not in the middle of a crisis? Possibly worth knowing...
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