WHAT I LEARNED FROM THE SOAPS: GREAT VILLAINS AND CONVOLUTED PLOTS, WHAT ELSE COULD A WRITER NEED FOR INSPIRATION? (SOAPS BLOG HOP)

GREAT VILLAINS AND CONVOLUTED PLOTS,WHAT ELSE COULD A WRITER NEED FOR INSPIRATION?

I’m so excited about this blog hop. I absolutely love watching soap operas, I’ve been watching them since I was a wee babe in my hometown of Libreville, Gabon. First, it was Santa Barbara, then Top Model (The Bold & The Beautiful). In my late teens, I got hooked on Sunset Beach… Good times! Then I got the opportunity to witness the beginning of one when Passions started in July 1999, a month after I move to Canada.  My sister got me on the Days of Our Lives’ wagon, summer 1999 was great. In 2012, I discovered Brit soaps with Hollyoaks. All I can say is damn! Two things draw me in, their great villains and their convoluted plots.

I write mystery novels and you always need a good evil family and their crazy schemes. There’s no place like Salem’s Days of Our Lives to get some inspiration. It’s full of villains you love to hate and they always get away with everything. The Dimeras, they are thieves, killers, rapist, organ traffickers, kidnappers, brainwashers, charismatic, handsome, unapologetically evil… as overdone as those characters might be sometimes, they entertain us and keep us guessing. Yes, the plots are not always believable… How many times could someone come back from the dead before we, the viewers, start to complain?

Not all villains are part of the permanent cast. Some are just here to stir up some trouble for a year or two. I personally cherish those characters in my books. Go bold or go home, I always say! They’re those psychotic characters in disguise, those who come to town to exult their revenge or worse. Ah… revenge and mayhem, it doesn’t get any better than that in soaps. In Hollyoaks for the Brits reading this post, do you remember Will Savage and his bloody path to madness? I remembered watching it last year and took some notes. I will write a twisted man like that in one of my novels someday. To summarize his schemes, he pretended to be paralysed from the waist down to guilt Texas Longford to marry him, then killed her on their wedding day and killed his own mother later. When he finally got caught, Psychotic Will didn’t apologise at all! Yes, it’s a little extreme, but at least you know where he stands.

So who’s your favourite unapologetically evil villain? What about your favourite scheme?