OK... I am struggling with this one , even after doing every search I can think of for the answer. Unfortunately I cannot find any books on my shelf with some examples either.

I am about to write a scene where my villain (identity not revealed yet) is going to make a phone call to one of his villain's apprentices, as they do. The novel is in limited third person thus far, although every 4 or so chapters there will be a short 1st person chapter in the form of a diary.
What I cannot figure out is how I write the scenes between an unidentified villain and his unidentified accomplice.

Can someone give some guidance or recommend a good example or two? Should I jump into God view for this or what?

I am finding it hard to move past this barrier, so your help is really appreciated.

Declan

You could just write the dialogue between them, and leave that to tell their part of the story. This is an approach I've used in a novel I've been trying to write on and off for three or four years now (so no, I'm not the best authority to go by).

Alex

What you are saying makes sense, and is more or less the angle I Had expected to take... but how would you go about doing that cohesively?

Writing something like...:
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"You know what you have to do. Get in, get the documents and get out again... without leaving any traces." said the burly man as he tapped his stubby fingers on the mahogany desk.
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...just seems so cheap and silly.

Do you know what I mean.

My approach was to give the protagonists nicknames, and hint that even they aren't supposed to know who their colleagues' real identities are (there are several, rather than just two, in my case). When I've got time, maybe I'll post a sample of their dialogue so that you can see the approach I've taken.

Alex

Personally I would avoid god mode (the omnicient point of view (pov)). Secondly this is your chief antagonist, and it is rarely a good idea to have the antagonist's pov (thoughts & feelings) which rules out 1st or 3rd from their pov. So that leaves some other form of communication, either a letter or diary entry which the pov character (protagonist) can read, or, since it's a phone call, then in the form of a recording such as an answerphone (landline or mobile), or even a text message or email.
I think the question to ask yourself, is "Is it necessary for the reader to know something, which your protaginist doesn't, at this point in the story?"

- NaomiM

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Perhaps I should add, the thing to avoid is giving the reader information which will spoil the suspense you are building in the plot. The reader will be experiencing the story through the eyes of your pov characters, so you want to be careful when you give the reader more information that the pov characters.

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Although saying that, how about having it as a prologue? Crime writers often do that.

I am in a tricky position where I don't want to finish the novel without establishing clues about the villain as I go. I mean, I don't want it to look like Deus ex machina at the climax, when suddenly the read discovers that two of the characters they had come to love are actually the villains. I feel like I need to sew in these little conversations between them, especially as the 'apprentice' villain as it were is one of three potential 'female companions' to the protagonist. The reader is meant to discover this early on, and then keep guessing for the rest of the novel who it is. But the protagonist has no idea whatsoever that anyone he is acquainted with could be the villains.

So... that in mind, does it alter your thoughts about how to approach this? I like your ideas, it just gets me even deeper into worry about how to work my plot around it all.

Tis midnight (almost) here, so I am packing in the keyboard for the night, but I will eagerly open the forum tomorrow to see if anyone has replied.
Night all.

Declan

I don't want it to look like Deus ex machina at the climax, when suddenly the read discovers that two of the characters they had come to love are actually the villains.

Hmmm, I don't know, it always worked for Agatha Christie.

I think it would be enough for the reader to know there's the potential for one of the characters to be the villain, and have fun guessing who it could be. But the risk in putting in too much detail is the reader knowing who it is before the main protagonist, because that could kill the suspense. Readers are pretty smart cookies, and usually less is more because the writer will tend to inadvertantly lay a trail to the person as they write it because they have that person in the forefront of their mind. To get around this problem, crime thriller writers have the habit of changing the person at the last moment so as to throw the reader who for the last few chapters have thought they've sussed it out.
I suppose the question one should ask is are you writing in the crime/thriller genre, and is it a who-dunnit? The other type of story is the 'why-dunnit' where the reader knows who the villain is, it's a investigation into why they've done it.



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I think if you have an initial conversation between the villain and someone else in a prologue, or one side of it overheard by the protagonist, it would be enough of a nod and a wink to the reader that there's something going on.

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But if you're still on your first draft, then maybe put it all in and play around with it in the editing stage, and see what you can then take away/leave in without it spoiling the plot.

Yeah, the catch 22 is definitely not letting the reader figure out who the villains are either. I will work on that in editing. I have an acquaintance reading through it as I go (she is a crime/thriller buff) and she has already been giving me some very good tips thus far. She promises to alert me the minute she thinks she knows what is going on.
We will see...

The story isn't a whodunnit or a whydunnit, so much. It follows an archaeologist on a study, and someone is getting in the way. He isn't aware of who, though he has his suspicions. It is only in the dramatic climax that the huge betrayal should become apparent... and then a little later, the wound is salted with a second discovery, the girl who helped the villain. It definitely needs to be written carefully for the effect to work. If I think of The Da Vinci Code, for example, it was only just before the villain was revealed as Langdon's friend, that I realised it might be him. Maybe (God forbid) I should re-read it.

In the mean-time... I managed to drag myself beyond that scene (left a little placeholder) and continued to write the following scenes last night. I can always do this the whole way to the end, as suggested, and then come back to fill in this part of the plot, without having any adverse effect on the rest.

Hi there.
I'm a bit confused - not too bright, you know.
Your MC is written in third and there are limited firsts as a diary?
Now, if you want to show a scene where either of those POVs are not there, you've got to decide whose POV it's going to be from. I'm not against the odd God drop, but do feel this works best where there are multiple POVs. The reader is used to thw frequent changes and thus it feels less clunky.
However if for most of your book, you are tucked in tightly to one POV I would think a God drop will clunk very loudly.

Answer: either drop the scene and find other ways to lay your clues. Or, if you want to go with the scene without identifying them, keep it, as Naomi says, mainly to dialogue.
I recently read No Time For Goodbye by Linwood Barclay, and at the beginning of each chapter is a scene with two, as yet unknown, characters. I thought it was done well.

HB x

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And it occurs to me that in my first book I had a number of chapters from the villain's POV which never mentioned the murder.
During those scenes we learn a lot about their back ground and their mind set, but we don't address the murder at all.
I suppose you could say that was cheating...but no-one seemed to care. Probably because I did POV scenes from all the suspects, none of which addressed the murder, but all gave the impression that that person had done it iyswim.

Yes, No Time For Goodbye is a good example. Lots of modern crime novels have sections from the crim's pov without them being identified. I think Stella Duffy's Wavewalker does and some of Val Mc Dermid's (sorry titles escape me.)

If I were doing a draft of what you're aiming for, I'd write the scene exactly as it wants to run naturally without worrying about giveaway signs. When it's done, I'd take out the giveaways and leave what's left. So if it's a phone call (thunderingly obvious example) you'd cut, 'Hi, Jeff here,' and just put 'Hi,' or 'Hi, it's me.' Change names to definite articles, give allusions to familiar places or lines of work rather than spelling them out.

My WIP has a villain who has two names though - one he's known by professionally around the adults he knows and his nickname which all the teens he hangs out with know him by. That helped a lot to withhold his identity.

Hi helen and cherys, thanks for jumping in.

There are multiple POVs in the book and the nature of these changing POVs are made clear from the get go. The prologue is 3rd person POV and very short, this scene occurs long in the past. Chapter One is 3rd person POV from one of the protagonists 'colleagues to be'. Then, in Chapter Two, we finally meet the protagonist in his 3rd person POV.
From there on out the book will mostly be in 3rd person POV from protagonist and occasionally his colleague. Breaks are made obvious, occurring in either new scenes or chapters. Every fourth or so chapter is a diary entry (from 500 odd years earlier) from the POV that appeared in the prologue.

But here comes in the villain POV.

I do want the villain scenes to merely be a phone conversation (and once, near the end, a face-to-face meeting) so they will consist mostly dialogue. That is intended.
So do you suggest that I use no description in these scenes? Should I not write about how 'he rubs his stubble' etc... to establish the character more.
Ultimately, what i am stuck on is this. How do you describe someone and his actions, without naming him. I just don't want it to come off cheesy and obvious.

So, considering the nature of a story from multiple POVs, would a God drop clunk too loudly, or would you go about this in 3rd person POV (villain) but not attributing him though, rather just actions. ie, 'tapping fingers', 'sitting back in chair'... but not 'he felt pleased with himself'.

I will order a copy of 'No Time For Goodbye' from Amazon right now.

Declan

Declan - it was one of the cheap books with the Times, so I've seen a lot of them in the charity shops -as you do. Have a look there first.
HB x

Already on it's way. 49p from Amazon... plus £2.75 postage to Switzerland, but no worries. It gave me an excuse to pick up a couple of other books at the same time.

Thanks for the heads up though.

How much character-establishment you want to do really depends on how much of a clue you want to give to his identity, bearing in mind that the more of the character you fill in, the bigger a clue you leave.

If you want the identity to remain hidden, I would steer away from things such as "rubbing his stubble", or "twirling his moustache". These already begin to describe the person, not merely characterise him.

Train journey home permitting (), I'll try to fish out a relevant exerpt from my would-be novel and post it on WW this evening.

Alex

Thanks Alex... I would really appreciate that.

And I see what you mean about desciption vs characterisation. I will be careful about this when I come to writing him in.

I look forward to your exerpt. Train permitting.