When my kids were little, they loved watching the Disney Pixar film The Incredibles. During this film there is a scene where the villain, Syndrome, defeats Mr. Incredible with his terrible machine and then when he’s telling Mr. Incredible about his evil plans Incredible throws a log at him. Syndrome dodges it, traps Mr. Incredible in a “zero point energy” beam and then says “Oh, you caught me monologuing again.”
This is probably one of the worst cliches in fiction. The problem is that we need to reveal the villain’s evil plan at some point in the novel, but we don’t want to have it revealed in a long, action-dragging monologue.
How to avoid this:
- Evil plan is revealed by action – The events of the novel, namely the action and peril that the hero must face, reveals the dastardly plan of the villain. Hopefully it…
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