Finding a Voice in Writing

A post at A Motley Vision discussed one author's experience with writing a novel and trying to flesh out her villain. I thought some of you might find the essay interesting. A more general interest point in the post was this comment:

I remember way back when sitting in Jim Faulconer’s class while he told about going to see a “Jason” movie with one of his kids. (That’s Jason of the hockey goalie mask.) Jim’s take on the movie went something like this: The brand of evil Jason represented was so monstrous, so incomprehensible that the dangerous behaviors the teenaged victims engaged in – a little drinking, a little fornicating – looked innocent by comparison. Jim suggested that this might be one of Jason’s purposes — to provide a distracting reason not to look too closely at our own behavior: “Huh! So that’s evil! Gee, I’m not half bad.”