By Forris Day Jr.
“The Power of the Dark Side” by Pamela Jaye Smith is a book full of information designed to guide you in creating bad guys (or gals) for your stories. After all it is usually the bad guy that makes a story interesting. Without the conflict the villain creates there is no story. Smith also helps with the creation of dangerous situations. Bad characters and situations are what block the hero from achieving his or her goal in a novel, movie or any interesting story. Learn how to effectively create these scoundrels and nasty conditions and you will become a better writer.
The book is broken up into sections, each devoted to a particular type of bad character or situation. By perusing the book you can quickly find what you are looking for. Obviously the book is designed to be read cover to cover but I also believe that if you are in the throes of writing your novel or script you can open it and easily reference the information you are looking for. The groupings of types of characters is intuitive and pretty clever in my opinion. Each character type has examples of where we see them in movies and the media. Smith also references each characters inner drive. To understand this concept better, see her book called “Inner Drives”. “Inner Drives” and “The Power of the Dark Side” are great companion books if you are obsessed with character development.
A section on “Confronting the Dark Side” teaches you and gives examples of ways to fight evil in your stories. I enjoyed this section. “The Power of the Dark Side” is not as heavy a read as Smith’s book “Inner Drives” but still contains tons of ideas and information to plant seeds in your mind for your bad people.
The book can be used even if you are writing a comedy, romance or a drama because even a funny movie has a bad guy. She uses a great example of a funny bad guy in the Austin Powers films, Dr. Evil. He is bad yet he makes us laugh. In a romantic comedy the bad guy is “the other man” that the woman is interested in, or vice-versa. Think about any story you have ever read or seen. There is always someone or something with evil intentions. They may be seemingly harmless but they are there. Even comic strips have villains.
I enjoyed “The Power of the Dark Side” for it’s wealth of ideas. If you find yourself with writers block grab a copy of this book and throw some spice into your screenplay. Mix some darkness into your novel. Put some bad love into your romantic comedy. You get the idea. I’m not sure if you will learn anything new from reading the book but you will indeed be inspired. It serves as a reminder of all the types of villains and bad things that happen in stories. You will come up with more of your own once your brain is pushed into gear. If you need help creating bad characters and situations check it out.
Rating: 7/10 – “Come to the Dark Side”