🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <17482@mindlink.bc.ca>, Alan_Barclay@mindlink.bc.ca (Alan Barclay) writes:
|I think that the maxim "the villain must pat the dog" is a bit misleading.  I
|suspect the very act of showing your killer and the internal consistency of
|his motivations generates sympathy.  I believe it is a symplification to say
|one can only generate reader-interest in a character by having him do some
|overt act of kindness--i.e. petting the dog.  Many people who are not
|axe-wielding villains are in real life overtly unsympathetic.  One can begin
|to sympathize with their state, though, when one gets inside their head.
|
|You don't need a Spielberg angel-music "awwwww" reaction to generate
|sympathy, you only need understanding.

This was more-or-less my point.  The agent who told me the killer had
to pat the dog said that that was a COMMERCIAL concern--the odds that
an acquisitions editor would buy the ms without a pat-the-dog scene
or two were prohibitively bad.  I'm passing that advice along for anyone
who cares.

-- 
--Fred, or another blind 8th-century BC  |  sasafw@dobo.unx.sas.com
        Hellenic poet of the same name.  |