Last month, I talked about citations and how much I enjoy working on them. A related service I offer and enjoy providing for clients is permissions editing. I have talked a little bit about it before on the website, but this is the process of requesting and managing permissions for a book project.
Permissions covers pretty much any content from a third-party source you’re using in your manuscript. Quoting a book or a short story or a poem? Using a photo or illustration? If you didn’t create it and you want to use it, that creates a situation where you will need to seek permission from the rightsholder of whatever it is you want to use, unless the material is in the public domain. If it is in the public domain, you don’t need to request permission to use the material.
I learned how to do this when I worked as a project editor at a publisher, and I have handled it a lot for one of my repeat clients, Elise Bishop.
Mrs. B., as I call her, was my grammar instructor and writing center boss once upon a time when I was in college, and it is a real honor to be entrusted with working on her Combine and Conquer Grammar textbook series. Mrs. B. teaches grammar through sentence-combining and combining sentences from literature.
A version of her textbook taught me just about everything I know about grammar. 😊 Our current project doesn’t require permissions because we are using a public domain text—stay tuned in the coming months to see what it is—but previous editions have required permissions work.
One edition focuses on sentence-combining with Biblical texts. Most Bible translations are public domain, as long as you are not using hundreds of verses, but I still had to make sure the attributions for each one was right and a few did require special permissions.
The middle school edition we did features sentences from over 40 different classic literary texts, ranging from novels to short stories to plays to poems to speeches, and we needed to ask permission for several that were not public domain.
I have always told Mrs. B. and my other clients I work with on permissions editing that the worst thing a rightsholder can say is no to the request.
Though I must confess, I have discovered that, strictly speaking, that is not the worst thing they can say. The worst thing they can say actually is that they refuse to either grant or deny permissions. However, my client and I both agreed that was basically a no, just with more words, so, technically, the worst thing they can say is still no.
That being said, most of my experiences with permissions requests have been incredibly positive.
For me, locating the rightsholder can be a fun bit of investigative work in its own right. Depending on the copyright in question, the rights could still belong to the author or they may have reverted back to the publisher, been inherited by heirs, or been purchased by another third-party entirely. Likewise, I also enjoy verifying whether or not work is actually public domain. It’s a good rule of thumb to still investigate that, even if a website is claiming it is public domain and that you have no worries.
The biggest key to permissions is being organized and proactive. You may be waiting weeks if not months for rightsholders to respond, so to have an answer by the time you are ready to publish, you need to be tracking down the rightsholders and requesting permissions several months ahead of time. They generally give a timeframe to expect a response, and I always have that noted down to follow up with them if I’ve not heard back by then.
When they respond, they may well have contingencies, such as a specific way they want to be credited or they may want to see the usage in the context of your manuscript. As the rightsholder, this is well within their rights.
You also will need to have a budget in mind for permissions. Some rightsholders charge for use of their content and others don’t, and the amount they charge can vary wildly. As with their other requests, this is their prerogative. If you don’t want to pay, you can always use public domain instead or at least do the request, see if they will charge, and then make a decision on the usage then. You absolutely should not throw something in after being told no or refusing to pay (or dodge asking because you know you will be told no or be charged money). However, after making the request and hearing back what terms the rightsholder is willing to agree to, you can then decide if the content is important enough to pay for the privilege of using or if you want to swap it out for something else or drop it entirely.
Some of my other general advice, drawn from my publishing days, is that unless you have unlimited pockets, do not use song lyrics. I have had writers of niche content tell me no charge for using their material because I had the courtesy to ask, but I can assure you almost no rightsholder for music will be that generous, especially for well-known lyrics. When I worked for a publisher, one of the best way to stir up the editors (not in a good way) was to use song lyrics in a manuscript. I also became leery of quoting from websites during that job because so many times I found authors doing that for websites that inevitably had a notice up somewhere that forbade any use of their material.
Now you may be thinking, as many of my authors then did because they were also doing textbooks, that your usage qualifies as fair use because it is intended educationally in your manuscript. But if you’re selling the book you are putting it in, you substantially reduce your claim to fair use.
The bottom line about fair use is unless you are using public domain content—that you or your editor have done proper due diligence to verify is public domain—you cannot just assume evoking fair use will protect you. Even if you do ultimately have a strong claim to fair use, that doesn’t preempt the rightsholder from suing you anyway.
Of course, the specifics for any manuscript vary wildly and can lead more to the purview of what you’d discuss with your lawyer rather than your editor, but as an editor, I strive to prevent situations where my authors would find themselves blindsided by a future permissions issue. I can track down rightsholders and make the permissions requests for you and also advise on finding credible public domain material and how to reference material effectively without quoting it.
If the idea of tracking down permissions requests for your manuscript and making decisions about permissions seems overwhelming to you, don’t panic! Reach out to me! I am happy to help.
The past couple of months have been busy for me, though not necessarily for editing reasons. In addition to working on editing projects and my regular part-time job at my local public library, I have also been working as an election official for our state’s party primary. I also have had two extracurricular projects that have kept me occupied.
Every year, I try to carve out a week or two in early January to prepare for the new year and wind down the previous one. I often refer to this as my business retreat. This year, as I was doing my end-of-year accounting, writing my business plan for 2026, and getting ready for my 2025 taxes, it occurred to me that, as an editor, I have my fair share of tools of the trade, though most of them are virtual/digital tools. To that end, I thought I’d give you all a glimpse behind-the-scenes as I walk you through the freelance editing business tools and services I use to keep my business running.
I apologize for not posting anything since last year until now. I had a couple of family emergencies in 2025, and I was not able to devote the time I had wanted to my business blog. My hope is that I can resume regularly blogging in 2026.
I did still read 43 books and 1 short story in 2025, as well as the 7 manuscripts I edited.
I look forward to this post every year, and I’ve had several clients and friends tell me they look forward to it too. Who am I to deny the people what they want? 🙂
I read 51 books in 2024, the third year in a row I’ve read 50 or more. That’s not counting the 6 manuscripts and 2 journal articles I edited. I also continued the periodic freelance writing gig I got last year.
One of my most important takeaways from working for a publisher was the importance of thinking evergreen. When marketers talk about evergreen content, they’re talking about content that has enduring power and isn’t just connected to a trend or fad. But when I say to think evergreen as a writer, what I’m talking about is not immediately dating your manuscript.
I have noticed that when I tell people I’m an editor in social settings, the most common default reaction for the other party is to immediately admit to being bad at spelling. Usually in a defensive way, as if we need to preemptively get that out of the way before we can be friendly because there will be nothing worse in the world to a professional editor than bad spelling.
The truth of the matter, though, is I actually think that being bad at spelling is just that. It’s not a deep-seated character flaw or a sign of low intelligence or even of poor education. In the same way that some people naturally spell well, some people just don’t. That’s what I learned when I worked as a college comp instructor and, before that, a college writing tutor.
One of the highlights of every summer for me personally is attending a performance (or two) from Opera in the Ozarks. I particularly love their Sunday afternoon shows where, in addition to great opera, you also get free ice cream and an hour-long opera talk before the performance.
Earlier this summer, I attended The Crucible and La Traviata at Opera in the Ozarks, and they were both excellent (as always). During the opera talk about the former, I learned about the writing method of composer, Robert Ward. As is true of many composers, he wrote the music after the libretto text was finished. What interested me the most as an editor, however, was his chosen method of doing so—he kept reading the words aloud as he worked.
When I get asked what my single top editing tip is for writers, I always say to read the text aloud. I’d actually been meaning to write a blog post on how beneficial reading aloud is, and that opera talk just reinforced that it’s an important topic to cover. Though Ward was reading aloud for musical reasons—to ensure that the words matched the music—and not editing reasons, reading aloud is still highly beneficial for writers and editors.
In the past installations of this series, we’ve looked at how Tombstone and Wyatt Earp both offer lessons on plotting, conflict, and antagonists. This week, we’re going to use them as a vehicle for examining how important developing foils is.
A foil is any character who contrasts with another character. Most commonly it’s a protagonist contrasting with an antagonist, but that doesn’t mean all foils are ultimately opposed to each other in a story. Allies can be and are often foils to each other as well.
Discussing foils may come across as something one does in literature class but isn’t particularly applicable in the “real” world of writing, but that’s a stance I strongly disagree with. Foils help flesh out the personalities of both characters involved, and often what really makes characters distinctive is how they interact with others and how others interact with and view them. Foils provide ample opportunity for this.
Foils in Tombstone
Tombstone has a lot of sharply contrasting foils, and that’s a big part of what helps make the characters so vibrant. Each group—the Earp/Holliday faction and the Cowboys—function as foils to each other. But each main character has a foil, and there are foils within each group as well.
Groups as Foils
As far as groups go, the Earp/Holliday faction and the Cowboys are distinguished from each other by villainy. The Earps and Doc aren’t perfect, but they are definitely depicted as far less villainous than their Cowboy counterparts.
That being said, what makes the groups interesting as foils is that they both ultimately subscribe to the same principle that an attack on one is an attack on all and will receive maximum force as a response. The Gunfight at the OK Corral features multiple sets of brothers—the Earps with Doc as an honorary member of the family—and the Clantons and McClaurys, but this operating principle of mutual attack is also openly discussed by multiple characters. The wedding massacre that opens the movie is a wildly disproportionate response to two Cowboys being killed, and the Cowboys’ default reaction, for everything from Curly Bill being taken into custody to Ike Clanton and the McClaurys being insulted, is to swarm in with a larger group.
But the Earps operate under the same principle. Morgan justifies himself to Wyatt by saying that, basically, he can’t let their brother Virgil stand alone, and though that really annoys Wyatt in the moment, he ultimately agrees and joins in despite his better judgment. It takes a lot more to push Wyatt to the point of responding, but once he does, he also rounds up a group of pals to help him enact what he sees as justice. What makes the groups great foils for each other is they’re following the same basic pattern but in such different ways and with such different personalities.
The Protagonist’s Foil
But even within these larger groups, they each have opposing foils. In Tombstone, Wyatt’s foil is Curly Bill, and Doc’s is Ringo. Wyatt is shown from the beginning of the movie to be a natural leader, but he doesn’t want it and only accepts the mantle when circumstances force it on him. He can easily take control of any situation that he wants to, but he really just wants to be left alone to spend time with his brothers and make money. It’s only when the feud gets so bad that he can do neither that he finally embraces his role as leader.
Contrast that with Curly Bill, who relishes his position as the undisputed king of the Cowboys. He’s not necessarily heavy-handed with his men, but he repeatedly puts them in his place as he sees fit and embraces his ostentatious persona and role. However, like Wyatt, he is a natural leader who also can quickly take control of a situation for his own purposes when he has a mind to do so.
Another way in which Wyatt and Curly Bill serve as foils to each other is both of them are, perhaps ironically, the cautious one in their respective groups. Wyatt is constantly advising other people to stand down and just let a tense situation blow past. He doesn’t do it out of fear but rather hard experience at what will unfold if you don’t exercise a little restraint. Thus, he advises Marshal White to not arrest a high and rambunctious Curly Bill as he shoots up the town, pleads with his brothers to not get involved in trying to tamp down on lawbreaking in town, suggests that they let the Clantons and McClaurys sober up and calm down before confronting them, and recommends to Morgan they leave town after Virgil is shot.
Curly Bill also is the one who curbs his fellow Cowboys, but because he’s Wyatt’s foil, it’s not for the same reason or in the same manner. As we’re shown quite pointedly in the opening scene, Curly Bill doesn’t have the slightest problem with murdering anyone, including innocent bystanders. But he’s pragmatic enough to realize when the time isn’t right to provoke a situation and prefers to bide his time. In fact, one of his more offhand humorous, colorful comments during the play—where he jokes he’d sell his soul to the devil and then betray him—is actually a pretty solid summary of his approach to conflict. He’s fine with appearing to play nicely with others when it benefits him, until it’s more to his advantage not to. That’s a strong contrast to Wyatt, who’s very upfront about why he prefers to err on the side of caution.
A particularly interesting scene to demonstrate their differences is one I’ve already mentioned ina previous post in this series. It’s when Curly Bill intervenes to stop Ringo from provoking a shooting with Doc. Curly Bill plays the peacemaker, in the same way Wyatt often does, but Curly Bill’s approach is wildly different from Wyatt’s straightforwardness. Curly Bill reassures the Earps and Holliday to their faces that Ringo is just running his mouth, but he also then privately consoles Ringo and advises caution while simultaneously goading him on further and then ranting about how ill-suited Ringo is to lead the group. It’s a very different vibe from Wyatt, but it’s an equally effective way to flesh out this particular group’s dynamic and their individual character traits. This is a fantastic use of foils to develop both characters!
Doc and Ringo also emerge as more obvious foils for each other—they’re both highly educated and dangerous—and the movie has them frequently clashing directly to bring this point out. Doc is more extroverted, but they both seem tormented and haunted by inner demons. Even the way others react to them is also pretty similar. Others tend to give them both a wide berth because Doc and Ringo make people uneasy, and there’s little question as to why. In addition to both of them being violent and unpredictable, they also both seem to enjoy the unsettling effect they have on others, and they also have no qualms about letting a tense situation blow up even more rather than trying to calm it down. They also both have a stronger bond with one other member of their group. Perhaps not too surprisingly, it’s our previously discussed set of foils. Doc is closer to Wyatt than he is any other member of the Earp family. Virgil doesn’t even like Doc, as he admits at the start of the movie. Meanwhile, Ringo can barely be bothered to talk to any of the other Cowboys besides Curly Bill. If you think in terms of foils, it’s quite appropriate that by the end of the movie, Wyatt kills his foil, Curly Bill, and Doc also kills his foil, Johnny Ringo.
The real Doc, John Henry Holliday
Foils Among Allies
Protagonists don’t have to be limited to antagonists for foils, and I think Tombstone particularly excels at fleshing out the respective group dynamics by developing foils within each group.
The Earp Brothers clearly love each other, but they have very different personalities. Wyatt is circumspect and stubborn. His brother Virgil is probably his equal in stubbornness, but he has a much more strident sense of right and wrong that draws him into frequent conflict with Wyatt,as we’ve already discussed. Morgan, meanwhile, is the earnest, inexperienced one and has tremendous little brother energy. He and Wyatt seem to have an easier rapport than Morgan has with Virgil, but that doesn’t preclude him from ultimately siding with Virgil on the law-and-order issue or him having his share of squabbles with Wyatt, like when he thinks his older brother is being unfairly dismissive of his interest in spiritualism. These moments all generate conflict, but also because the brothers are developed as foils to each other, there’s no chance of confusing them for each other or not understanding the basics of their personalities. Doc is also a foil to all of them in his own way. More experienced than Morgan but less uptight than Virgil and more confrontational than Wyatt, he occupies his own unique role in the group.
The Cowboys also have their own unique group dynamic that derives from the characters’ unique personalities and causes them to function as foils to each other. Curly Bill is the pragmatic leader, while Ringo is the wild card loner. Ike is very much the group idiot. Others with smaller roles still emerge with some distinguishing features, such as Barnes, whose rambunctiousness occasionally seems to annoy even his fellow Cowboys, and McMasters, the conflicted one who seems to be harboring concerns about his comrades as early as the first scene of the movie. In group scenes, you can see these complicated dynamics at play.
Foils in Action
And where the movie really excels is when all these different layers of foils come together in a scene. The first meeting between both groups has a lot of understated subtext that works whether or not you actually get what’s happening, and that’s in large part because of how well established the characters are as foils to each other.
On the surface, it’s the protagonists and antagonists taking each other’s measure in a scene that manages to be both tense and funny. What the scene doesn’t really draw your attention to and just lets unfold quietly is the fact that Wyatt totally cheats at cards in this scene. He rigs the faro game to give his foil and fellow pragmatist Curly Bill a $500 payout as a peace offering.
And every single character’s response helps further establish their own personalities and foil relationships. Curly Bill immediately realizes what is happening and is highly amused and seems content enough to accept the unspoken truce that retired lawman Wyatt is offering him. Game recognizes game. Or maybe foil recognizes foil.
Morgan also immediately gets it and starts counting out the winnings before Wyatt even draws the cards, suggesting this isn’t the first time either of them have done this. Doc and Ringo both also realize what is happening but don’t care because they have no vested interest in keeping the peace and also recognize each other as an instant adversary. Like I said, game recognizes game, and foil recognizes foil. So, of course, they start goading each other, first into a linguistic battle and then a display of gunfighter prowess, much to everyone’s discomfort and then amusement.
And Ike, well, poor Ike is too dumb to realize what is going on, so he continues threatening Wyatt, completely oblivious to the complicated character interplay unfolding in this scene or the fact that Wyatt is extending a proverbial olive branch to them in this moment. (Though to be fair to Ike, I watched this movie dozens of times myself before I realized Wyatt was intentionally cheating at cards here to let Curly Bill win.)
The effective use of foils in Tombstone helps drive the action forward but also really helps flesh out the characters, even in fairly short scenes.
Foils in Wyatt Earp
In my opinion, part of what makes the Arizona action in Wyatt Earp ineffective is the movie doesn’t really use foils. They can’t because the antagonists aren’t really developed enough to serve as a foil to Wyatt, let alone anyone else in the movie. As noted earlier, the only villain there with a distinctive personality is the smarmy sheriff Johnny Behan. And guess what? Because he’s developed a little more, he actually is the closest thing to a foil in the movie for this subplot. It just doesn’t land quite the same because he’s never framed as the primary threat or even a credibly serious one. Likewise, it’s hard to really connect to the family dynamic in the movie because most of Wyatt’s brothers are fairly indistinguishable. Virgil and Morgan are both attacked, as they are in Tombstone and were in real life, but neither get a whole lot to do in the movie, which limits the impact of that plotline.
I’ve ragged quite a bit on Wyatt Earp so far; however, I am going to change pace a little. The Arizona scenes are ineffective, in my opinion, but that doesn’t mean the whole movie is. I personally think the first half of the movie works better, and not too surprisingly, that’s also because it features a better usage of foils.
The more vibrant conflicts in the movie stem from Wyatt’s interactions with his father, his one-time friend and coworker Ed Masterson, his brother James, and his buddy Doc. And in each case, that’s because they’re given more scenes to flesh out their personality and they have some distinctive characteristics that contrast with Wyatt. None of these are villain antagonists to Wyatt, but they receive more character development than any of the actual villains receive, and it benefits them a lot. (It also adds that essential element of conflict!)
The movie depicts Earp patriarch Nicholas as stern but paternal (though the real Nicholas was much less pleasant apparently). When it comes to being a dynamic character, it doesn’t hurt he’s played by Gene Hackman, but we see Wyatt clashing with his father early on due to his desire to run away and join the Army. We also see his father’s emphasis on the importance of family and his early attempts to direct his son’s life. Nicholas only gets about as much screentime as Urilla, Wyatt’s ill-fated first wife, but he makes more of an impression because he’s given more to do and demonstrates more personality. He also serves as a foil to his son, who’s as headstrong as he is but far more impulsive.
Likewise, Wyatt’s terseness contrasts markedly with his friendly coworker Ed. It creates conflict with them as they both work the rough streets of Dodge City and ultimately serves as foreshadowing that Ed is tragically much less suited for this work than Wyatt, but the scenes that highlight how different their approaches are end up being some of the better ones for demonstrating Wyatt’s gruff but pragmatic personality. They’re far more effective than Wyatt being gruff and pragmatic alongside a bunch of other gruff and pragmatic people, which tends to be the vibe of the latter half of the movie.
Wyatt’s tense scenes with his brother James, in a similar vein, also are more vibrant because he and James are allowed to clash. James is more laidback and seems disinterested in many of his little brother’s opinions. Wyatt gets along better with Doc, but the latter’s willful belligerence also helps set him apart from Wyatt’s matter-of-factness.
In all these cases, the use of foils actually does create the potential for a stronger plot and more character development, but it’s not a dynamic that is sustained once the movie switches its focus to the feud with the Cowboys.
Applying These Lessons To Your Writing
Really think about the roles your characters occupy within the story. How does your main character interact with others and how do other characters interact with your protagonist? Do you have any foils already in the story? Do you have any other characters that could be developed into foils? If you don’t know, that’s okay because I can help! Analyzing characterization is part of what I do in both developmental edits and manuscript critiques.
This is my final post in the series. I hope you enjoyed reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them. But even more so, I hope they provided a helpful, accessible way to look at how important narrative structure, conflict, and characterization are to storytelling.
You can analyze any story you encounter—whether it’s a book, a movie, or a TV show—along the same lines. Try it out! Recognizing effective and ineffective storytelling techniques in other works is a great way to sharpen your own narrative-building and characterization skills.
In previous installments of this series, we’ve compared the narrative structure and use of conflict in Tombstone and Wyatt Earp for plotting lessons we can apply to manuscripts. This week, we’re looking specifically at lessons we can learn from the depictions of villains in the two movies.
The Villain Problem in Wyatt Earp
One of the main issues I noted with Wyatt Earp when we discussed narrative structure is the OK Corral subplot occupies about 40% of the movie, but the conflict between the Earp-Holliday faction and the Cowboys is skimmed over. In the same way, the villains themselves are largely incidental to the plot. Curly Bill is probably the most prominent in the sense that he is named and pops up in a couple of scenes. However, there’s nothing fleshed out about him. The Clantons also pop up, but other than a couple of lines where they’re name-checked it’s sometimes hard to tell who even is a Clanton or a McLaury, which is a tension killer once the pivotal actual shootout involving the Clantons and McLaurys starts. In what might be the most egregious example of how little interest the movie has in its villains, Johnny Ringo is only directly shown once, when another character conveniently shouts his name right before killing him. Hi, Johnny. Bye, Johnny. It’s hard to have effective, interesting, or memorable villains when the story doesn’t even bother to distinguish them from each other.
I’ve noticed when working on some manuscripts, the villains are often treated in a similar cursory manner. They pop up as needed—often rather late in the proceedings—and they are easily bested. The writer’s thinking often is the quick dispatch of the villain shows how strong the hero is, but it really does the opposite. If you want an interesting, compelling protagonist, you also need an interesting, compelling antagonist who is a real challenge. From the audience’s standpoint, the protagonist’s victory should not seem guaranteed!
Villainy in Tombstone
Tombstone offers some excellent lessons on how to craft great villains. Unlike Wyatt Earp, Tombstone doesn’t hold off on introducing its bad guys. In fact, the opening scene after the initial narration features them, and boy, are they some really bad guys. They casually slaughter an entire wedding party before nonchalantly sitting down to eat the wedding feast. It’s a memorably villainous entrance, and even if you have a hard time keeping track of this motley crew, you’re not going to soon forget its leader, Curly Bill, and the enigmatic Johnny Ringo.
Curly Bill is flashy—sporting a bright red shirt and snazzy Cavalry boots with aces on them—and surprisingly jovial for a cold-blooded killer. Ringo, meanwhile, sets himself apart as both unusually educated in comparison to the others and exceptionally vicious and standoffish. The others quietly avoid shooting the local priest, but Ringo has no problem murdering him. Though he quickly laughs it off (after the clip ends), Curly Bill even seems a bit shocked by this, despite conducting his own murderous rampage minutes earlier.
One of the quirkier real-life grave markers in Tombstone’s infamous Boot Hill Cemetery
In the scenes that follow, these characters get fleshed out more and some complexity is added to them. We get to see them take in the theater, in which they are as obnoxiously ill-behaved as you’d expect, but they also end up genuinely captivated and moved by Shakespeare. We then get to see them finally meet Wyatt and Doc, which is also about as tense as you’d expect. Through all of this, Curly Bill remains the gregarious one while Ringo comes across as the ultimate dangerous loner. But Curly Bill is shown to be a bit more restrained than the others, not out of any moral compunction but rather just because he’s more cunning and patient than his affable, grandiose personality suggests. Ringo is also shown to be innately troubled and resigned to it in his own private way, as well as unsettled by Doc Holliday.
It takes a bit for the movie to focus on Ike Clanton, but he’s also hard to forget once you meet him. An annoying loudmouth who can be reliably counted on to always run from a fair fight, Ike completely lacks either Curly Bill’s social skills or Ringo’s brains, and he’s clearly going to be the gasoline poured on this fire.
By early establishing these character traits, Tombstone ensures its villains aren’t just wallpaper for the events that unfold. They’re a vital part of the plot, and they’re treated accordingly. They’re undeniably bad guys, but they’re also relatively three-dimensional ones with their own individual personalities and goals. They don’t just exist to be mowed down by the protagonists. They even have friends and lives outside of being the movie’s villains. Mostly evil friends they commit crimes with and lives that largely revolve around being rowdy jerks, but there’s clearly a bond between them all that drives their own quest for revenge in the same way that Wyatt’s anguish over the attacks on his beloved brothers drives his own vengeance.
And during Wyatt’s vengeance ride, the movie doesn’t treat Wyatt triumphing as a foregone conclusion, even though if you know your history you know you don’t have to worry about his survival. Yes, Kurt Russell’s Wyatt and friends slaughter a lot of cowboys—a truly unhistorical amount, to be honest—but it’s not a given he’ll survive the ambush set by Curly Bill and he expresses genuine concern to Doc that he won’t emerge victoriously if he squares off with Ringo. Because we’ve seen both of these bad guys in action, they loom as a significant, very real threat to him.
The Problem with Weak, Ineffective Villains
In contrast, Wyatt Earp attempts to explain the conflict in a few quick lines of dialogue and treats the presence of the Cowboys as afterthoughts. One could perhaps argue there is a thematic purpose for that, to demonstrate that they weren’t so much of a threat, but I don’t think you can then blame audiences for treating the storyline as an anticlimactic afterthought in return. A Johnny Ringo who’s only identified just as he’s shot down isn’t going to be anywhere near as interesting of an antagonist compared to when the story has developed him as a haunting, formidable, and unbalanced psycho for nearly 2 hours. It’s also not even an example of in media res storytelling since this is hardly the start of the story. Rather than starting in the middle, it just pretty much skips over everything related to the antagonists.
Do you know who actually emerges as the most memorable antagonist in the Wyatt Earp depiction of Tombstone? The smarmy, gladhanding town sheriff, Johnny Behan. He is no actual physical threat to Wyatt Earp, in that movie or real life, but he gets a lot more screentime and development than any of the other antagonists.
Applying These Lessons to Writing
We talked last time about the importance of introducing your story’s conflict early to ensure the narrative is compelling. It’s just as vital to make sure the antagonist at the heart of that conflict is an interesting, vibrant character in their own right. To work as a legitimate threat to your protagonist, the villain needs to be an actual challenge and have an actual role in the story.
Next week, we’re going to use the two movies as a jumping-off point to expand on these principles about character development and look at how creating foils for your characters is also a vital aspect of storytelling.
