Frowning friends and villainous obstacles

Something occurred to me whilst watching ALONG CAME A SPIDER. As Michael Wincott is trying to kidnap a little girl dressed as a fat Englishman (Wincott that is, not the girl) he is almost caught several times. It was the most tense scene in the movie.

It clicked.

You have to throw obstacles in your villains way too.

We spend so much time making it difficult for our hero that we don't really think to turn up the heat on the villain too. Instead they sit back in their old abandoned warehouse and toast incompetent henchmen in the boiler room. That's not enough. It's not enough for the hero to keep progressing on his quest, overcoming obstacles and such. The villain should have more to contend to than that. Maybe a traffic warden puts a clamp on his getaway car. If you were really clever you would have the clamped car then function as a clue for the hero. Keeping it all "integrated" (see last post).

I had a scene in a thing I did a little while back that I hated. I was just writing stream of conscious just to see where it would take me. My villain escaped from prison and met up with his old crew who were all very happy to see him.

Scenes like that suck.

All that crap in LORD OF THE RINGS where they get to Rivendell and the Elves are arguing and Wizards shout but no one puts our hero in jeopardy nor does he come into conflict with anyone. Yeah Gandalf and Elrond have a nice little debate about if Frodo should go the rest of the way but he's not even in earshot. In the end he just volunteers and everyone else accepts it.

It gets worse. He has a nice time listening to poems and eating Elvish food (recuperation for the body AND the soul no less) and then they all get shiny presents and magic cloaks. Nah, Tolkien should've cut all of that and had them go straight to Lothlorien. They were much better with their "not in my back yard" attitude to the fellowship.

So back to my scene. Let's just imagine it was my hero and not my villain. He meets his friends and they're all smiles and hugs. No conflict. No drama.

It would be much better if his friends were pissed off with him about "something" (which, of course, we'll integrate). If allies were reluctant ones. The guy who greats you with a smile, he's the one you've got to worry about. What exactly IS he smiling about? He knows something you don't, that's what it is. He knows your hero is about to get double crossed, that if the hero knew what he knew the hero would think twice about trusting him.

So my deadline for TOMB OF THE VIKINGS is less than 2 weeks away and I have less than a week to complete a "1 page selling document" (which I assume is just a short treatment) for BLOODRUSH, which is what I'll be doing for my full length. Better get back to it.