Radio FreeWrite
A podcast for lovers of stories- reading them, hearing them, and writing them. We provide a new prompt every week, then share the stories we have created from that prompt. We discuss the stories and the art of storytelling while encouraging listeners to create their own stories along with us.
Radio FreeWrite
120: Eblis – Writing Convincing Villains (Without Loving Them Too Much)
This week, we dove into the eternal struggle of writing good villains: pure evil forces vs. sympathetic antiheroes, Darth Vader vs. Sauron, and why Nabokov’s Lolita is a masterclass in manipulation (of you, dear reader). We talked about finding that tiny spark of humanity in awful characters but stopping before you accidentally make them too likable.
Then we read first‑draft stories for Eblis, a name straight out of Islamic myth, perfect for tales of angels, devils, and moral messiness.
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Episodes of Radio FreeWrite are protected by a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) license. All Stories remain the property of their respective authors.