Thoughts on what I’m writing?

[Historyguy]

I am trying to write a novel but it’s pissing off two women I know.

The problem they have is my villain, Abigail Williams (she’s a real person who was used in the Crucible, but given the fact that she really did exist, she’s fair game).

She will be 40 because the novel is set in 1720, as she was only 11 or 12 in the real witch trials.

At this point, the money she stole will have gotten her far in life and now she’s a wealthy widow of a merchant in Barbados.

She continues to do what she did as a child, create moral panics and mass hysteria to get innocents killed (now they are her enemies she’s framing as pirates).

her greatest nemesis is a fictional daughter of Sarah Osborne that I invented. Abigail will try to get her hung for piracy.

Thoughts?

Why? All we know about her is that she did something that seems absolutely bonkers when she was 12. The theft and running away is Miller’s fiction.

One of the victim’s children will be in my novel too. She will be vengeful against Williams for exploiting a bad society via creating a moral panic, and continuing to do so in adulthood.

She eventually learns to let go.

Because the nature of her character is that she isn’t meant to be fleshed out. She’s supposed to manipulate a broken system for her own gain. Just like the Shawshank warden pretending to be a good Christian when he’s a damn slavedriver.

Did Abigail ‘exploit a bad society’? Or did the pious theocrats exploit some delusional children?

Yeah, assuming a preteen vulnerable orphan girl was exploiting a patriarchal society seems bizarre.

Impossible to say. There are people who are bad at young ages.

no point trying to explain why.

I picked a character who is almost universally interpreted as villainous for a reason.

You're not really selling it to me, but then I'm not keen on dishonest fictional versions of real people who existed. And yes, you are sounding a tad misogynistic (and not much of a people-person in general, tbh) in blaming a pre-teen girl for not standing out against the madness of that society in general.

Even in Miller’s depiction I wouldn’t say I saw her as the main villain of the piece.

Who was it then? Society itself? Samuel Parris? Thomas Putnam?

Lots of shared blame among the adults.

Can I ask why you can't just create your own character? Maybe one who is three-dimensional, even? Men writing women/girls as representatives of pure evil rather than as actual humans is... iffy. Who do you see your potential reader as being?

People who like adventure novels honestly.

Pirates play a large role. There will be other, real life, female antagonists who aren’t evil.

i intend on using Anne Bonny, for instance.

It comes across as a bit underdeveloped and naive more than anything. I'd go back to the drawing board and maybe make up your own characters from scratch.

basing a whole narrative structure on a modern interpretation of a last-century fictional version of a historical real person seems like creating unnecessary complications for yourself.

can you explain why it’s ok to have the Shawshank Warden as a monstrous person but not Abigail?

Yes. The fact Abigail really existed is why she isn’t ’fair game’. The fact she’s already been used and distorted by a world class playwright for a serious allegorical purpose is another reason you’re foolish to use her for your pirate adventure.

Give me a different woman who exploited a society designed against her for her own gain then? And then later on went missing

But she didn't. She was a young girl trapped in a highly religious deeply patriarchal society over which she had fuck all control. She was used by the adults.

I think what we're all struggling is why you can't just make one up.
You asked about the difference between writing the shawshank warden as villainous and writing Abigail as villainous; the warden is fictional. You can't defame a fictional character. Abigail existed and has, arguably, been defamed enough already.

“That excuse worked..”
You do come across as quite bitter and angry towards girls and women. It’s a very judgemental tone to use of a child.

For what it’s worth, whenever I have read a book with a wholly unsympathetic central character, with no nuance or redeeming features at all, I have found it boring and hard to bother reading because I don’t care at all about what happens to them. I could not become invested in their story.

It doesn’t sound to me as if you have the necessary insight into character and the human condition needed to make this idea work.

Okay, friendly reminder she isn’t the main character. She hardly has any time speaking to the main characters at all.

So why do you want to traduce a real girl rather than inventing a woman?

People like reading about real people. Take all the westerns with Jesse James for instance

Is Abigail the main character of your piece? Because if so, then there’s your problem. The Shawshank Warden was not the main character - he was a catalyst character, there to motivate the main character’s character development.

Look, I may be teaching my grandmother to suck eggs here, I have no idea what kind of a writer you are, but maybe go read some Joseph Campbell - the hero needs to go on a journey, preferably one that involves some change in their outlook. Otherwise what’s the point?

Didn’t you have a long thread about this the other day?