Five Interesting Phobias that I Didn't Make Up

Part of the joy I find in writing paranormal and fantasy fiction is the freedom to explore creatures and places not of this world. This opens up the ability to stretch the imagination a bit and do what I love the most—make stuff up! But in my research for my stories, I’ve discovered that often reality is stranger than fiction.

What Makes a Good Villain?

When I’m crafting a villain who plays upon the deepest fears of my characters, I strive to make one who is more than skin deep. I want the reader to be just a little sympathetic to my villain while he strikes terror into the heart of my heroine and/or hero. The process is often referred to as avoiding making cardboard characters. I like to think of it as the whole villain you love to hate.

Phobias Can Be Stranger than Paranormal and Science Fiction

Since my stories are often laced with laughter, I often like to find emotional and/or quirky methods of combat outside of blood and gore for my hero and/or heroine. In researching one of my stories, I stumbled across phobias. I realized that there were a multitude of them that I never heard of, some so unusual that it sounded as if someone made them up in a fictional story.

No Laughing Matter

Phobias are defined as an irrational fear or aversion to something, and as ridiculous as some of them may sound, they can cause true distress to the person affected by the phobia. Therefore, I don’t intend to make fun of anyone who might suffer from one of these unusual phobias, but I might occasionally utilize one or two in a story.

In fact, I used an angle on one of these phobias I listed below for a villain in a manuscript I’m working on. I’m not going to tell which one it is and ruin the surprise. I’ll let your imagination run wild with how I incorporated it into my character.

Five Interesting Phobias

1.     Ancraophobia- also known as anemophobia, is an extreme fear of wind or drafts. Apparently telling someone "Don't get blown away" is more of a concern to some than I realized.

2.     Aulophobia- an unknown, persistent fear of flutes. Luckily my daughter plays this terrifying instrument (to some) so if we’re ever faced with a villain with this phobia we already have the non-violent weapon of choice.

3.     Arachibutyrophobia- the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth. As an avid lover of peanut butter, I’d be in trouble with this phobia. With National Peanut Butter Lovers’ Day this month (March 1^st), it seems that there would be a lot of unhappy people if they couldn’t indulge in this tasty treat.  

4.     Pteronophobia-the fear of being tickled by feathers. Seems that those old cartoons had it right all along when they pulled out a feather to battle their enemy.

5.     Asymmetriphobia- the fear of mismatched or asymmetrical objects. I’d never be out of ammunition for a villain suffering with this phobia. All I need to do is pull out the mismatched sock drawer in my laundry room to strike terror into the heart of the villain who suffers from this.

These are only a few of the odd phobias I ran across in my cyberspace searches. It seems that there is a phobia for just about everything.

What’s the Most Unusual Phobia You’ve Heard Of? 

Author Bio: Maureen Bonatch grew up in small town Pennsylvania and her love of the four seasons—hockey, biking, sweat pants and hibernation—keeps her there. 

While immersed in writing or reading paranormal romance and fantasy, she survives on caffeine, wine, music, and laughter. A feisty Shih Tzu keeps her in line. Find Maureen on her website, Facebook & Twitter

How to Write A Good Bad Guy

I'm often asked by new and aspiring authors, how to write a villain. Not a stock figure with a dark mustache stomping around kicking puppies and doing obviously Bad Things, but a credible or sinister or surprising villain.

It's a good question and my answer is always: don't write a villain; write a person.

Construct the villain as you would the heroine. She has a body, a mind and a heart. She has pet peeves, deep fears and strong desires. Her past contributes to, but does not overpower her. While she is full color, her past - culture and heritage, important relationships and moments of strong emotion - trails her like a dimly-sketched river of ghosts.

She does what she does because she believes she must and she also believes, in the end, that it is right.

Here's the kicker: so does the villain. The bad guy can't exist only because the heroine needs a force to butt up against. And, while some bad guys - particularly in fantasy - can be beings of pure evil, it's difficult to get much mileage out of that. If the bad guy is PURE EVIL, the heroine doesn't have to be very complicated to oppose him. So, the villain believes that what he is doing is right but, unlike with the heroine, the reader does not root for him because his values are twisted. He is twisted.

He isn't just greedy; he believes he is owed or deserves his ill-gotten gains.

He wasn't born hating a group of people or creatures; he believes they did him insufferable harm or will turn his world into an unbearable place.

He does not hate the heroine; he is envious of her. So envious that he loathed himself for his jealousy, and that self-loathing made him lash out, and the more he struck down others, the more he believed he was building within himself something of the power he perceives the good guy as having.

That's a little bit scary.

The most insidious kind of villain is the character that is present throughout a book without the reader knowing he is evil, but the moment that fact is revealed, things become clear. The Usual Suspects is a great example of this. The villain is masterful, so intent on his goals (the only thing, in my mind, not well-revealed in this movie) that he disguises his brilliant mind and allows himself to be penned up with criminals who, if they discovered he was the cause of their incarceration, would likely kill him.

Author Raymond Chandler was also a master of the insidious villain. For one, he juggles fleets of distinct suspects without ever dropping a red herring, but he also allows the suspect to exist among the rest of the players. Chandler, of course, was writing mysteries so the emphasis is on discovering the bad guy rather than having to work against or defeat him, but I do recommend reading him. His stories are lessons in how to hide a bad guy as well as how to write a memorable character.

The exercise I use when I get stuck with a flat villain is to write from his point of view. If I'm halfway through a story and can't seem to get any further, I back up and write the most conflict-heavy scenes from the bad guy's point of view. It isn't always comfortable to step sideways into the mind of a monster. However, the less comfortable it is, the more compelling the character will hopefully be. And doesn't everyone love having someone to root against?

cross-posted at www.regansummers.com

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Regan Summers lives in Anchorage, Alaska with her husband and alien-monkey hybrid of a child. She is a huge fan of the low profile. She likes books, ottomans with concealed storage, small plate dining, libraries, Corporal Hicks, some aspects of pre-revolutionary France, most aspects of current Italy, and books.

Her Night Runner series, including Don’t Bite the Messenger and Running in the Dark, is available wherever e-books are sold.

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