Accepting Submissions: {TREAT YOUR VILLAIN LIKE A HERO} Writing Prompt

Each week, we issue a writing prompt to our own staff, guest contributors, and readers like you. We welcome guest submissions, so if you’re interested in being featured or regularly contributing to the site, email your responses to kelaine.conochan [at] thepromptmag.com.

In writing, our heroes are given a full-bodied treatment. We understand their motivation, their personality, their status and position, and their idiosyncrasies. We know their flaws, their interests, their personalities. They are fully realized and explored because they are essential to the story.

But what about our villains? Are they evildoers, plain and simple? Just inexplicably rotten to the bone and horrible in every interaction? And now that we’re thinking about it… what did they eat for breakfast and what do they do for fun? Now THAT, we don’t know. But shouldn’t we?

Prompt Co-founder and lifer, Jillian Conochan, came across the following video exploring why Lalo Salamanca, from AMC’s Better Call Saul, is such a dynamic villain. The answer, not surprisingly, comes down to writing. Specifically, providing more depth and dynamism, showing Lalo beyond just “being a bad guy.” Painting him with more color allows us to maybe understand, maybe sympathize, and maybe even kinda LIKE a villain. And so, we asked our writers to do the unthinkable: give your villain the hero treatment.

This Week’s Writing Prompt: TREAT YOUR VILLAIN LIKE A HERO

This week, we’re looking for new original pieces, using TREAT YOUR VILLAIN LIKE A HERO as our prompt.

If you’ve got an inspired ideas about how to respond to this week’s prompt, send us your submission of 400-700 words, in which you TREAT YOUR VILLAIN LIKE A HERO. It can be a personal essay, a poem, short story, script, or anything else original and fresh. Ironic or sincere, real or imagined—just make it worth our while and we’ll publish it, include it in our newsletter, and give you the chance to join the creative, talented staff writers here at The Prompt.

Email your responses to kelaine.conochan@thepromptmag.com by Sunday April 14th at midnight ET.