Writing the baddie always seems to become more fun for me than creating the protagonists. That’s not to say the others are arduous, but they tend to be a bit easier to put together. There are more pitfalls with the bad guys, and that’s what makes it fun.

It’s important that the villains be believable, as I’m sure you know. The moustache twirling madman of old still has his place, but it is largely in satires and spoofs. A proper villain has to think they are doing the right thing, which means when you are designing them, you need to find a way to justify what they are doing.

For SNIDE, this means I’ve had to work quite hard at that. The logic I’ve had to work with to keep the villains consistent with the plot as well as somewhat realistic has been great fun, and has given me numerous jumping off points I can exploit in future stories too.

Essentially, writing is exploring. I go nosing around the heads of tiny little people I build out of words, and they surprise me every time. The ones in SNIDE have been especially good at it, to the point where I find them dictating huge detours from where I expected the story to go.

And I’m okay with that, because they are awesome.