If you’re of a certain age, or even if you’re younger but you have access to YouTube or streaming services, you probably know a cat named Tom and a mouse named Jerry. If you were asked to describe them, it could be done in very few words. “Bully” comes to mind for Tom and “smart, sassy underdog” for Jerry. Their show finds them enacting these roles episode after episode, with very rare glimpses of the personalities behind their archetypal masks. Even as a kid I found this uber-boring.
If you’re of a different certain age, you’ll be familiar with a sincere young “man” named Spongebob, who lives in the undersea village Bikini Bottom. While a sponge is what we would consider a “lesser life form” than even a cat or a mouse, and even though he’s technically a rectangle, Spongebob is what some call a “round” character (and what I call a loved character). His creators care enough about him to present viewers with his varied challenges, relationships, and motivations, and to show different sides of him. He loves his job as a fry cook at the Krusty Krab and cares greatly for his friend Patrick Starfish, but he can also be impatient and struggles to learn new skills, like driving (a boat) (underwater).
That’s all great, of course, but it’s no more than we would expect from the writer of any main character. And it’s not what makes those who grew up watching Spongebob Squarepants enjoy it still today. What keeps them tuning in is a writing secret that we should all make our own: Love your villains.
When we initially set out to write a story about a particular character, we dote on them. We imagine their backstory. We fret over their dialogue. We excuse their foibles and write them so the reader will as well. And this is a fabulous starting point. But there’s a cliff right in front of us when we begin, and our book will fall right off it if we fail to dote just as much on our secondary characters and even our villains.
Spongebob has a neighbor by the name of Squidward Tentacles, who is your classic “You kids get off my lawn!” type of guy. And he could have stayed that way. But the Spongebob writers love him too much to leave him etched in lifeless stone. We get to see him defend Spongebob, whom he constantly mocks otherwise, by smashing pizza into the face of a customer who wouldn’t pay the young delivery “boy” and spend an entire day enduring his least favorite activities to entertain Spongebob, whom he mistakenly thinks will soon die. Squidward is also a clarinet player with aspirations, and some episodes focus on his musical thrills of victory and agonies of defeat. No viewer could hate Squidward 100%, even if they tried.
Spongebob’s boss and sometime foil, Mr. Krabbs, is greedy and grouchy. But he’s not just greedy and grouchy. We meet his daughter in some episodes and see how kind and generous he is to her. We get to glimpse the tender heart under his rigid exoskeleton when he sells his restaurant, the Krusty Krab, to a giant corporation and then buys it back because the corporation Hoovered the quality and care out of it.
Mr. Krabbs himself has an enemy named Plankton. This far down the storyline, Plankton could easily appear as a caricature. More of a prop than a “person.” But Spongebob’s writers love Plankton—by which I mean they know him well and show him well—as much as they love Spongebob. Plankton adores his (computer) wife Karen, and in several episodes he’s shown letting down his mad scientist guard enough to genuinely enjoy the company of Spongebob and other characters. He even adopts a pet amoeba and names him Spot in one episode and falls into a deep depression in another as a result of one of Mr. Krabbs’ schemes against him. We alternately loathe, like, and laugh at Plankton because he is not lazily written or unloved by his writers.
In Bikini Bottom, viewers are treated to the motivations of the villains, not just their machinations, and this keeps Spongebob Squarepants safely at the top of the cliff. Join it there by loving your villains.
Written by Anse Najiyah Maxfield, Head of Publishing