This morning I figured out the problem with the villain in the book I’m working on: I’ve been focusing on the wrong villain.

There’s still the big bad causing the societal problem, but I picked the wrong lower-level villain to be the heroine’s direct nemesis, the person who stands in the way of her achieving her goals. The one I was trying to make be her nemesis really has no reason to want to oppose her through most of the book, and he has no power to stop her from achieving her initial goal. He’s still an antagonist and he can be the kind of bully who makes her life miserable, but he can’t really do anything to stop her until maybe getting in the way toward the end.

It’s another character who’s been there all along but who I hadn’t really focused on who makes the best nemesis. He has a reason to be opposed to her, in particular, and he has the power to stop her from achieving her goals — all of them, both the one she initially thinks is important and then the real goal she later realizes is what she needs to do. He’s also an agent of the big bad, so he fits in with the big-picture conflict.

I may not even have to rewrite that much to bring this out, but I feel like this is the ingredient that’s been lacking, and emphasizing this conflict will make the book spark.

The challenge will be to actually write the conflict, since I tend to be conflict-averse. I don’t like torturing my characters, but I really must do so.