It's possible that I have a mild addiction to writing character redemption arcs. Often I want to redeem my villains. It takes me by surprise when they don't want to be redeemed. Robert Winslow, for instance, in "Caffrey Flashback" and "Caffrey Disclosure" insisted that he was not going to change.
In my novel edits, I've needed to remove a lot of content in order to get the novel down to a reasonable length. One of the things I had to remove was the redemption of one of the villains.
Fortunately I have a "future stories" file for sequels, so removing the arc felt more like a postponement than a deletion. Except...
Today I took a clear look at what the character was accused of doing. Waving that away would be unfair to readers who have suffered from his type of conduct.
So that's it. No redemption for this guy.
Unless...
What if someone impersonated him, and he didn't really do those awful things?
A mistaken identity trope. Dare I try it? I'll toss it into the future stories file and see how it feels when I'm ready to consider sequels.
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