I thought I'd share something in the hopes of seeing how everyone here would react to it. Feedback is greatly appreciated, but I'm also interested in whether the speaker of this excerpt strikes you as an interesting villain or not. Anyway, here's the piece of dialouge and I hope you like it:

“Mrs. Weber, through all that hatred can you not sense the similarity between us? We’ve both given up so much for that question. ‘Why did you kill him’? I also wanted to know how he could do it – why he would do it. Why kill two people, two sweet people? Harmless people who taught their daughter compassion and love, what was the cause of their death? Finding my parents that day was the cruelest thing. Blood everywhere, a stench of gunpowder, and that man, just standing there amidst the carnage, breathing it in. It was the cruelest thing, that he drew breath where they could not. The gentle way his chest rose and fell petrified me, and that’s probably the only reason I walked away alive. He didn’t notice the little girl he’d shocked into silence. I don’t even think he’d realized that his accomplice fled the scene when he heard the shots fired. Or that he’d dropped his gun in the doing. By the time he saw me creeping up behind him the shot was already fired, and he was dead. And like you I was left wondering why. Since that time all I’ve done has been for the express purpose of learning why. I lived every day of my life with the hopes of finding an answer. I even dedicated myself to the study of criminal minds in the hope that I might one day comprehend the sickness inside that murderer. But it proved futile, and I grew convinced that nothing could ever make such a monster familiar to me. The only thing that kept me hopeful was finding the man who had fled our home on the day of the murder, the only person who might know why my parents were killed. Only recently did I succeed, and now I have my answer. Mrs. Weber, you ask me why I killed your husband, but what comfort would that knowledge bring you? The day I found him, the accomplice in my parents’ murder, do you know what reason he gave for there deaths? Nothing. He sat there, and he said nothing. You want to know why I slew Samuel Weber, but there is no reason. And Mrs. Weber only when you stand to face a monster, only when you search it’s eyes and find a void glaring back do you see the truth – nothing is scarier.”

Wow, that's very cool. It has much more substance than the stuff I normally manage to write. A whole back-story explained in one speech too, that's pretty cool. Where do you reckon this speech would fall in the layout of the story? Start, middle, end? She could be a very intriguing character I think, and the question stands 'is she really a villain?' Or that could just be me...

Thank you! I appreciate what you've said as it's let me know I'm on the right track. I'd actually been doing research on villainous characters when I wrote it, so I would chalk the depth up to quality inspiration. I'm actually trying to answer some of those questions myself. I only started working on the idea three days ago, I'm not even sure what the story is about yet, haha. But I have come up with a few other possible events, and based on that I'd guess this would come around the middle of the book.

"Is she really a villain," is exactly the feeling I'm going for right now. I'm hoping to make her out to be charismatic enough that people don't want her to be evil, but I can assure you she's actually quite a heinous person.

Mmmm, well, either way, good luck with your story :) Hopefully it will progress further than mine usually do

I like this, it seems like she might make for an interesting character. I'm wondering what the motivation of a person like this could be.

I like this, it seems like she might make for an interesting character. I'm wondering what the motivation of a person like this could be.