Yearning to be Evil
By David Corbett | March 13, 2018 |
The only etchings I’ve seen have been behind glass
And the closest I’ve been to a bar is at ballet class*
Last week Kathryn Craft and Don Maass both addressed particular issues related to portraying protagonists—Kathryn pointing out the essential role of willfulness, and Don exploring the crucial role of shame in defining what the character fears and what it will take to overcome it.
I’m going to turn the focus around on the character I call the Opponent, but others call the Nemesis, the Antagonist, the Adversary, or the Villain. (Some resist this terminology. The crime writer Les Edgerton rejects it outright, preferring instead Main Character #1 and Main Character #2, an approach I actually like a lot.)
I define this character as the one with the power, the will, and the desire to deny, destroy, or claim for himself what the Protagonist wants.
This can be as benign as a reluctant love interest, or a competitor for the same job. Even when the character commits genuinely bad acts, he may believe himself justified, whether out of desperation for a better course, out of devotion to a cause considered worthy or even noble, or some other belief that “the ends justify the means.” (Of course, these justifications may mask a deeper, truly insidious purpose, but I’ll leave that to another post.)
I’m going to focus here on something far more blatantly malevolent, and discuss those characters who genuinely long for harm, cruelty, destruction, chaos, etc., whether that seems to be the only way to escape some profound sense of affliction, to claim power in the only way that feels truly significant and meaningful—or simply because they take pleasure in the misery of others.
You know. Like Captain Hook.
Yearning and Wickedness
I want to be nasty, I want to be cruel
I want to be daring, I want to shoot pool
As most of you who follow my postings know, the central issue I explore with my characters is their Yearning—their “dream of life,” i.e., the kind of person they want to be, the way of life they hope to live.
This encompasses identity, morality, and interpersonal relationships, as well as the character’s tribe (the group to which she feels a unique and compelling bond) and sense of home (the place where she believes she belongs).
It is sometimes easy to fall into the trap of believing that, in their original, unpolluted essence, all Yearnings involve a greater largeness of heart, generosity of spirit, or some other enhancement of virtue: courage, honesty, compassion, forbearance.
This is a natural extension of the psychoanalytic ideal of individuation, which presupposes an instinctive drive to integration, wholeness, and health.
As gratifying or reassuring as it might be to believe to interpret one’s Yearning only in its most positive light, the truth is a harsh mistress. Not everyone wishes to sing in the choir.
But why?
This is not the place to explore the question, Why Does Evil Exist? It’s an exhaustive issue, studied for centuries, with each generation offering new insights.
But to the extent the question is relevant to characterization, we need to at least ask why certain characters not only commit crimes and do harm, but strive for it, derive pleasure from it—even fashion their identities around it.
Are Monsters Born or Made? Does it Matter?
I want to be wicked, I want to tell lies
I want to be mean and throw mud pies
Although the conviction that some people are simply “born bad” is a favorite conceit in certain quarters, writers risk lackluster results if they permit themselves such an easy out with their characters.
That’s not to say there isn’t some truth to the claim.
Not everyone wishes to sing in the choir.
Consider what is commonly referred to as the Dark Triad of personality disorders (ironically, the three such disorders most commonly found in successful people):
- Narcissism (characterized by grandiosity, pride, egotism, and a lack of empathy)
- Machiavellianism (characterized by manipulation and exploitation of others, a cynical disregard for morality, and a focus on self-interest and deception)
- Psychopathy (characterized by enduring antisocial behavior, impulsivity, risk-taking, selfishness, callousness, and remorselessness)
If you suffer from a personality disorder you can genuinely claim you were “born that way.” But that’s not the end of the discussion as the fact that there are “successful” and “functional” narcissists and psychopaths attests.
This means either that there are varying degrees of these disorders, or that even people who possess them are not necessarily trapped inside their pathology. They may not be able to “heal” or transcend their condition but that doesn’t make them impervious to experience.
This gets us back to the old nature vs nurture argument, which is always inclusive. Both factors always apply, the only question is to which degree. In characterization this means discovering how the character’s intrinsic disposition and life experience interact—supporting, reinforcing, contradicting each other.
A character’s past experience is NEVER irrelevant. Backstory is behavior, even with a calling from God. Or an organic disorder.
There are indeed cases where individuals suffer personality disorders that render them impervious to insight and change. But that is typically not how they themselves see the matter. Nowhere is the dictum that every character is the hero of his own narrative more applicable—and more necessary—than when creating a character whose ambitions include violence, destruction, and cruelty.
Claiming a character’s behavior is entirely explained by some neurological condition risks creating a “plot puppet” in scientific drag. The character becomes a mere victim or automaton, albeit of a horrific sort, draped in psycho-babble.
Backstory is behavior, even with a calling from God. Or an organic disorder.
Also, labeling a character as a psychopath or a narcissist risks violating the first and most essential rule of characterization: Justify, don’t judge, the character.
Attaching a label to a character is an implicit judgment, exhibiting a need to confine his behavior within a descriptive straitjacket, which only diminishes the character (and the writer). Since the protagonist will be measured by the opposition he overcomes, a slight or cartoonish villain will diminish your hero as well.
The way to rectify this is to once again reclaim the character’s dignity through imagining his Yearning. As long as he is conscious, he is more than just a robotic response to unconscious stimuli. He is convinced he wills his actions with intent, and that intent is an expression of his Yearning: the dark avenger he longs to be, the righteous nightmare he hopes to bring to life.
Summing up: Even if your character is “born bad,” you need to explore how his life experience shaped that pathology—reinforcing it, reining it in, tempering it, encouraging it. You can’t escape backstory, even if you never address it directly in the text itself (more on that below).
One key moment to explore: the first time the character recognized that he was “different” than others, or expressed his tendency toward cruelty, indifference, manipulation, grandiosity. What happened? Who else was present? What reaction did the other person have? How did that affect how the character felt about what he did, and who he was?
Another key moment: the first time the character suffered some physical or psychological harm, whether accidental or in the form of punishment or abuse. Just as with normal people, the desire to get even and seek retribution is powerful. In those with personality disorders, it often takes extreme form.
Further Exploration of “What Made Me This Way”
I want to be evil, I want to get mad
But more than that, I want to be bad
The French philosopher Simone Weil devised the term “affliction” to refer to experiences of relentless, unmitigated, and horrific violence, deprivation, and shaming—such as repeated child abuse, rape, torture, even combat, especially when civilians are targeted. Children are especially vulnerable, including those fleeing drought, famine, war zones, or confined within refugee camps.
Such experiences, especially if the sufferer feels not only that there is no escape, but succumbs to a deep and personal shame because of his suffering, can result in such an utter loss of faith in human decency, such a loss of confidence that well-being will ever return, that the ability to love or accept love is forever lost. Such individuals live in a darkness so profound that escape no longer seems possible.
This sort of prolonged, repeated, malicious abuse finds its way into the biographies of numerous violent offenders, especially sexual predators. What might appear to be simply a “malignant heart,” as the legal texts would phrase it, in fact is the consequence of unthinkable victimization, usually in childhood.
Such experiences … can result in such an utter loss of faith in human decency, such a loss of confidence that well-being will ever return, that the ability to love or accept love is forever lost.
This can be thought of as an extreme case where experience has forged—or malformed—the Yearning. Whatever innocent or benevolent “dream of life” might have once existed is lost for good. Another Yearning has risen in its place, marked by a craving for power and dominance that, in turn, echoes back to an underlying terror of weakness, even if the individual remains unaware or unconscious of that fact.
My late wife, during law school, worked pro bono on a death penalty case involving just such a defendant. He was accused of killing three young men, each one younger than the last. In his interviews with defense psychologists, he described the repeated sexual abuse he suffered in a progression of orphanages and foster homes. And the increasing youth of his victims represented, in accordance with what is known as the repetition compulsion, a symbolic attempt to return to the age of his own victimization, to relive the event but this time with a different outcome, where he is not the victim but the victimizer. As unforgivable as his actions might be, they were nonetheless evidence of a disturbed attempt to heal.
In cases like the one just identified, the victims serve as totemic replacements for the sufferer himself, helping him to erase the memory of his own violation by inflicting it on someone else. I’m not the victim, you are. In still other cases, the victim will represent the wholesome world of caring concern the killer has lost forever. See what the world is really like? If I can’t be innocent neither can you.
An example of a similar character from fiction is Francis Dolarhyde in the novel Red Dragon by Thomas Harris. From the outside, Francis conforms to the usual diagnostic profile of a sexual predator—a victim of severe sexual and psychological abuse as a child, resulting in fantasies of sadistic and murderous domination.
Harris, however, does not limit his character to that biography. Exemplifying what C.G. Jung referred to as “psychopathic archetypal inflation,” Francis reveals not just a fascination with William Blake’s painting “The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed With the Sun,” but a psychic identification with it. He believes himself to be the physical embodiment of the Red Dragon.
This vision informs how Francis views not just himself but his sadistic longings and murders. He is not the mere product of his painful, humiliating past. He is a monster in the truest, greatest, most transcendent — even beautiful — meaning of the word.
It is tempting to conclude that what Francis suffered as a child transformed him into that monster, distorting whatever childlike Yearning he might have had into the diabolical one he came to embrace as an adult. But that’s not entirely clear.
It remains an open question whether Francis’s tortured childhood created this Yearning or merely awakened it. We can also see, however, from the writer’s perspective, where the question is moot. Whether Francis was born with the Red Dragon already nascent in his psyche or turned to it in the face of his torments is largely irrelevant. The point is this: As the story begins, that image now defines his identity and chosen way of life. It represents his Yearning.
To Reveal or Not to Reveal
And in the theater, I want to change my seat
Just so I can step on everybody’s feet
Not all characters possess backstories that might explain their turn toward criminality. Shakespeare provided us with two such villains—Iago and Richard III.
The Bard was notoriously stingy in providing his characters with explicit motivation, and this is particularly true of Iago. Though he clearly resents being passed over for promotion by Othello, he could easily have rectified that slight by merely carrying out the first part of his plan—engineering a drunken brawl involving Cassio, guaranteeing his demotion.
Iago’s decision to keep going, to destroy Othello through manipulation, causing not just the Moor’s fall but the murder of his innocent wife, Desdemona, speaks to a craving for more than vengeance and vindication. It speaks to an essentially hateful nature that revels in deceit and mayhem.
Richard III, as befitting royalty, is even more manipulative, deceitful, and murderous, with a body count Iago would envy, including as it does not just nobles but women and children.
Though Richard’s disfigurement is sometimes cited as a reason for his malevolence—the real Richard of Gloucester contracted idiopathic scoliosis in adolescence—he offers no such justification himself, nor does anyone else offer this as explanation. Describing himself as “determined to prove a villain,” he simply seems possessed of a “malignant heart.”
Interestingly, though both characters are clearly reprehensible, they typically mesmerize audiences through the simple trick of speaking directly to them, making all who listen unwitting co-conspirators.
A similar device is used by the modern incarnation of Richard III, Frank Underwood of the American TV series House of Cards.
Not only does Frank share the technique of scheming with the audience, he also, despite flashes into his past, offers no satisfying justification for the degree of evil he is willing to embrace in furtherance of those schemes.
Like both Richard and Iago, he has been passed over, but that never seems to genuinely account for his lust for not just sidelining his adversaries but, whenever possible, leaving them crushed, humiliated, even dead. Being passed over merely provides the spark that lights the fuse. The bomb was there the entire time.
The reason none of these characters need explicit backstories may lie in the fact they all bear a strong resemblance to Lucifer, whose sin is pride, and whose resentment at being overlooked, and then banished, is an unquenchable thirst for corruption, destruction, and ruin. That narrative is instinctively understood by readers and audiences, since it is so central to the cultural iconography.
The reason none of these characters need explicit backstories may lie in the fact they all bear a strong resemblance to Lucifer
Given the apparent void where a motive should be, how do we address the issue of the character’s Yearning? Is he responding to an organic disorder or some other instinctive disposition in fashioning his dream of life—who he wants to be, how he hopes to live? Or are there experiences unmentioned in the text that explain how the character’s malignant heart was forged?
We shouldn’t confuse the reader’s and audience’s understanding with the writer’s. One reason Shakespeare deprived characters of explicit motivations was to better allow the audience to devise its own, deepening its engagement with the play. That doesn’t mean he himself was unclear or unaware of what drove the character to act.
Refusing to overtly state the character’s motivation can be a powerful technique, especially with characters whose actions are not just surprising but shocking, even horrifying—as long as the silence as to why he acts as he does isn’t mere avoidance of the issue on the part of the writer.
That said, just because you the writer understand the matter doesn’t mean you need share it with the reader or audience. Leaving the monster’s Yearning unexpressed, remaining silent about the cause of his passion for carnage and cruelty, can intensify the terror he evokes. We are never so frightened as when we fail to understand.
One final word on the technique of having the villain directly address the reader or audience: John Fowles in The Collector allows his villain, Freddy Clegg, to address the reader in first person. Patricia Highsmith in The Talented Mr. Ripley uses close third person, but the effect is largely the same. Unlike the supremely devious Iago, Richard, and Frank Underwood, however, Freddy and Ripley, though aware of what they are doing, lack any genuine insight into the fact their actions are deliberately cruel—an effect that interestingly only enhances the terror their actions invoke, for an individual who sees no evil in what he does is capable of virtually anything.
The “Cartoonish” Villain–a Reconsideration
I want to be horrid, I want to drink booze
And whatever I’ve got, I’m eager to lose
As a final exercise in villainy, let’s consider The Joker as portrayed by Heath Ledger in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. A more cartoonish villain would be hard to come by. And yet he’s one of the most complex, compelling, and fascinating villains around. That’s because he transcends that cartoonish stature in three distinct ways, all echoing remarks made above:
- He lacks an explicit backstory. Rather than being silent on the matter, however, he gives two distinct, contradictory explanations as to how he came by his hideous face, which obscures any real understanding of how his past explains his behavior. That opacity intensifies the terror he incites. He will actively subvert any attempt to “understand” him.
- He exhibits “psychopathic archetypal inflation.” He not only believes that life is a cruel joke—life has no meaning, there is no such thing as noble suffering, people are feckless, corruption and cowardice are universal—he embodies the archetypal manifestation of that joke. It’s not a mask, it’s his truest self–which reinforces his lack of backstory. Resorting to childhood experience or other real-life causes to explain his evil simply represents one more way lesser minds cling to false hope. They fail to grasp the real nature of existence—it’s all a sick joke.
- He reveals his Yearning in a moral code. His psychopathic inflation also reflects his “dream of life”—the kind of person he wants to be, the way of life he hopes to live. “I’m an engine of chaos,” he says. “And you know the thing about chaos: It’s fair.”
This last point deserves special mention. One of the ways that villains truly becomes memorable is in their moral argument—how they justify to themselves and others what they do. That deserves a post all its own, and I’ll get to that in the future. For now, I’ll just point out that the Joker is by far the character with the most eye-opening lines in The Dark Knight. I don’t know to what extent Christopher Nolan admires or even reads George Bernard Shaw, but he followed the Nobel laureate’s example of giving the most compelling arguments to the most ethically compromised character.
So: do you have a truly villainous character in your story?
Can their tendency to evil be explained by a natural disposition or life experience—i.e., were they born evil or “made that way”? Is it perhaps a combination of the two? (Hint: Yes. Explain.)
What is their Yearning—their dream of life, the person they want to be, the way of life they hope to live—and why does it involve harm to others, indifference or even taking pleasure in their suffering? Has it always been that way, or did something happen that turned a more benign Yearning into a malignant one?
Do they exhibit “psychopathic archetypal inflation”? If so, how?
*The lyrics quoted throughout the post are from “I Want to be Evil,” written by Lester Judson and Raymond Taylor. For the definitive performance of the song, go to Youtube and look for Eartha Kitt’s rendition.
Concerning the images used, they are all from the Internet Archive of Book Images. The first (the featured image for the post) is from page 471 of “The history of Our Lord as exemplified in works of art: with that of His types; St. John the Baptist; and other persons of the Old and New Testament” (1872); the second and third are from page 153 and 98, respectively, of “Religious emblems: being a series of emblematic engravings, with written explanations, miscellaneous observations and religious reflections, designed to illustrate divine truth, in accordance with the cardinal principles of Christ” (1868).
David Corbett (he/him) is the author of seven novels: The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime (a New York Times Notable Book), Blood of Paradise (nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar, Do They Know I’m Running?, The Mercy of the Night, The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday, and The Truth Against the World. He has also published the story collection Thirteen Confessions and the novella The Devil Prayed and Darkness Fell.
David’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in a broad array of magazines and anthologies, with pieces twice selected for Best American Mystery Stories.
His non-fiction has appeared in numerous venues, including the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Narrative, Zyzzyva, MovieMaker, The Writer, and Writer’s Digest.
He has taught both online and in classroom settings through the UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program, Book Passage, LitReactor, 826 Valencia, The Grotto in San Francisco, and at numerous writing conferences across the US, Canada, and Mexico. In January 2013 Penguin published his textbook on the craft of characterization, The Art of Character (“A writer’s bible that will lead to your character’s soul.” —Elizabeth Brundage), and Writer’s Digest published his follow-up, The Compass of Character, in October 2019.
This is very helpful, thanks! I need to think more about my villain’s background (although he is probably not a real villain like the Joker). I already know some things about him, but not exactly why he has become quite that Machiavellian character he is. He definitely is disillusioned by human nature, but I am not sure yet what the trigger was. He basically thinks people are sheep that need to be guided into the direction he sees fit.
Hi J:
That’s classic position — it’s sometimes called defiant individualism, where the person sees himself as a cut above the average bear.
Richard III is a great example, but so are many other villains. The call to evil almost always includes a narcissistic element of self-grandeur and self-elevation.
Alternatively, it may reflect the notion that he refuses to be the person others consider him to be; he will not live in society’s straitjacket, or live down to their smug, condescending idea of who he is.
It might be organic, in which case the past doesn’t create this view of himself but events mold and shape it.
Or events may have created it, in which case you’re probably looking for moments of shaming by a person the villain-to-be comes to hate, and identifies with the ignorant, cowardly, conformist, hypocritical masses.
In either case, you’re looking for that moment when the character first perceived himself to be different, and told himself: I’m not like them. There’s a strong element of defiant resentment.
Good luck!
David, all of the above. I knew someone for quite a long time who fit all those descriptions, and I’ve spent many years sorting out all the characteristics you mention, identifying them and estimating their relative weights, just for my own enlightenment (how could I have been so blind, etc.). If I live so long, I have material for many characters. Meanwhile, my current villain clearly requires more complexity. He already knows he’s “not like them” and I need to find the defining moment in his backstory.
Thought provoking post, David, thanks.
My WIP in progress has two characters who both experienced cruelty and victimization as children: very similar experiences, experiences rooted in the corruption, greed, and callousness of others.
Both are rescued. Both find love. Both wind up with powerful allies. Both have a Yearning to never be victims again. They are so similar in their demeanor and outwardly-expressed attitudes — being strong is a moral imperative, those who allow themselves to be weak are responsible for their victimization — that victims of one are terrified by the sight of the other.
But one lives in a Nietzschian society and becomes the chief villain of the work. The other embraces the faith of her parents and becomes the MC’s heroic companion.
I didn’t plan it this way — it’s just how the characters evolved. I’m not particularly religious myself. But I don’t deny the power of faith — whether it is in oneself, another person (like a child does in parent), a culture (e.g., “America!”), a philosophy (e.g., Confucianism or Nietzsche-ism), or a deity — to shape both individuals and cultures. Faith is a two-edged sword that produces both heroes and villains, both thinking they are following the Truest Way.
Faith, like the foundations of mathematics, is axiomatic: true because we decide it is true, and incapable of being disproved. The degree to which faith determines a character’s development, how they react to trauma, shouldn’t be ignored. When a person has faith, that faith forms the foundation and scaffolding upon which their character exists and develops.
So whether a character is a villain or a hero, an author should understand what, if anything, they have faith in. And if you really want to torture them, shatter that faith.
N.B. This comment didn’t start out as being about faith. It started out as about how nearly-the-same backstories can produce very different characters. But that turned out to be because of what the different characters had faith in, and so here we are.
Hi PCGE:
I like that pairing of characters, having two with similar backgrounds evolve so differently and need to face each other. Question: why did you make one of them a sidekick instead of the MC?
I also like your interpretation of faith, though I would put it differently. I would focus on the Yearning–the person the character longs to be, the way of life he hopes to live. This too relies on faith of a sort, and shattering that dream will definitely crush someone.
Ah, Nietzsche. Where would we be in our arguments about evil without him (and Machiavelli)?
As a former math major, I must admit I cringed a little at the equation of faith and mathematics. Just one example: It is difficult to shatter one’s faith in Euclidean geometry or basic arithmetic, even though, as you say, it is an axiomatic system. The difference lies in the level of abstraction in the axioms. Torture me all you want, I’m still likely to believe that if A > B and B > C, then A > C (unless we’re getting into oddball topological spaces, in which case all bets are off).
Thanks for chiming in. Good luck with this story, it sounds intriguing.
Why did that character become the sidekick? Because the MC suffered worse, but is too kind to become what her friend becomes — or so she hopes.
Nature vs. Nurture takes on special meaning when you’re a singular product of illegal genetic engineering, strong, fast, and smart, but raised to be loving and gentle. No matter who you think you are, how human you think you are, there’s no knowing what lurks in the neural configurations beneath your conscious mind. It might be something utterly inhuman, something that explains why your creator gave you that inhuman speed and strength — something you’d rather die than be.
I’ve a BS in Math myself and I stick with my comparison to math. Not to challenge your faith in it, but Euclidean geometry isn’t really correct– not in a gravitational field, and not on the surface of a sphere. It is a good approximation though. :)
Oh, so you’re going to drag out the non-Euclidean geometry argument. Okay, buster. You’re on.
Yes, Euclidean geometry fails on the surface of a sphere, etc. But in Euclidean space it works just ducky.
The point: axioms are not articles of faith. They are mere suppositions on which a mathematical or logical system is based. Take one away, you get a different system. No one is crushed or stops believing in the value of life because you take away the parallel line axiom.
Now, if you want to argue that Gödel’s work or Russell’s paradox had a devastating effect not just on math but not a few mathematicians, fine. (No one, apparently, was more shattered than Gödel himself, for he was an avowed Platonist.)
I love the genetic engineering premise of your story. It’s a great new twist on Jeckyl and Hyde — we do not and cannot know ourselves completely.
BTW: apropos of not much, the whole “search for the true self” story line, which parallels the search for God, is never more devastatingly presented, imho, than in Ingmar Bergman’s Through A Glass Darkly, when Karin finally opens the door to the closet where she believes God has been hiding … and discovers that he is a spider.
Hi David,
I’m saving this post. I don’t have a true villain in my current WIP but I may in my next one. I prosecuted many “villains” and often wondered what made them commit such terrible crimes. Some were obvious: victims of child abuse, drug-addled mothers, etc. Others were less so, having what appeared on the outside to have been decent upbringings, nuclear families, good education, well-paying jobs. Those were the mysteries, the ones that someday may appear in my fiction. I do believe that in trying to understand even the most evil among us, we come to better understand ourselves.
Thanks for such a thoughtful and compelling post!
Thanks, Mary.
Yeah, in my work in the justice system we came across a broad array of backgrounds, and a variety of good-guy bad guys and bad-guy good guys. Sometimes the ambitions are meager or even accidental. People stumble into evil — like Gyges in the old Greek myth, who discovers a ring that makes him invisible. First thing he does, kills the king and rapes the queen. (Oh, those rascally Greeks.) But hey, even there, you can imagine what led Gyges to seek revenge against those two particular people.
We all harbor resentments. To make a great villain, inflate them.
Good luck!
Often
My villain has abandonment issues. He was traumatized at a very early age after becoming lost in the dark and nearly left to die of fright. He grew up angry but brilliant, and determined to matter, no matter what he had to do to achieve that goal. Given that he subconsciously equates love with lack and weakness, though, he often opts for simple obeisance. There are times when I actually like him, though, in those moments when he accepts that he’s flawed and embraces it. He’s honest, at least.
Hi, Susan:
That kind of abandonment tracks well with Weil’s concept of affliction. I wonder, though, if he was abandoned, would he only equate love with lack and weakness? Wouldn’t he also associate it with betrayal (thus his demand for obedience) and even cruelty? A great many villains are born when a child notices that what everyone calls “love” is really self-aggrandizing abuse.
Good call on giving the villain insight. It almost always makes him more fascinating — and the fact you “actually like him” at times is another good sign, imho. Making evil seductive only makes it more terrifying.
Good luck!
I agree, Dave. His screwed-up views on love would be more complex than just seeing love as a weakness. But he does see his need for it, when he allows himself to feel it, as a weakness in himself. This is such a great post!
Great article! It’s definitely harder to be good. Being bad is soooo easy for me. I don’t think most people realize how much energy I have to expend to be good. Even a puny conscience is the great leverer.
Remind me to count the silver after you leave, Thea. :-)
My villain is prideful and thinks he’s doing good! I recognize myself in him. Classic horror stories don’t really horrify me, but I am horrified by the evil I am capable of. But then there’s the action of grace. I see this is stories–moments of grace–and it can make me cry.
PCGE’s story scenario is one I’ve often pondered. It’s amazing how similar circumstances can make one person a saint, and the other succumb to evil. It is a choice the person makes, deciding which path to take.
Thanks for the great fodder–it’s been esp. rich all this month.
Hi, Vijaya:
One of the techniques I teach for making a morally compromised hero — who often is not that much different than the villain — is to push a virtue to an extreme: fairness and understanding becomes indecision, belief in the law becomes an obsession with rules and obedience, reasonable suspicion curdles into paranoia, etc.
Taking self-confidence (or pride) to an extreme would seem to suit that paradigm. Also, in accordance with the dictum that the villain is the hero of his own narrative, the fact that a proud person would only consider their motives pure and their deeds laudable makes perfect sense.
Is there any point in the story when this character becomes aware that her motives aren’t so pure, or her deeds aren’t so laudable?
BTW: Using a trait you yourself possess to create a character, especially a villain, is a great technique for making sure the character arouses real emotion.
David, my daughter brought home a piece of paper which she was going to toss–on Aristotle’s views of virtues and vices. Example of a virtuous mean is Courage. It’s corresponding vice of deficiency is Cowardice and vice of excess is Rashness. I rescued it and have filed it somewhere but it makes so much sense. Ap. Fulton Sheen’s book on the Seven Capital Sins is a slim gem that helps me both fight the battle and write believable villains :)
Yes, my antagonist is self-serving so although he sounds good and laudable, it’s not so in reality. He recognizes this eventually and mends his ways, slow by slow bit. His teacher is the daughter whom he thought incapable of deep thinking because she’s intellectually disabled. I made him a ponderous old professor, giving him my academic background :)
I used to watch Bishop Sheen on TV when I was a kid. Always loved the bit where he would step away from the blackboard, the camera would track with him as he continued talking, then he’d venture back — and the blackboard would be magically erased! “My guardian angel,” he would explain.
Bertrand Russell had an interesting response to Aristotle’s “moderation in all things.” He argued that some virtues cannot be fit neatly into that paradigm. For example–should we pursue moderation when it comes to pursuing the truth? Perhaps in personal matters, to spare someone’s feelings (see my response to Beth below), but what about scientific truth? Historical truth? Or what about justice? What middle line should we search for in pursuing justice? Is it okay if only half the world’s children starve to death–because the number lies at the midway point between all children and none?
Ah, the consolations of philosophy.
Philosophy can get you in a pickle without a hearty dose of charity. I tend more towards Ayn Rand’s absolutes. There are some things that I will not compromise. My intellectually disabled character has that quality. Why yes, a piece of me is in all of them.
Interesting you would champion charity and then invoke Ayn Rand, who famously derided altruism as moral suicide. I will concede she was smitten with absolutes, and I’ve often suggested you can create a credible hero from what she considers virtues. (Russell said something similar about Aristotle.)
I’m full of contradictions David. My daughter is named Dagny after the heroine in Atlas Shrugged. After our conversion she lamented that there was no St. Dagny. I told her she could be the first :) I like some of Rand’s ideas, particularly on excellence, and it always surprised me that such an intelligent woman rejected God. It just goes to show that faith is a gift that one has to accept and nurture.
David, you take so much time with your posts and offer so much–thank you. I’m taking a class with Don Maass this week and we had to pick three minor characters in our current WIP and assign them a trait. I picked an antagonist and assigned her the trait of authenticity, because she acts as a foil to my MC. She says what she thinks and it’s truth-telling that is not always kind. So she’s not evil, but somewhere down on that scale. She also will change and become more of a friend. Another of my antagonists does have pathology in her background. I carefully researched the psychology behind child abuse to discover how she would act. I found you post fascinating, and in the end feel that there might be some blending between author creativity and psychology. After all this is fiction. Thanks, David. Great stuff. Eartha Kitt who knew!!
Hi, Beth:
Authenticity is an interesting trait to pick for an antagonist. It goes directly to the idea of her being the hero of her own narrative. For her, being authentic (I’m guessing) means not just being honest about herself, but honest about and to others. Or is she really so painfully honest about herself? Does she recognize that she secretly enjoys hurting people’s feelings because she thinks they’re stupid or dishonest for not recognizing or admitting their glaringly obvious (to her) faults?
See what I responded to Vijaya above about pushing a virtue to an extreme to create a moral flaw. “Painfully honest” is one such extreme virtue. And extreme virtues can allow a character to justify their actions to themselves under the guise of doing the right but difficult thing.
However, that devotion to honesty may allow her the strength to not turn away when the glaring light of candor is turned on herself. Someone with a personality disorder can’t do that. The fact that she changes suggests she has insight (and humility). All in all, not such a formidable opponent.
Your abuse victim may reveal more promise in the realm of sheer audacious opposition and infliction of harm. That’s sad to say, but so many abusers are themselves victims. (I teach in a men’s prison. The stories …) And the damage they suffered, the terror of “going back there,” can often build a truly impregnable wall between their ego and the painful, shameful truth they just do not want to face.
Fun stuff. Next post — genocide!
Tell Don I say hello.
Awesome help, David. Will say hi to Don and yes, I agree with all of this–will save and read your mentioned comment.
Hey David – I really appreciate the deep dig you’ve taken us on today. You’ve left me thinking all morning.
I’ve always gotten good feedback on my primary antagonist. I’ve always written from his POV (in close third), and I intuitively wrote him with understandable motives. He’s impulsive, selfish, compassionless, and snarky. I’ve had readers say he’s funny, and even likable in his way. I’ve even had a couple of people say he’s my most interesting character, which I used to sort of resent (rather than simply taking the compliment, and realizing I needed to up my game with my protagonists, as I should have). Not sure what all of that says about me.
The reaction he’s gotten reminds me a little bit of The Hound, in Game of Thrones. Though I wouldn’t compare myself to GRRM, or even to the show’s writers (and I think the character in the show has taken it to a whole new level), as reprehensible as he is, there’s something that makes the reader or viewer grin every time the guy shows up on the page or the screen.
As for whether my antag was born evil or “made that way,” I always would’ve said he’s definitely more a product of nurture than nature. One of the things your essay made me realize is how much he and my MC learned from each other. For example, in their time as friends, my MC learns the power of wealth (not to mention the power of a willing unscrupulousness in its accumulation) and of creating a scapegoat/common foe in the consolidation of power. Then – get this – I realized today that what my antagonist learns from my MC is ruthlessness. And that accumulating political power is a worthy pursuit. My antagonist had always thought wealth could keep him safe, contentedly living in the imperial underworld, until my MC violently bursts his bubble.
I’m also realizing the potential power that resides in the antagonist’s patience and willingness to play along with my MC in order to set him up. He doesn’t just want to beat him, or to see him dead. He wants nothing short of the destruction of his world, his heirs, and his legacy. In other words, he’s patiently plotting, and playing a very long con game in order for a hella lot of people to suffer and/or die. So yeah, there’s some serious villainy there.
Thanks for the exercises in examining his Yearning and the origin of this villainy. You’ve provided really useful insight today. Again, much appreciated.
Hey Vaughn:
The comments seem to be feeding off each other, or there’s some kind of thematic thread unconsciously developing.
First, villains are fun to write and are often (almost always) easier to get down on the page than the hero. It’s because villains allow us to unburden our psyches of what we normally must keep under wraps. Turn the spigot on, the juice flows.
I love the Hound, and for all his murderous despair and rage he is true to himself, which echoes Beth’s remark about her antagonist being authentic. One of my favorite scenes is when he tells Arya that he’s a killer, not a thief. “You have to have a code.” When he subsequently steals from a poor farmer and Arya confronts him, he replies, “I don’t steal from the living. That man won’t last the winter.”
I would perhaps take a look at your antagonist’s resentment. To be willing to do that much harm to so many others, he has to feel (like Richard III) that he has been mocked, betrayed, overlooked, and hsunted aside far too often. He wants to get even at all those who thought so little of him, who shamed him, who laughed at him — not just them, but all their supporters, enablers, and allies. He wants to burn it all down. ( Never overlook a fascination with fire when creating a character with vengeful heart.)
I also commend your making the MC and antagonist share a certain moral middle ground. The hero’s journey is always one of self discovery, and the trek to the villain’s home ground is always a journey into the Shadow. (Sorry to get all Jungean here, but it’s helpful.) Only by recognizing and integrating the Shadow, without succumbing to its dark power, can the hero become more whole and defeat his nemesis.
Write on!
Thank you for this Brilliant piece! You grabbed me immediately with the Dark Triad – as that is totally my bailiwick. In The Sleeping Serpent MC #1 is Afflicted with the Dark Triad; often referred to as “malignant narcissism” I never labeled or diagnosed this character and subtly provided back-story about his past as it was relayed by him; which could have been unreliable. I believe the Dark Triad is caused by trauma, which I have come to equate with the term Affliction. Thank you so much for the bible on Simone Weil – The Love of God and Affliction— she has become a touch stone. Affliction/Trauma can “come through” karmically (I do believe this, but that’s just me) but primarily is an inability to connect, as in attachment disorder. This inability to attach creates the inexorable emptiness and pain that is the germination of the Dark Triad (or to a lesser degree one or more of the 3 – Narcissism, Machiavellianism, Psychopathy) — leading to the Yearning for Belonging, Connection, Acceptance, Validation, Love. The inability to feel empathy leaves the afflicted in a constant state of mistrust and abandonment – The Orphan. The Orphan lives alone in the world and the world in not safe. There is no one to depend on and no one can be trusted. When the MC is afflicted and does terrible things to others because they have a desire to possess them, control them, take what they need from them in the hope of assuaging their own suffering (narcissistic supply), the reader may be able (try really hard) to have some sympathy for the character because they are afflicted with this irreparable inner wound. You unearthed the “acorn” (Soul’s Code) here in what you wrote: “…if the sufferer feels not only that there is no escape, but succumbs to a deep and personal shame because of his suffering, can result in such an utter loss of faith in human decency, such a loss of confidence that well-being will ever return, that the ability to love or accept love is forever lost. Such individuals live in a darkness so profound that escape no longer seems possible.” That is so powerful! To varying degrees, the abuser takes pleasure in causing suffering in others, as it brings them a sense of release and euphoria. This could be an entire essay about the Christian (Jesuit) practice of self-mortification of the flesh as a spiritual discipline for the atonement of sins, which when practiced induces ecstasy. This ecstasy can be attained in the physical abuse of others, and can translate in the mind of the abuser, as the absolution of sin. In my current WIP, I am continuing my pursuit for the Light, the escape hatch and redemption for my character. Thank you again. You still have your own folder and I print-out and yellow highlight your brilliant essays!
Hi, Luna:
A few words of caution. The Dark Triad is not one disorder. It’s three distinct disorders. Also, since they are organic — i.e., constitutional — they are not caused by trauma, and in fact are largely impervious to insight and therapy.
Glad you found the posting helpful.
Wow. What a post. So much to ponder here.
I’m currently working on two stories, one MG and one YA. Neither has an evil villain, per se. The MC in the YA (OMG, writing that just got the song “YMCA” stuck in my head)–to continue, the “almost fourteen” year-old MC (one of her quirks: since age nine, when asked her age she always answers “almost” 10, 11, 12, etc. if she’s within six months of her next birthday), gets separated from her parents during a storm. Not sure if they are alive, she must spend the next few days navigating a world of strangers, in a city her family moved to just a couple months earlier. In addition to fear (she keeps reminding herself “don’t let your imagination run away with you”) and survival, one of her challenges is figuring out who she can trust after she sees a shelter volunteer take a wallet from someone’s backpack. I guess, in a way, she’s her own lack of knowledge, naïve assumptions, misconceptions, etc. that ‘s the villain? She keeps wondering if she can trust herself to know, recognize, the people who can be trusted. What if she’s wrong?
Perhaps a villain doesn’t have to be a single person, but can instead be a system, a faceless organization, or the culture of a city?
No reason these aggregates of people can’t suffer the same evil traits as an individual.
Hi, CK:
I would avoid trying to identify a single “villain” and instead focus on what is keeping your MC from reuniting with her parents. That’s the source of conflict, the obstacle to her objective.
It needn’t be personified, any more than we need to pick one character from the Odyssey (or lump them all together as one) to be the “villain.” Odysseus wants to go home. There are perils along the way. He must overcome them, one by one, from the seductive Calypso to the presumptive suitors. That’s the story.
The same is true of Lassie and almost every other MC from a “find the way home” or “reunite with loved ones” story. Unless one character in particular is trying to keep your MC from finding her parents, let it go and focus on desire (objective), conflict (obstacle), and action (how the MC decides to overcome the obstacle(s) and continuing pursuing the objective).
To keep the plot from meandering, you will need to make her perils/obstacles increasingly difficult.
Now, PCGE has a point: if this strange city has a unified ethos, which serves to guide the actions of everyone there — i.e., “I look out for Number 1” or “The Big Fish Eat the Little Fish” — then that group morality can serve as a kind of villain.
One sees this in Satire, where the MC is part of an inauthentic or oppressive society (think Jane Austen’s class-obsessed England) and at first strives to succeed in it only to discover that such a success would betray something fundamental to her sense of self.
It’s also true of Black Comedy, where the society isn’t just oppressive–it’s destructive: Hollywood (The Player), the news media (Network), politics (Wag the Dog), organized crime (Goodfellas), the military (Catch 22), Mutually Assured Destruction (Dr. Strangelove). Here again the MC strives to succeed in the insane system, competes with others to do so, and ends up destroying himself and/or others.
My guess is your MC is simply a stranger in a strange world, and learning who to trust will be crucial to her survival and ultimate escape. Such allies usually make fascinating secondary characters (the entire subplot of learning they can be trusted is often one of the most compelling parts of the story). If your MC does not find an ally, then her perils will have to intensify her own survival skills so she can prevail alone.
These kinds of stories range from Through the Looking Glass tales (Alice in Wonderland, After Hours) to Dickensian child-in-peril tales (Oliver Twist, Great Expectations), to the kinds of stories like the Odyssey and Lassie Come Home I mentioned above.
BTW: Don’t sniff at Lassie (as it were); she might be canine but she’s a true hero.
Hope that’s helpful.
Hi David,
Yes, your response is very helpful. Thank you.
I got interrupted while writing my comment yesterday, and had to quickly wrap it up and go. Reading it just now, I saw what a mess I made of the second to last sentence. What I was attempting to ask is if her own inexperience with the world (her misconceptions, naïve assumptions, etc.) will suffice as “the villain”, and the challenges she faces, something you seem to have figured out in spite of my botched sentence. She does encounter a couple of “bad guys”, but mostly people who, like she, are afraid and trying to cope with the chaos of the storm–no power, no communications, no safe water, etc.
I do like the idea of making the city a villain, because the MC already hates it–she is angry with her parents about the move, anger that has fueled a new rebelliousness in her, which in part is what results in the events that leave her stranded.
And, you’re right, this is a journey story, but it’s as much an interior journey (self-discovery) as exterior (learning more about people).
I’m writing this first (very rough) draft as fast as I can, partly to assure myself of plenty of mental room for future changes, instead of locking my brain into one version of the story. So, I really appreciate your input. Now, I can hardly wait to see where this goes.
All journey stories have both an internal and external dimension. Otherwise they can all too easily turn into “one damn thing after another.”
The trick is to weave together the internal and external struggle threads — as well as any interpersonal struggles, like trust issues, the character may face — so that each step of the journey serves each arc.
With your story, it seems like overcoming the perils of the city will both oblige her to learn to trust certain individuals and also gain greater self-confidence in her capabilities and worth.
Thank you for penning this erudite and thought-provoking study.
You’re most welcome.
Hi David,
Your posts are always enormously thoughtful and useful in terms of unlocking the code of story. Thank you! I have one question I was hoping you could answer. I dislike reading and writing narratives written from the villain’s point-of-view. I just don’t want to spend my time with a villain, if that makes any sense. And I always lose interest at those moments in a story. In any case, I think I’m going to use first person for my WIP. Do you have any suggestions about how to deepen the villain without giving the reader the world through his/her perspective?
Hey S.K.
If you don’t want to enter the mind of the villain, you can bring out his character in scenes, especially through dialogue, with other characters. Sooner or later, though, you have to be able to identify with the character and see the world from his/her perspective. Otherwise your understanding of the character is all external, which can easily turn judgmental.
Makes sense. Thank you!
*fights one last time to get this comment to publish*
Your post today really brought to mind a TV series I watched recently, “Manhunt: Unabomber”. Talk about showing us inside the humanity of someone whose actions terrorized and dehumanized many. The way they depict the lucid clarity of Kazynsky’s argument and how it governed him is so well done it sometimes eclipses the horror of the big picture. To see a man twisted by the pain of his past, a pain he never was able to let go of, who struggled even up to the moment of his arrest with knowing the choice to let go and be free of his compulsion
was always in reach—and to see the tragedy of why he didn’t make this choice; wow, what a mixture of sadness and anger I was left with after this show. As you put it, sometimes the worst and most heinous of villains are themselves victims of the cruel world that shaped them, unaware of the prison that surrounds their very choices, their scripting…the power to change that many of us who lead morally upright lives can take for granted. Doing the right thing seems obvious for those who have never been on the other side where doing the wrong thing is the only right one knows.
For me as viewer/reader/storyteller, I’m very interested in villains who are their own show within the show. We’ve seen enough good guy wins the day, or bad guy goes to ruin. We know in our world we want peace, justice, compassion. But in fiction there’s a new frontier I think—and shows like Manhunt: Unabomber really are exemplary of how we’re exploring it. It’s the place where we explore the terror of walking in the shoes of the most wicked, and really feeling them, shedding tears not out of pity, but out of true empathy… to understand just what it’s like to be evil, and never to overlook the humanity of one lost in this. We can only try to understand, and through this understanding, add more love to the world.