Writing a Sympathetic Antagonist
By Kristin Hacken South | December 7, 2023 |
Therese here to introduce you to today’s special guest, Kristin South! If the name Kristin South rings a bell, it may be that you recognize her as the winner of this year’s full Writer Unboxed Scholarship and/or recall her mentioned in Kim Bullock’s post last week. You may even have met Kristin in Salem last month and formed a fast bond with her, as did many who attended the conference.
I’m thrilled that you all have the chance to meet her now.
Kristin South, like all of you, lives for books. More here, in her own words:
I’ve been writing fiction seriously for ten years. I’ve completed four novels, two of them Middle Grade and two adult. None of them have been published. But I do have about a dozen published academic articles and book chapters and multiple international conference talks to my name, almost all of them in the scintillating and popular field of archaeological textiles from Egypt in the first millennium AD. Total bodice-rippers, every one of ’em. Or at least vaguely related to something like a bodice, if I remember correctly that a bodice is a piece of clothing. I’ve taught middle grade and high school history and been an adjunct at a university, where I taught classes in ancient history and first-year writing. I adored my students and I always enjoyed a good argument about interesting ideas.
Today, Kristin shares not only a critical tipping-point moment for her during this year’s UnConference, she turns that moment into empowering tips for the rest of us. (Because she’s awesome like that.)
Welcome, Kristin! It’s so good to have you with us.
I read a book twenty years ago that has shaped my understanding of the world. (Okay, yes, I’ve read lots of books that have shaped my understanding, but this particular book surprised me with its lasting impact. It didn’t seem to be trying to sway my thinking in any way. It just did.)
The book was How to Be Good, by Nick Hornby, whose better known novels About A Boy and High Fidelity were both made into movies. It tells the story of several people going about their lives with a firm belief that what they do — work as a doctor, help the homeless, seek spiritual enlightenment — makes them a good person. Because of their innate goodness, they each think, everyone else should give them a pass for other things they do that aren’t quite so good (like having an affair or mooching off of others).
Everyone in the story has their own view of what constitutes goodness, so conflicts inevitably arise. Each character insists on his or her own goodness while judging everyone else’s. The book is comic and pointedly accurate in its exaggeration, like other books by Nick Hornby. I think part of the reason it has stuck with me, though, is that while exploring a unified theme it doesn’t force an answer to the question the book poses: What is the right way to be good? Is there a “best” good out there? Apart from the title of the book itself, these issues are never directly addressed, but the book as a whole constantly interrogates them.
What stuck with me, and has informed my way of thinking about other people ever since, was that every single character in the book, when viewed from the inside, was good. Viewed by others, each was less than good.
With few exceptions, we all want to believe in our own goodness. This bedrock belief is important to my current work in progress, a book told from the points of view of three people whose lives are intertwined but who differ enormously. One of the three, I confess, is a character I don’t particularly like. He is more certain of his righteousness than most, and his choices and pronouncements actively harm a lot of other people. Even though I dislike him, I decided this book needs his voice because many people do agree with him. I have to demonstrate to those would-be readers that I can understand and, to a degree, sympathize with his views.
On the last day of the UnConference in Salem, Donald Maass asked us to participate in a writing exercise designed to help us develop a more distinctive voice for our characters. For just six minutes, he told us, write in an exaggerated form of what you see as that character’s voice. Write about babies or birthday cake or sunshine or…or…
I didn’t hear the rest. I was off and writing. The hateful, corrosive “truths” that my character believed about babies and family came flooding out, steeped in faulty logic and absolute certainty. I wrote and wrote, and when the time came to stop, I felt like I was reemerging from a separate reality. How was it possible that such acid could flow through my pen and onto the page? I didn’t believe any of what I had just written, but the fact that I had written it so easily made me feel dirty, used, and confused.
When Donald asked us how the exercise had gone, I had to ask for help, even though I could barely breathe and was visibly shaking. “How do you do it?” I gasped. “How do you survive writing in a voice you hate?”
And that’s when the good folks of UnCon rallied. For the rest of the day, people I had barely met shared their hard-earned wisdom with me. I’d like to pass it on, now, to you: when you need to write sympathetically about someone with whom you absolutely cannot sympathize, someone whose idea of how to be good is at odds with your own, consider the following strategies.
Value your work. If this book holds such emotional power for you, it is exactly what you need to write. Or, to put it in familiar story structure language: don’t resist the call to action. As another attendee said, “You are going through this so that someone else doesn’t have to.” Yes. That way of thinking elevates the entire experience. I’ll take that trade any day.
View your writing self as akin to a character actor. You must get into the part and play it convincingly, but it is not you. Even when you allow yourself to sympathize with someone who’s odious to you, you are separate from what you write.
Claim your work. Tell the people around you what you’re doing so they can help instead of feeling puzzled or threatened when they find you withdrawn, combative, or sullen after writing. (And no, I’m totally not speaking from personal experience here, and my husband will definitely back me up in that claim.)
If it’s particularly difficult, share the load with a therapist. I’m fortunate to have an amazing one. She understands my background and she has experience with this kind of character. I could not write the book without her.
Give yourself time. Write that voice in small enough chunks that you aren’t overwhelmed by living in it. Let yourself reemerge from it as slowly as needed.
Plan an exit strategy. This kind of writing can hurt. Acknowledge it and consciously keep yourself well. What grounds you? What healthy treats can bring you back to yourself when you’re done?
Accept love. Yup, I had an awkward, embarrassing breakdown in front of 120 people I had just met. And in a classic show-don’t-tell kind of moment, some of them simply, wordlessly, hugged me afterward. Never underestimate the power of support from fellow writers. If you show your vulnerability, they’ll be there for you. They’re good that way.
What about you? What strategies help you deal with the emotional toll of writing sympathetically in the voice of unsympathetic characters?
Kristin Hacken South is happiest on the days that she works on her fiction, which to date has included a few short stories, two middle grade detective stories, and two adult novels. She lives in Atlanta, with three independent book stores within walking distance of her house. Her idea of a good time is still a day in the desert with a trowel in one hand and a notebook in the other.
Hey Kristin — I was the one who said to view your writing self as akin to a character actor. You must get into the part and play it convincingly, but it is not you. Even when you allow yourself to sympathize with someone who’s odious to you, you are separate from what you write.
I think the people who miss this are like supposed “method” actors, for whom there’s the old quote, “That’s all well and good, but where’s the acting?” It’s a quote embodied in the play The Shark is Broken. The quote is really about what counts as actually — ethically — doing a a given thing. Actors who have sex with other actors “for a role,” whether they like it or not, are making pornography. Actors who — intentionally or not — kill other actors in a production where it’s supposed to be pretend are committing manslaughter or murder, whether they like it or not.
Sometimes this is okay. Leonardo DiCaprio actually smashing that glass with his hand for a role seems to me to be a willing, measured, and helpful sacrifice. Similar with Tom Cruise’s risk in the ropeless climb in Mission Impossible II. These also have the added benefit of generating buzz.
It depends on context. But, generally, and especially with ethically questionable actions, literally doing the thing isn’t acting.
Actors who pretend, however, are acting. That’s the point: transformation.
And that’s sort of the case with writing: unless you’re doing the things (or enjoying thinking the things) your characters are doing, what you’ve actually done is the sort of secondary world creation and imaginative segmentation of your own consciousness into a character. There’s nothing wrong with that. And I would make a point here that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is wrong to say that thinking a thing and not acting on it can’t hurt us. Thoughts can because they do change us. But there’s a difference between an unwanted obtrusive thought, a thought that’s just teasing out an idea (speculative fiction writers GET THIS deeply), and a thought that’s truly indulgent, meditative, willful, and desired.
The key, I think, is to humanize this person by seeing a way in which they could be redeemed. Whether they choose it or not. Whether they understand the consequences. That alone gives you a sort of shell around the behavior to protect your core self from indulging in the evil: you know, deep down, that this isn’t what whom they were intended to be, whom they are called to become in their highest self.
This also, frankly, (and for instance from my own novel) gives you a response for when a character whips a cat or tortures a pig in a story and folks come after you for animal cruelty: turns out authors hate the way some of their characters behave. Novels are not, after all, ethical treatises logically concluding that everyone should behave the way every character behaves. God help us if that’s the case. Who wants to actually BE Voldemort? Or Pinochet?
Novels are more like icons of a segment of society, showing us — over the total story — the potential permanent metanoia or metamelatheis (“change of mind” or “change of heart”) arising from a given delimma that’s embedded within a protagonist’s driving desire and longing.
Even Judas had that:
Τότε ἰδὼν Ἰούδας ὁ παραδιδοὺς αὐτὸν ὅτι κατεκρίθη μεταμεληθεὶς
Literally rendered:
“Then when Judas, the one handing him over that he might be betrayed, changed his heart…”
What did he do?
ἔστρεψεν τὰ τριάκοντα ἀργύρια τοῖς ἀρχιερεῦσιν καὶ πρεσβυτέροις…
“He returned the thirty pieces of silver to the high priests and elders.”
Rather sympathetic antagonist, isn’t he?
Hi, Lance! Thank you for identifying yourself as one of my sources. I didn’t want to tie anyone to my potential mischaracterization (or at least severe simplification) of their remarks, so I’m glad to see you claiming your comment and expanding on it!
I’m intrigued by your example of Judas: in the end, did he change or not? His death at his own hand, soon after this, implies that the strain of the mismatch between his new view of goodness and his awareness of having just committed an irreparable act of betrayal is too much for him to overcome. I agree that it’s the change of his heart that makes him sympathetic to us as readers of this morality play (and speaking of variations on how to be good, in the gnostic Gospel of Judas, he’s the good guy who understands higher truths and makes a necessary sacrifice to bring about the transformation of the entire world!).
My go-to for a baddie-potentially-turned-good-but-remaining-stuck has always been Javert, with the Grinch as my barometer for a transformed antagonist (“then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before…and the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day…”). It’s interesting that both Javert and Judas die, isnt it?
Your suggestion is quite right: “The key, I think, is to humanize this person by seeing a way in which they could be redeemed. Whether they choose it or not.” In the case of this particular character, he has a moment near the end in which he is able to view his actions as those around him see them. Whether he accepts this new assessment is up to him, but he has had a real opportunity to change his heart, just like Judas, Javert, and the Grinch.
Thank you for such a thoughtful response!
My pleasure, Kristin. And I’m probably the most ignorant one here, so I’m just fumbling along — take whatever I say with heaps of salt. What do I know?
Regarding Judas, yes he did hang himself. But why? Right after he goes to return the silver, what happened?
The change of heart resulted in a change of action that was rejected by the people in authority. His heart change was rejected by the religious leaders who had paid the blood money and he had nowhere else to go.
Certainly more grey than it’s normally painted. I’m not that into the Gnostic texts myself, other than as stories, mainly because of how late they were written, but still some of them are funny: like animating stone pigeons and turning them on playground bullies.
It’s Sam.
From Green Eggs and Ham. He’s the antagonist. Or maybe just a reaaaaaaaaaally refusing hero on the hero’s journey. “No. No. No. No.” and then: “If you will let me be, I will try them, you will see.” Then “SAY! I like green eggs and ham!”
That’s metanoia. The Grinch is a great example. And it’s interesting because the Grinch is the protagonist! He’s basically a who-ville Scrooge, who is also the villain!
Regarding death: memento mori. Valar morghulis. Remember you will die. All men must die. Yes, Judas dies and so does Jesus. Only one resurrects. The thief on the cross doesn’t, but he occupies sort of an interesting middle ground between the two. Javert does die in the Siene. But so does Jean Valjean: and is buried in an unmarked grave. My grandma (who just died a couple of months ago) was the type who used to say, “If the Lord tarries, we all get a funeral before the resurrection.” Regarding herself, she wasn’t wrong.
I suppose the key is what kind of death you will have. Will you die maintaining your convictions? Or abandoning them? And do you get a second chance even after death? George MacDonald’s Lilith thinks so. So does Diane Duane’s So You Want to be a Wizard.
As for that last moment: that’s key. To really see, to really experience empathy. I mean honestly, for a sociopathic person, that’s a cripplingly overwhelming feeling: it’s like feeling for the first time. Think a 2-year old or 3-year old that never got to be angry or sad or happy or afraid or disgusted or liking.
What’s it like feeling all of that?
Is it like reading a novel and “getting it” for the first time?
You might be able to invert the mirror on the reader, in fact, and help them see how the act of reading a novel is precisely like what that character experiences.
And if that’s the case, how different are we really, in the end?
Those are fascinating insights regarding Judas. I am going to think a lot more about the interaction of personal transformation and institutional ability to let that person change. I think it’s relevant for Javert as well. And for everyone who’s ever been in the prison systems, or excommunicated from a religious community, or kicked out of school.
Regarding death, I should have been more clear: I’m fascinated that both Javert and Judas die as a result of their failure to complete the transformation that their awakening has begun. You’ve brought up a really interesting point that Judas’s stuckness (is that a word?) is external, but Javert’s seems entirely internal. He cannot allow himself to accept the new truth, and that internal conflict destroys him. He is true to his beliefs to the end.
But is abandoning convictions such a bad thing, if your convictions are harmful to start with? The topic of my first master’s thesis was martyrdom in early Christian Egypt, and I’m still fascinated by the question of when and why people are willing to die — or kill — for their convictions.
The invitation to vicarious feeling is one of the most important roles that fiction can play. We are not all that different, once we get into the deepest of human emotions. And we are also overwhelmingly separate and alone. And with that, welcome to a cheerful Friday morning!
Thank you for sharing these excellent strategies. What an incredible exercise and result! I hope, at some point, we’ll get to read it.
This is really great advice! Thanks for sharing!
Hey Kristin — Wonderful essay. I consider myself blessed to have witnessed the powerful experience you describe, both the clear impact and (from the outside) the community’s response to it. I was moved then and again today.
Having written a story in part from the POV of someone who descends into some truly despicable behavior, and thereby the internal process of rationalizing it (which is far from pleasant), I’ve been struggling with another aspect of this. Which is: why put readers through it? In my case, it’s the story of a character whose initial trajectory is mostly heroic. Looking back, I now wonder why I came up with this deep descent for this character. It’s a profound question for me, as during the writing process, it seemed perfectly rational and necessary. Now that this part of the story (the descent) is going out into the world, and seeing it reflected back, I keep wondering if it was wise. As I say, if it’s unpleasant, and perhaps goes against reader expectations (my authorial promises?), why would I put readers through it? Maybe it was something I should’ve just done for myself and then shelved…?
I have no answers. Yet. But then, from your powerful piece today, I received this: “If this book holds such emotional power for you, it is exactly what you need to write.” I’m not sure you’ve solved the second part of the equation, about then sharing it. But you’ve helped me to reconvince myself that I’ve been doing what I was meant to do. At least for the moment.
Thanks for bravely sharing so much of yourself with your fellow writers. It’s a gift, and I’m grateful. And I know others are, too.
Hi Vaughn! It’s great to hear from you. I really enjoyed our brief conversation over dinner and I love that this forum allows us to carry it on!
I’ve also thought a lot about the bigger question you’re raising: why do we need to have literature (and art in all other forms) that seems to glorify evil and all of the baser instincts? I was raised in a culture that only wants to acknowledge the existence of sunshine. Why run outside and revel in the storm? It only leaves you sodden and miserable.
The answer that allowed me to keep reading the literature I wanted/needed to read was that by experiencing these aspects of the real world–things that genuinely do flavor the human experience– in such a visceral way, we can understand why they exist and how they harm even those who perpetrate them. Understanding, to me, is one of the highest virtues, because without it there can be no compassion. And compassion is the WD-40 that keeps the machinery of this rusty old world from clanking to a halt.
Kristin, thank you for sharing this exercise. I confess, I’ve tried to do this with my historical wip, but have failed miserably. So your experience is helpful–I will fail better next time (next year). I’ve been singing a lot and learning lessons–you have to feel it to project it, but you can’t feel it so much that you start crying because then you cannot sing. So it’s a fine balance. There’s the element of losing control and it helps to experiment during practice. I must do the same with my writing. Thank you and congratulations for winning your scholarship to UnCon. Thank you for sharing your gifts.
I love this analogy to singing! You’re right that there’s such a need for balance in feeling enough to make it real, but not getting overwhelmed by it.
Hello Kristin. Thanks for an excellent post, but I must say that anyone who “reads a book twenty years” is going to be shaped by the experience (sorry, couldn’t help myself). I read How to be Good, and I share your appreciation for it. But then I tend to prefer British fiction. The very idea of an American writing a novel with such a title, and then ironically offering up a bookful of characters who are often anything but “good” is in my view close to unthinkable. One antagonist character, okay, but a book full of them? Brits yes, yanks no.
Lance Schaubert is so right about writers being actors in a play. It’s why I don’t write in first person. I’m like Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: I want to play all the parts.
How about this? A negative protagonist who nevertheless comes off as sympathetic in the eyes of the reader. That’s what I’m attempting to do, and it’s not easy, not for me. Thanks for your readable, intelligent AND witty post. It strengthens my regret at not having met you at the conference. By the way, in addition to sharing your appreciation for Nick Hornby’s book, I want you to know that I also share a deep and abiding passion for first millenium A.D Egyptian textiles. This near-obsession keeps me up nights, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Haha, Barry, thank you for that catch! Word omission now corrected.
A negative protagonist who comes off as sympathetic: yes, that’s the challenge, I think! Let me know how it goes with yours. As for that passion for Egyptian textiles, welcome to the worldwide crowd of ten or fewer who share it. Who’d have known the UnCon group could be so similar in so many ways. :)
Is Nick a stand-in for Shakespeare?
Hi Kristin,
Fabulous essay!
Don’s workshops tend to lead to big breakthroughs even for people like me who freeze up the second a presenter assigns an on-the-spot writing prompt. Seriously, I would have the same reaction if asked to solve a calculus problem in front of a large audience. My brain says ‘nope’ and I just stare at a blank screen, hands hovering over my keyboard but never touching it.
Stage fright? Perfectionism? I don’t know. In this case, I definitely knew I didn’t want to go THERE in a room full of people. I admire your courage, both for doing so and for expressing aloud what I’m sure many people were thinking.
I do always write down the writing prompts to attempt later, and sometimes actually do them. Other times I simply stew over the images that pop up in my mind when I think about the assignment.
Thankfully there are many paths to take to get the answers we need.
Welcome to WU, Kristin. As you saw at UnCon, we are a supportive group!
Thanks, Kim!
UnCon works magic, for sure. I’m usually with you — totally unable or unwilling to do personal writing work in a group setting. I’m looking forward to going back over the prompts and exercises from the conference in a more leisurely and private setting.
That was a powerful and painful moment at Un-Con. The whole room felt it—and signaled their support of you.
To give a villain justification, however wrong, is to make that character redeemable and real. For the writer, that is hard. One draws on one’s own anguish, rage and weakness. As Lance points out, method actors do that too. When a role demands much, they are spent. The part of the play they hate the most is the curtain call, facing the audience as if it was all pretend and they are really okay. They are not.
There is darkness in us all and as author you tap that darkness in service of light, the story. The self care you recommend is right. If you weep, weep for yourself and weep for us all, that our world is flawed and we must feel such things.
Then write the ending, we may weep some more but in relief and hope. That is the power of story. That is why you bear the cost. Write on.
“As if it was all pretend and they are really okay. They are not.” Exactly.
Thank you for facilitating such a meaningful awakening.
Thanks for this. You had a powerful moment as a writer and you shared it with the rest of us. Thank you.
I appreciated your honesty in real time, and I appreciate the wisdom and clarity you distilled from that experience and were willing to share here. Thank you.
Waaaay back, when my story and I were young, my clients were often behind bars – usually on the basis of very good evidence of their guilt. Callous me (I was young remember), listened to their rationalizations and justifications, and judged them more harshly than the judge had. Excuses! my young dumb self whispered in my own head. Now, I hear their voices as backstory, as what had happened to them, shaped them, hardened them, broke them open. All those vile evil (mostly) men who had done awful things, and had awful things done to them. They had their stories that need to be told. I imagine a young person twenty-two years from now telling they’d read your novel, Kristen, and still thought about it twenty years later, feeling impacted and changed by it. Now, as Don might say, go write it.
ps It was great dining with you in Salem. Shall we do it again in two years?
Yeah, I regret a lot of things I thought and said when I was young. It’s so easy to believe that one’s own path is the only right one (cf. How To Be Good). Your work in recording and sharing the stories of those so different from you undoubtedly helped others; it certainly made you compassionate and slow to judge.
As a barometer of the value of a book, I love this concept of thinking about what still impacts a reader twenty years later. I can’t imagine a greater reward than to have someone say that about something I’ve written. Wow. As to the actual writing, I guess I’d better get off the internet so it can happen. :)
I loved talking with you in Salem. I’m counting down the days until the next time!