Writing Despicable Characters

[doug anderson]

I know that something about bad guys has to be likable. I would imagine I could even find something about Dick Cheney that is likable if I actually met him -- although I don't want to meet him: I prefer to judge him by his actions. I'm afraid of being charmed. But writing bad guys is tough for me. I have them prejudged. I know they're scumbags before I start out, and this sometimes gives me trouble. I'm thinking of characters written by great writers that fail in this regard: Don John in Much Ado About Nothing: he's the most uninteresting character Shakespeare every wrote.

At present I'm trying to write a guy who obviously has charm and can deceive people, but I'm struggling. I simply don't like him.

Anybody have this kind of trouble?

[doug anderson]

I just did a flash piece for my character. It worked. The son of a bitch got witty.

[I. J. Parker]

There you go! Humor, especially if its clever, is a very endearing quality. Do you want the bastard to be liked?

[doug anderson]

Hannibal Lecture is a wit. Yeah. I think most socio/psychopaths have an instinct of what part other people are corrupt enough to be manipulated. Pimps for example understand the part of all men that want something a little forbidden.

I want my character to be the kind of guy you love to hate. When Alfred Drake did Claudius in Burton's Hamlet the audience booed him: the character, not the actor, and he knew he'd succeeded.

[Karen Dionne]

When I was writing my first novel (not Freezing Point - the drawer novel that didn't sell), I was really struggling writing a scene in which my main character's lives were at risk. I knew they weren't going to die, of course, and I knew the reader knew because it was little more than halfway through the book. Because of that, I just couldn't generate any tension in the scene. It seemed to me as though anything I wrote just came off as silly.

Then I realized that the characters didn't know they were going to survive. Once I wrote the scene from their pov, totally immersed in the story, it worked.

I think something similar might be happening with your bad guy. Maybe you're not yet solidly enough in his head. After all, he doesn't think he's the bad guy . . .

Just a thought!

[D.R. MacMaster]

In my sci-fi novel I had a cluster of villains who do a lot of terrible things, not only to the world, but to each other. The backstabbing among them was horrendous. I was worried that people would consider them cartoony in their almost constant treachery, but people actually complimented me on how well rounded they were.

I re-read the material and realized that when I was writing things from the point of view of the conspirators, I was writing them as if they were the hero. This is because in their minds they believed that their motives, no matter how selfish or destructive, were right.

[Lindy Cameron]

Bad guys don't have to be 'likable' but they do have to be 'human' to be believable - otherwise they're just a boring cliches. After all, you can't have a 'good guy' without the bad guy. There is NO hero without the the villain. No anti-hero without someone badder. The best way to do this, I've found, is to give them a back story in which they have a family, of a lost love or a dog or a hamster - something that's not part of what makes them criminal. You know, the things that make them like you and me. And, as objectionable as WE (yes, even us Aussies) find Cheney, there are people who love him a lot (even if it's just his family and bestest friends) - so he must have some redeeming features. Same for your bad guy. Unless someone is a complete sociopath - or completely deranged or depraved - they must have 'something' or they have no depth, no life, no reason.

[Craig Fox]

I recall Ben Bova saying that writers should avoid writing evil villains. The mustache twirling cliches don't really exist in real life. So I try to make "villains" adversaries for the "heroes". From this perspective you may make the bad guys as interesting as you want. You may even give them their own sense of right and wrong. For instance I had a character that was a Russian art thief. He knows stealing is a crime so that would make him a "bad guy". However he only stole Russian art that had been taken from Russian museums after the fall of the USSR. So in his mind he is stealing the art back. It sort of palliates the fact that he is a criminal. Of course there is also the fact that he appreciates art which also makes him more interesting.

[I. J. Parker]

Yes, that's what I meant when I said the villain should have a reason for his crime that isn't just greed or self-gratification.