Writing villains

[Aminar]

When you're writing villains do you ever feel bad for making them do what they do?  I just wrote a scene that has my stomach turning, despite the fact it isn't truly explicit, and I'm not sure I'm comfortable with it.

Basic summary
Sociopath assassin pulls an inmate from an asylum to help him.  Said inmate is a bodyshifter(Can heal himself and shift the properties of his body as he wills(Muscle mass and the like))  The bodyshifter is mentally incapable(Lacking in some crucial bits of sanity).  He's also a masochist that learned the golden rule very very well.  The sociopath is using the mentally deficient man as a tool of murder and mayhem and it feels so horribly wrong, but it works so well.

[superpsycho]

If you're revolted by them, think how the reader will react, if you've communicated your feelings effectively in the work.

[Lanodantheon]

When writing you have to balance/decide between what makes you comfortable as an author and what the story needs.


When I write/plan out villains, I think about something  the DC Comics writers said, "The greater the villain, the greater the hero."


So, I personally see Villains and whatever twisted stuff they do as a means to end. My characters work for me after all.

[LizW65]

And remember, villains don't think of themselves as villains.  As far as they're concerned, they're the heroes of their own stories, the good guys, doing battle against your evil, oppressive hero.

[Aminar]

Or in this case a mercenary with a grudge against a hero.  No illusions about doing the right thing...  Just really hates the hero.  I don't buy into sane evil people but I do buy into selfish petty violent people given too much power doing evil things because they can.

[Dresdenus Prime]

Interesting you posted this question, I just read an article on www.ign.com recently about supervillians in movies. The article goes into some detail about what makes them great, and while it mainly deals with the cinematic supervillian, I think there is some good stuff there that is helpful in the literary villian as well!

Here's the link to the page:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/08/12/the-rise-of-the-supervillain

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

And remember, villains don't think of themselves as villains.  As far as they're concerned, they're the heroes of their own stories, the good guys, doing battle against your evil, oppressive hero.

Mostly, yes.

I've known three people in real life who were consciously doing "evil be thou my good" as an avowed philosophy and deriving pleasure directly from messing up other people's lives, and done enough helping clean up the resultant messes to have a bit of a hot button on the notion that everyone is the hero of our own story.  (As well as the feeling that for a goodly chunk of my own life I'm much more a spear-carrier in the story, and the Thing Which I Should Be Working On is among other things an experiment with that.)

With regard to writing villains, though, maybe it's nearing forty, but I am kind of getting tired of villains who do something despicable as a cheap and simple way of polarising reader sympathies; that story's been done and done and done.  I'm much more drawn at this point to conflicts where both sides are as close to equally sympathetic as I can make them.  (This is hard.)

[o_O]

With regard to writing villains, though, maybe it's nearing forty, but I am kind of getting tired of villains who do something despicable as a cheap and simple way of polarising reader sympathies; that story's been done and done and done.  I'm much more drawn at this point to conflicts where both sides are as close to equally sympathetic as I can make them.  (This is hard.)

Would it be equally as hard to be equally sympathetic (or possibly harder yet) if you hadn't had that spear-carrier feeling?

(I'm working on the idea that people with a strong sense of agency IRL would not be equally disposed to be sympathetic to both sides in fiction as those with a sense of being in the back of the phalanx.  At this juncture I don't have a clear sense of which way that inequality would tilt).

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Would it be equally as hard to be equally sympathetic (or possibly harder yet) if you hadn't had that spear-carrier feeling?

Hard to tell.

(I'm working on the idea that people with a strong sense of agency IRL would not be equally disposed to be sympathetic to both sides in fiction as those with a sense of being in the back of the phalanx.  At this juncture I don't have a clear sense of which way that inequality would tilt).

I think an awful lot of people have stronger senses of agency than their lives actually support, and i am a long way from comfortable with many of the consequences of this.

[Aminar]

Mostly, yes.

I've known three people in real life who were consciously doing "evil be thou my good" as an avowed philosophy and deriving pleasure directly from messing up other people's lives, and done enough helping clean up the resultant messes to have a bit of a hot button on the notion that everyone is the hero of our own story.  (As well as the feeling that for a goodly chunk of my own life I'm much more a spear-carrier in the story, and the Thing Which I Should Be Working On is among other things an experiment with that.)

With regard to writing villains, though, maybe it's nearing forty, but I am kind of getting tired of villains who do something despicable as a cheap and simple way of polarising reader sympathies; that story's been done and done and done.  I'm much more drawn at this point to conflicts where both sides are as close to equally sympathetic as I can make them.  (This is hard.)

I'm in a way just the opposite.  I'm tired of stories that are so realistic I can't derive joy from reading them.  I don't read to feel reality, I live in it.  I deal with some of the worst of it(via my job) every day.  Why would I want my free time devoted to that?  At the same time I try to mix the two.  I have evil people.  I have good people.  I have evil people doing good and good people doing evil.  A story can and should have both.  Otherwise you end up with either Game of Thrones level depressing or cartoon level cliche villainy. 

[Gilitine_Memitim]

My hero's are rarely actually "good", they usually exist in a gray area. As for my villians some are simply twisted and others actually have good reasons for their thinking.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I'm in a way just the opposite.  I'm tired of stories that are so realistic I can't derive joy from reading them.  I don't read to feel reality, I live in it.  I deal with some of the worst of it(via my job) every day.  Why would I want my free time devoted to that?

The balance I look for is plausibly uplifting.  Without a certain amount of plausibility, all the good things in the world won't cheer me up.

Otherwise you end up with either Game of Thrones level depressing or cartoon level cliche villainy.

mmm. Game of Thrones striking you as depressing makes it clear that we're looking at things from different angles; I'm with Iain Banks on the standard for a happy ending being "not everybody is dead", and GoT is well short of my depressing threshold.

[trboturtle]

I see it this way -- evil has a goal and will do anything to acheive that goal, Need to seige a city and kill everyone inside? Evil does it. Need a super weapon and the only person who can create the weapons don't want to have anything to do with you? Grab his daughter and give him the orders. A little old lady between you and a fortune? A shove down the stairs.

In short, Evil will do anything it can to do its thing. Most heroes have some sort of line they won't step over. Evil had only the restrictions that have been palced upon by someone with grater power than them and even then, Evil is looking for loopholes (Reason why Lawyers are mistaken for being all evil (Actually only 99% of lawyers are evil -- the other 1% are shoved into political office where they can do little harm...))

Inshort, evil is power without much restraint (For the most part) Good have some rules to follow, even if they are flexable...

Craig

[Aminar]

The balance I look for is plausibly uplifting.  Without a certain amount of plausibility, all the good things in the world won't cheer me up.

mmm. Game of Thrones striking you as depressing makes it clear that we're looking at things from different angles; I'm with Iain Banks on the standard for a happy ending being "not everybody is dead", and GoT is well short of my depressing threshold.

I make a living off of empathy-my sympathy gene is way over-active.

[OZ]

I'm in a way just the opposite.  I'm tired of stories that are so realistic I can't derive joy from reading them.  I don't read to feel reality, I live in it.  I deal with some of the worst of it(via my job) every day.  Why would I want my free time devoted to that?  At the same time I try to mix the two.  I have evil people.  I have good people.  I have evil people doing good and good people doing evil.  A story can and should have both.  Otherwise you end up with either Game of Thrones level depressing or cartoon level cliche villainy. 

I would have to agree with this at least for the most part. Specifically I tire of reading horrific stories with disgusting endings that are defended by people saying, "That's how real life works." I can read the newspaper if I want to read about people doing horrible things to each other and getting away with it. When I read a book, I want a little fantasy, a little triumph of good. I want to put the book down and feel good about life for at least a few minutes until I hear the latest news about whatever new trajedy is in the news.

Having said that I would partially agree with Neurovore. There has to be plausibility. There also has to be tension. Evil has to be successful enough, at least for a while, that I can feel some fear that the hero will die or at least be permanently scarred. I guess it just doesn't take as much grief and depression to make a story plausible to me as some folks require.