"I submit that if you want to create a sense of awe about certain characters, whether they are elves or returning kings or Victorian detectives, you stay out of their heads and pick point of view characters as close to those of ordinary readers as you can.

It isn't a matter of main or not-main. It's a matter of effect, of creating an emotion of awe in the mind of the reader. It's a way to make sure your reader is impressed."

Proceeding from this thought, would it be better, therefore, to stay out of a main antagonist/"villain's" head, if you wanted to keep this aura of mystery? Can you truly fear and be in awe of someone once you know how they think, and are given full insight into their motivations?

Peter from "Ender's Game," for example, stikes me as much more terrible and fearsome when I only see him from the eyes of others.

You are rarely ever inside of any movie character's head nowadays, so the actors have to convey all of that information by actions, dialog, tone of voice, and body language. Every one of those things can be described in prose, too, though you have to be careful with how you describe tone of voice (watch out for -ly words and "synonyms" for said).

As Bardos, said, though, you may want the reader to understand the antagonist at some point.

There is also the possibility that you want to show that the protagonist and antagonist are both good guys, trying to accomplish what they perceive to be worthy goals--that just happen to be contradictory. (This is the stuff that tragedy can be made of.) In such a case, you may want to be in both of their heads alternately.

I am willing to assume that if I could read the minds of "good" people and "evil" people, my opinions of their actions would be accentuated and strengthened, rather than attenuated or obviated, by certain knowledge of their virtuous or loathsome motives and thought processes. If you actually know that someone did something for you out of pure love, or hurt you completely out of spite, that would confirm and justify you in holding opinions that you would otherwise hold on the basis of assumptions (albeit assumptions warranted by available evidence). Alternatively, if you are the type of person that assumes that others are acting out of motives entirely uniform to your own, I would feel confident that you would be surprised indeed if you could actually see into their hearts.

However, when we write in point of view, we don't take the role of being a literal third person narrator with a character distinct from that of the character whose POV we are writing. We write as an internal or integral observer of the character (except in certain first person accounts). This is expressed in many ways, such as using language that reflects the personality of the point of view character (i.e. one character's perception of technologically advanced artifacts would be "gizmos", while another would mentally catagorize them as "devices" or even be distinctly aware of the particular function of each--just as the tray full of surgical tools that one character sees would be seen by another as a set of hemostats, forceps, scalpl and catherized micro-waldos). It is also expressed in the sorts of expectations that that character will have of situations and how they react to them. One character's POV might describe a sudden bump as a frightening indication that there is something wrong with the aircraft, while another character's POV would hardly notice such a minor amount of air turbulance.

In well written POV, the reader's attention is not directed to things that the character wouldn't know, nor is it directed towards things that the character wouldn't notice. And the fact of the matter is, really good people are simply good by habit most of the time, just as really evil people are evil even when they don't have to be. And because these are entrenched mental habits, they wouldn't be out of the ordinary and therefore wouldn't be particularly noticed most of the time. Real people don't sit there noticing their habitual mental patterns and habitual actions all the time, and neither should our fictional portrayals.

What this means is that when you write from the POV of a really good and kind person, you have to ignore an amazing amount of the good and nice things that they are doing and thinking from one moment to the next. In just the same manner, when writing the POV of a really horrid person, you have to ignore almost all of the nasty actions and attitudes that would scald your brain if you were unfortunate enough to be a passing telepath (one of the qualities of a nasty person is that they tend to be less aware of how their habitual actions affect others--as well as how much nastiness there really is in their own thoughts).

In other words, when Joe the nice guy walks into a room and starts talking to people and helping out and being nice, he's not thinking (or if he is then he's a bit of a phony) "hey, I'm being nice today, that was a good compliment, and I really meant it! Wow, I can earn extra points if I lend a hand here...wow, I'm really much better at this than everyone--my help is sooo valuable and I'm really generous to be giving it without any recompense...." and so on. On the other hand, one aspect of niceness that is useful is that nice people also tend to be pretty honest, they actually say or show what they're thinking most of the time.

On the flip side of the coin, Jacque the mean guy doesn't think (unless he's a poser, like me) about his scowl and the visible contempt that he has towards everyone around him that doesn't have something he wants (for that matter, I don't know how likely he is to think about his envy towards everyone that has something he doesn't). He doesn't dwell on how much trouble he's causing for the host when he lets his dog in or lights up a cigar (unless that was his primary motive for doing so, which isn't usually the case even with nasty people). And to everyone else, no matter how much he tries to pass off his behavior as perfectly acceptable, it's obvious that he's a jerk.

IMHO

First, there is what you might call a hierarchy of antagonists (at least that's how I look at them), with antagonists who really are good guys trying to accomplish a good goal, but at cross purposes with the protagonist being at the top of the hierarchy, and the comic-book antagonists like Snidely Whiplash and Murky Dismal who do bad things because they like being evil sneering around at the bottom.

In between are those who don't believe that there is such a thing as true goodness, those who are unable to see other people as people and only see them as obstacles or objects, those who consider the only good to be what they want and the only evil to be what crosses them, those who have lost touch with reality and don't see good and evil the way we do at all, and those who get their kicks (or their feeling of power) out of causing pain (or doing something else evil) and may often hate themselves in the morning--or may not.

So my first point is that there are lots of ways of doing antagonists, but you as the writer have to know what the motivation is, even if you don't come right out and tell the reader.

Second thing is something I've heard referred to as "first and final causes" (I think this is from OSC, but I'm not absolutely positive).

The "first cause" is the reason someone does something--they expect a certain outcome.

The "final cause" is what actually results from their actions.

You can have a lot of fun messing around with first and final causes because, as the poet said, "the best laid plans of mice and men have oft gone aglee" (or something like that--Murphy's law, anyway).

I think I understand the point. What some of you are saying is that nothing is inherently "good or evil". Take killing for example -- not necessarily "evil" in and of itself, it's the motive behind it, the consequences of it, and the perspective you bring to the understanding.

But, if someone kills a pet dog because they know what the reaction will be to the owner, then a)the act itself is evil because the person took a life b)the consequences of the action are evil because it was done for a sadistic cause (to cause pain and suffering on the owner) and c)the person who killed the dog obviously revels in the suffering of the owner, probably reveled in the snuffing of a life, and could revel in extatic (morbid) joy brought about by seeing someone else suffer. All of this is the character reveling in being evil. This person isn't going to say, "I'm not evil, you only think I'm evil." or "I don't think what I did was evil because the consequences gave me pleasure, and how can pleasure be evil?" This person knows their doing bad (evil) and does the actions for that very reason.

Does that mean that the person can't show compassion towards something? Does that mean that the person can't help an old woman across the street? Or cherish a house plant like life itself? Not in my opinion. In fact, I would expect some "contradiction" to give depth (reality) to the character.

But the person is still evil from the story's and reader's point of view. (Show a different day in the life of the same person caring for the house plant and we may never see the evil, but then that's not the same story is it?)

We're not talking about absolutes -- absolute good or absolute evil. We're talking about good or evil characters, in all of their many forms. Bardos touched on it, but I think it's the crux -- to say someone is evil or good maybe too simplistic, and it's better to characterize them by their many layers. But that doesn't mean that you can't create truly good or truly evil characters.

Of course all of this changes if the person killed the dog because it carried the plague and by killing the dog the person saved the town. But then the "evil" is taken out of the equation and we're no longer talking about the same situation. The story is different.

Okay, I just reread this post, and I'm not sure I'm making any sense, but lunch break is over and I don't have any more time to spend on this. So someone please tell me what the real point is, and we'll all see whether or not I even touched on it.

edited in
And before any of you start thinking I don't know how to spell, reveling and reveled are just as correct.

[This message has been edited by JP Carney (edited December 06, 2001).]

second edit
Okay, so Kathleen was working on this at the same time I was, and put several things in perspective. I could delete the post, but I'll leave it up to add to the mix.

And to swing things back into the original topic, does it work better for you to have the "villain's" motivations and thought processes ever fully revealed? Does it give them more depth? Or would does it make them that much more a figure of power and mystery if we never had them humanized by seeing things from their point of view?

Maybe that's why the seemingly more common method is to have all secrets pertaining to the "villain's" past revealed only towards the end, because once you see into who they trully are, you can't fear them in the same way you could when they were veiled to you...

But I agree that the writer, at least, had to understand everyone's motivations from the start. <sighs> As if trying to understand my "levels" of protagonists and their actions wasn't bad enough...especially since they don't seem to want to listen to any of my suggestions on how they might behave.

I think I've rambled long enough...

In Eden's Hammer, the villain is a sort of cult leader, who is willing to destroy San Francisco to save the valley where his cult lives. That book spends more time on the villain's thoughts and POV that the hero's.

In the Pillars of the Earth, we know the thoughts and motivations of several villains, ranging from a rapist knight to a power-hungry Bishop. In this book especially, knowing the villains' thoughts greatly increases the tension. This is important if you want to build tension without the heroes doing something stupid every time you put them in danger.

The Hunt for Red October may be the best example, since the villains' motivations are ideological. Clancy shows that the Soviet sailors, pilots, politicians, and agents are all ideologically opposed the capitalism. They believe in their hearts that the Americans are the bad guys. This sincerity makes their use of warships and fighter planes against the heroes much more menacing that the cartoonish villains you see in James Bond stories.

JK asked:
Why, Doc, is a person who revels in evil unbelievable, but a person who revels in good believable? You can't have it both ways.

Sure you can, but I suppose it depends on what you mean by "revels."

JP Carney pointed out the distinction between someone who revels in the consequences of evil (which was not the subject of my post) and someone who takes pure pleasure in evil for evil's sake (which was the subject of my post). As I said before, you seldom see such characters, except in legends or comedy.

It would seem that if good and evil really exist for certain persons, such as gods and demons, and not for anyone else, then you have simplified the problem fairly neatly.

Those for whom good and evil are, indeed, real, get to judge everyone else by their own standards.

To put it simply, if humans are unable to relate to good and evil personally, then God gets to do it for them, since only His morality is, in this standard, "real".

Revelling in evil just for the sake of evil: think of Christine, a cursed Plymouth Fury that starts maming humans the day it is built. It has no personal motivation of vengence, greed, lust, or anything else. It just commits evil acts for the sake of evil throughout the story. At least that's how the movie version goes.

Revelling in the consequences of evil: the Queen in Aliens. The fact that she wanted innocent humans to die made her evil (at least to human movie audiences) but her real motivation was the consequence of allowing her eggs to hatch.

Survivor, you do not need to invoke a God to have a standard of good and evil. You could invoke a pantheon of many gods. But it is more interesting when you determine good and evil based on the standards of a society.

The same is true for the moral relativism/whatever point of view.

Regarding revealing an antagonist's motivations, I had the following thought. If you as the author think you can give a better, more inspirational, clever, or interesting motivation than the one the reader might come up with on his/her own, then you should do it. Or if that motivation has something special or relevant about it. Most of the time, I'm not that talented, so I let it remain mostly a mystery, especially for Sauron-types. I would rather not have my incompetence ruin a perfectly good mysterious fear.

Just thoughts that popped into my head...

By the way, hi everybody.

Eric

I also like severe plot twists. I love friends turned to enemies stuff which works better in series than single books. In situations where friends later become enemies you get to see the logical progression of their thoughts down that dark path. I want my hero to understand why the bad guy is bad because that prevents him from becoming the same way. To truly be good, a hero has to have some experience with the differences between "good" and "evil"

Thus, the correct but boring answer is that if you intend to have anything other than a very small audience, the standard of good and evil that concerns you will have to be the commen, bourgeoisie or proletariat or middle-class morality that most of your audience believes in.

This is, of course, an answer that none of us like, since we all hold to our own notions of good and evil (particularly those of us that claim not to believe in either, since why would you stand up for unpopular ideas unless you thought them good?).