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Okay, so maybe he's not quite evil, but he's definitely not a good guy at the beginning of my story. I wrote a story that had the predecessor to this character as the antagonist but by the time the story was finished I was more fascinated with him than with the main character. I'm planning on giving this character his own story for NaNoWriMo but I'm afraid that he won't be sympathetic enough. I mean once you get to know him and understand why he does some of the things he does he's definitely becomes sympathetic but I'm wondering if having him start out apparently bad is too harsh. Thoughts, questions, whatever?
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"Darth Maul, Shadow Hunter" (I believe is the title) is an excelent Star Wars book with the bad guy as a viewpoint character. It works well. But it can be hard to make a bad guy work. I think the best way to do it is to have other characters as the sympathy characters and let the bad guy lose in the end.
Posts: 79 | Registered: Jul 2004
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If he's the point of view character, just don't have him think of himself as bad. Let the readers realize as they read that he isn't as good as he would like to think he is.
Something similar happens in Walter Jon Williams' book DAYS OF ATONEMENT, where the point of view character is Loren Hawn, the local sheriff in a small town that is being overwhelmed by Progress (it's a near-future SF novel). The guy seems sympathetic at first, but as he makes less than sympathetic choices, this reader began to be a little uncomfortable sympathizing with him. He learned better by the end of the story, but it was an interesting ride.
I'd recommend reading it to see one way to do this kind of thing.
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The Godfather is one of the best selling books in the history of books, and the main character is a gangster!
The key is to make your character someone the reader can respect and care about. They don't have to do good things, they just need to be motivated by things the reader values. Michael Corleone kills to protect his family, the other gangsters kill because they are sadistic, greedy, fetishist, or other reasons that are revolting to the reader. Even the police have evil motivations in The Godfather.
Your evil POV character will engage sympathy if he is motivated to protect his family, woo his one true love, learn the truth behind some mystery or conspiracy, etc. If he is a two-dimensional character motivated by simple greed or sadism then this won't work. In that case you may need to go for humor, or give him a foil like Agent Starling was in The Silence of the Lambs.
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For me, one of the best ways a bad character becomes sympathetic is how he (or she) understands his (or her) need for redemption. If you don't like that word b/c of it's religious connotation, then don't use it. But for me, a bad character, on some level--unless he's insane--recognizes that what he does is bad, wants to stop, but doesn't know how to stop. He doesn't even have to understand this on a conscious level--but the reader needs to understand it.
Of course, I'm coming from the belief that no human being is essentailly evil--that every human being, regardless of his or her deeds, is essentially redeemable. So it seems to me that the first question you have to ask in writing from this view point is this: What does it mean to me for someone to be evil?
Perhaps this is too philosophical. I got slammed about a year ago for proposing that writers should study philosophy. But this is how I'd go about it doing it.
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I think you are right, Balthasar & Doc Brown.
Still, I can’t help thinking about - A Clockwork Orange. Alex, the main character, and POV character, is a fairly evil fellow, yet for some reason I don’t want him to be punished. I sympathize with him, even while he is doing despicable things. If you saw on the news that gang members broke into a little old lady’s house and bludgeoned her to death, you would be outraged. Right? But when you follow Alex through the actual crime, you are not outraged. Somehow he charms you into feeling like he is the victim. I guess it is the POV. The story is told in 1st person, so you get Alex’s feelings along with his perspective on what he is doing. He is charming in an odd way, and the things he does, though despicable and sometimes disturbing, are told in a humorous manner.
Alex does not think of himself as being evil. Nor does he see any evil in the things he does. He has no conscience about what he is doing. He also does not have any noble motivations. You would think that would make the reader lose sympathy, but somehow it doesn’t. Somehow readers gain sympathy for him. Alex’s evil acts become merely mischievous when viewed through his POV.
It might be worth a read to see how Burgess does it. The movie does not do it justice. CAUTION: The book seems to put a weird spell on its readers. Two of my family members who NEVER read anything but the newspaper are addicted to that book. I think it is one of the only novels my brother has ever read outside of a school assignment. And he read it twice! Call the Guinness Book!
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Bad Guys make interesting characters. It sounds like you may be a bit worried about starting him off too bad/evil and thus not be able to make him sympathetic. IF that is the case, my advice is don't worry about it. Write the story, then edit it. You can always build on what you have. I've had to do that several times. For one of my stories, I was told that I had almost no character development and that only one of my characters actually changed through the story. I had to go back and re-create the beginning of the story (and all but one of my characters) in order to help build the complexity -- and I'm still working on it Posts: 1473 | Registered: Jul 2004
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I think if you combine Balthasar and Doc's post you have a solid answer -- they may be bad people doing despicable things, but if the motiviations driving them have merit, the reader can overlook a lot, and even pity the poor fool!
In the case of Micheal Corleone, the story isn't just about how he defends his family and his business...it's also about his quest to try an legitimize his family and get it out of the crime racket. His perpetual struggle with trying to become "good" with the need to protect himself and his family--which requires some despicable acts on his part--is what drives that story (and the sequel).
A lot of "hero" bad guys are caught in similar struggles, becomming and doing bad things almost against their will. It's this struggle against who they are or what they're becoming that often makes them sympathetic.
Then there's the Clockwork Orange character, for which the only explanation I can offer would be simply Charisma. If they've got enough of it they could some pretty terrible things and we'd still like them. Also, in many cases the character is introduced/presented in a favorable light, and only in time do we see how rotten they are. These introductions mean a lot. First impressions...you know? They really do cement our opinion of a person and from that point a lot of bad behaviour can be explained away and thus forgiven...
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I was re-reading some of the other posts and they made me think of something else. Where you begin your story will go a long way to how sympathetic your character is, even if he is unsavoury. I began thinking about The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (don't think too much about any of the movie versions because they can't possibly begin to tell the story). In the last half of the book Edmond Dantés has gone into vigilante mode. If you picked up the book without knowing why he is the way that he is, he would appear callous, uncaring and vengeful. By showing how Edmond becomes the Count, Dumas gives readers a reason to care about him, even cheer for him, as he destroys the lives of the other characters.
A more current example of bad as good are the movies Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick. Although we aren't given much info on what exactly makes Riddick evil, he becomes a hero of sorts, but I don't know as you're looking to write a redeemed villian story. This is only an example of bad guy as protag.
Long story short -- You have a lot of control over your character. When you begin your story will affect how the reader sees him. Also, his motivations (as mentioned before) will define whether he is a dark hero or pure evil.
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For one, I like a bad guy for a main character. For example, I like to think of putting a bad guy in a situation and making him do something that could tarnish his being evil, like saving his arch-nemesis from certain death or something like that.
But I think writing from a totally evil perspective would be a challenge in itself, and I think that the result would be fantastic if handled well.
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Of this advice the references to Clockwork Orange sound the most like the issue that will come up. The story starts with him being a disillusioned sadist (sort of) but the more I think about it the better I might be able to pull off his seeming niceness at first. Theoretically he is supposed to be very charming, now if I can write a charming guy without having him be corny is yet to be seen.
quote:Alex does not think of himself as being evil. Nor does he see any evil in the things he does. He has no conscience about what he is doing. He also does not have any noble motivations. You would think that would make the reader lose sympathy, but somehow it doesn’t. Somehow readers gain sympathy for him. Alex’s evil acts become merely mischievous when viewed through his POV.
I just re-read this and it reminded me of something from a theatre class that I took. When acting, you become the character. You are not to make judgements on your character, you just be your character. Some characters know they are evil and they revel in it. But, if the character doesn't make apologies about who they are, then the actor shouldn't make apologies for the character. One way to do this is to really know the character well. Know everything that motivates him, everything that makes him feel justified. Then let him tell his story.
My thoughts are really starting to ramble right now, but perhaps some characters to consider are Iago (from Othello) and Richard III (he even gets the play named for him ). They are evil and spiteful, and they know it and exploit it. Othello would be uniteresting without Iago and well, you can't have Richard III without Richard III.
[This message has been edited by Robyn_Hood (edited September 01, 2004).]
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The interesting thing about using Iago as inspiration for evil characters is that at one point in Othello Iago states that he doesn't have a reason for anything he does. He just hates Othello and that's all there is to it.
At least, if I'm remembering the play correctly. It's been a long time.
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Yeah, I actually studied that concept last year in my theatre class. We did King Lear over the summer and there are some great possiblities for evil characters there, because everybody hates everybody else. I played Cornwall and having you bring up theatre just reminded me of that truism (I do not pass judgements on my character). In our play Cornwall turned out to be very nearly Sociopathic but I had a vague reasoning in my head for how it all worked and I've heard that my character was very convincing, not just the generic bad guy. Edmund is like that also.
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of my characters) in order to help build the complexity -- and I'm still working on it 
