I don’t like clear cut good vs. evil story lines anymore. As I have realized that in real life we are seldom good or bad, we are just there to get by.

The other day at the local Wally World, a woman was going through the self checkout line and she wasn’t checking everything in her basket. I was in a position to tell the manager of the theft, but the things she wasn’t ringing up were Diapers and baby food. Now would I be the bad guy to let her steal knowing it was wrong, or to stop the theft knowing what she was stealing she probably really needed.

Well as it turned out I didn’t have to act either way. A very large man behind her caught her and made her ring up everything. Then he proceeded to swipe his Credit Card and pay for everything. I was moved, so as he was leaving I stopped him and asked him why. Turns out he was the store manager and had been following her for some time throughout the store, and he wasn’t willing to put a mom in jail for 50$.

In my current story I am having a time making my “villain” seem a good guy. He is the bad guy but I want to show his point of view and that he may not be such a bad guy just his goals conflict with my heroes’ goal. He is bad I just want to show a side of him that isn't so bad.

I want him to be likeable and charismatic but not in a car salesman way. So far I’ve been writing his inner turmoil about his actions and that he knows that they aren’t the best choices but since he made them he must live with them.
Any other things I should try?

There are some really bad people in this world. There are bad people that aren't just trying to get by, they are truly evil people. That's not to say that they don't have some good in them. Few people are purely evil. They do the things because they believe what they are doing is necessary, possibly even good.

Most people that do bad things don't think what they are doing is bad. Take your Wal-Mart thief. She is trying to take care of her children, she doesn't realize that by stealing she is making things tough for others. Or is it just that? Perhaps she has the money, and she steals because she can. Is it about the thrill? Does she have kids at all? Maybe she just sells diapers and formula to others for discount prices. These things are expensive. I take my son to the store with me. He sits in the car seat with a blanket over his head. He often sleeps at the store and on one really knows for sure if he's in there. I could be stealing a lot of things and putting them in the car seat. No one really knows for sure. I don't think most people would ask to check for risk of offending me.

There are good examples of bad guys and how the author gets us in their head. We are shown that they aren't completely evil, or that they became that way as a result of events. "Wild Seed" by Octavia Butler is a good example of this.

Try writing your antagonist as a good guy. Show the good things he does, show his motivations as being good. In fact, you could sketch a story how he is actually the good guy. Then twist it a little so that he happens to be a bad guy.

You say, “I don’t like clear cut good vs. evil story lines anymore. As I have realized that in real life we are seldom good or bad, we are just there to get by.”
I am nobody to judge but that reasoning (while not rare) seems to be out on a limb to me. I wouldn’t want to live in a society that had that as its judicial mantra. That being said however, in today’s world, you would be in thick company if you wrote with that undercurrent.

Each one of us has the ability to be truly good or evil. The choice to be either is what makes us human. The choice for neither also makes us human. I believe most of us don’t look at our actions as good or evil. We just look at it as the decision of the moment either good or bad we must live with that decision.

And Matt it’s not a question of what she was doing that was bad. It was my choices that were in debate. Either way it could have been seen as a "Bad" choice or a "Good" choice. Morality is a funny beast.

I'm having a related but different problem. I like my characters so much I'm having a hard time putting them into tension/conflict/turmoil! LOL

Karen

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And Matt it’s not a question of what she was doing that was bad. It was my choices that were in debate. Either way it could have been seen as a "Bad" choice or a "Good" choice. Morality is a funny beast.

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You would have been right to report her. In a society governed by laws, everyone is responsible for obeying and upholding them. Obeying laws matters because we do not live in anarchy. As a responsible citizen, you should have reported her. Would that be easy? No. Would I have reported her in your situation? Doubtful, I don't like causing problems. But it would have been a good choice. Someone that willfully breaks the law, for any reason, will continue to do so. That person will teach their children to break the law when it suits their needs or wants. It has to be stopped somewhere.

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I'm having a related but different problem. I like my characters so much I'm having a hard time putting them into tension/conflict/turmoil! LOL

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Really KayTi? I enjoy beating up on my characters, and I love them to death. Which is quite literal, because some die, or will eventually.

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There is no good and evil. Societies' laws and ethics are merely there to maintain the Nash equilibrium in which we live...

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Hogwash! But that's a debate for another day. Actually, I think it's already going on in another thread

In the case of the shopper, her reason may or may not have been good. There are programs to help people who can't afford these things for their children. My wife works with children who have disadvantages in life, so I get to hear some of how those programs work. However, in the case of the woman, there is a lot we don't know when it comes to motivation. She might not have had enough to buy it all or she might have and just wanted to save some money. She might have had alternatives or she might not have. The act itself was immoral, but the motivation may or may not be so. We can only guess from the information given.

The Store Manager probably thought he was doing a good thing, too. However, his action may have sent the offender a message that it is okay to do what she did, despite it being illegal. I wonder if she'll be more likely or less likely to try that again in that particular store.

Bad Guy motivation has always been interesting to me, but the one rule (for me) is that it must be believable. Generally, antagonists think they do good things (or the result will be good, despite the evil necessary.) One antagonist I enjoyed knew his actions were bad, but he was trying to build a better world for the people. He even knew he could never exist in that world, because he admitted he was an evil man. Therefore, he knew he would have to die (kill himself) before his vision could be realized. He was portrayed in a way that made him believable to me.

Bad Guys may or may not feel they are bad. One person may think the ends justify the means, while another thinks the means justify the ends, and a third will think neither justifies the other. Within those, there could be degrees of tolerance, too. When they are at odds, each might see the other as the antagonist in their own story.

A story where the "evil" person is actually trying to help the MC but the MC does not know it. It would be like the evil is trying to get the MC to safety and the MC keeps avoiding the attempts to get him there.
REal evil is also working on the MC, acting as if he is trying to help. The MC is being lead deeper and deeper into the tenticles of the real evil.
The MC is finally captured brought to the "evil" person. He likely escapes and ends up in the cluches of the bad guy only to learn the truth of what is going on.
There might be some treatment during the story where the MC is forced (possibly chased) by the "evil" through situations that toughens and trains him. When the final confrontation arrives, the MC is ready to deal with the final enemy. NOw the final enemy might be not be a person but instead the winter, or having to cross a mountain, a journey. The MC is forced to be prepared to handle it against his own will.

While my example is not good, it might be one way to have the one dumping on the MC to be doing it to help.

I'll repeat my position on good and evil, and good and evil characters. I don't think anybody thinks of themselves as evil in their own mind---even if they're shouting "I'm evil!" it's just a pose on their part. So I assume my characters have their reasons for doing whatever they're doing---it might not seem a good reason to another character, but it seemed good enough to the one in question.

Anyways...go read Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind. Somewhere in there a character named Zedd will give the MC a lecture on good and evil and how it's all the perspective of the doer. The bad guys never ever think that they're the bad guys, they always see themselves as in the "right".

An antagonist is someone whose goals come into conflict with those of the protagonist. And those goals don't necessarily have to be "bad" goals. They just have to come into conflict.

Aristotle, in his POETICS, I believe, even pointed out that the most tragic kind of story is one where the protagonist and antagonist find out after it's too late that they were both striving for worthy goals, but only one of them could win. (And the story, of course, is told from the point of view of the one who wins--at tragic cost to the antagonist.)

Was she wrong to do it? Yes. but was it immoral, I could go either way.

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I don’t like clear cut good vs. evil story lines anymore. As I have realized that in real life we are seldom good or bad, we are just there to get by. .... Keep in mind that this guy is very bad. Stomp on kitties bad. But is fighting with his innerself(is that a word?).

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I don't know that I really have much more to add to the above, but it sounds to me like you recognize that people are all good or all bad, but you're unconsciously make him all bad anyway and are now fighting to redeem him. Remember, what the fellow is doing either 1) isn't bad in his own mind (he thinks he's a hero!) or 2) he recognizes that it's not good to act that way but feel that there are compelling reasons to act that way, anyway. I think that you're trying to make a #2 from your description since you want him conflicted about his decisions.

Take your diaper thief. Is she
1) stealing because her husband drinks away all the money and she is heroically keeping her family feed and diapered with no one the wiser! But our protagonist is having to pay the cost of her stealing and so is at odds with her.
2) stealing because her husband drinks away all the money, but feels guilty about it and would stop in a second if she could. She's keeping her family alive, but the guilt is eating her to pieces. (Same protagonist line.)
3) [the combo] stealing...and feeling heroic, but some man calls her on her stealing but pays for the items himself. Suddenly she sees herself as a thief. She continues stealing because that's the only way she knows how to live, but suddenly doubts the rightness of her actions.

Maybe the question should be "is a new guy always a new guy?"

Well, as long as each personality behaves itself (himself? herself?), I am not going to do anything, but I will keep watch.

To make note of the above mentioned story (that I'm currently REreading for the umpteenth time) about the good/evil (plus a little side note about "power") discussion that I was mentioning. Just to properly quote the novel, it was written by Terry Goodkind and it titled "Wizard's First Rule".

(pg 112) "'Sounds like a terribly evil magic,' ...
'No, not really. The magic of Orden is the poer of life. Like all power, it simply exists. It's the user who determines what use it will be put to....The power is neither evil nor good; it simply exists. It is up to the mind of the man to put it to use....'"

(pg 127) "'...There is no such thing as pure good or pure evil, least of all in people. In the best of us there are thoughts or deeds that are wicked, and in the worst of us, at least some virtue. An adversary is not one who does loathsome acts for their own sake. He always has a reason that to him is justification. My cat eats mice. Does that make him bad? I don't think so and the cat doesn't think so, but I would bet the mice have a different opinion. Every murderer thinks the victom needed killing.'"

Well...at midnight, that was all I could pull out of the pages. Much thanks to Terry Goodkind and his novel for my little 2 cents that were really borrowed from someone else. My advice would be to read the whole series...they're actually rather good (in my humble opinion).

Good night all!

Alye, what makes the villain the villain is antagonism. RmatthewWare explained it perfectly “When one person steals, us honest ones have to pay extra.” Even if the character isn’t necessarily bad their purpose in the story is to oppose your protagonist. The villain’s actions punish the hero. A good example is the Anakin/Darth Vader transformation—his switch to the dark side is much more evil than Dooku’s because Anakin killed most of the Jedi and betrayed Padme and Obi Wan.

Well, where do I begin... It appears that Rommel has taken on a roomie. Someone from Florida named OMEGA. Now when I say roomie I dont mean they're sharing a house or even a room for that matter. No, Rommel and Omega share a brain... quite possibly with several other "roomies." Time will tell. Regardless, at least two occupants of said brain have decided to join Hatrack.

Of course, if this has one of those great fictional twists at the end and they all turn out to be Kathleen, someone’s going to have to email OSC and let him know that his helmsman has been wearing a led lined top hat too long.

But that probably won't happen. Most likely Kathleen is sitting in a nice SLC suburb knitting pink and yellow woolen booties for some unsuspecting baby. Rommel and Omega, on the other hand, are probably sitting somewhere in rural Kentucky knitting a hemp balaclava which could just end up featured on the post masters notice board one day.

Yes this is “to do with writing.” Just look at the literary quality of this post.

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I think that the main definition of an evil person is someone who does things his personal conscience tells him are wrong for whatever reason, whether it is greed, lust, revenge or ambition.

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*sob* Oh, no--I'm evil! I was once nasty to my brother when my conscience told me I was wrong to do it. *wail*