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This “guest post” is by one of the authors of Writing Fiction for Dummies, Randy Ingermanson, one of my heroes for creating publish-quality stories. He personally invited me to steal this article from his E-zine that I subscribe to. There are some good pointers. If you’re resistant to these particular points, at least hopefully I’ve made you think a little.
Extracted from “Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine,” received Dec 20, 2010
By Randy Ingermanson
Creating: The Villain Next Door
One of the most common types of characters in a novel is the villain--a person directly opposing the protagonist.
Writing villains is hard. The reason is that you, the author, are likely to dislike your villain. You probably find it hard to relate to your villain. You don't understand what makes him tick. Therefore, it's all too tempting to make him a two-dimensional character whose sole purpose is to be bad.
The problem with that is that villains don't believe they're bad. Villains generally believe they're the good guys. Villains believe that the story is their story.
I've been reading a book lately titled THE SOCIOPATH NEXT DOOR, by Martha Stout, Ph.D., and I think it's valuable to any novelist who wants to write a real, live, breathing, three-dimensional villain.
We'll define a sociopath, as Dr. Stout does, this way:
A sociopath is a person who lacks a conscience. A sociopath feels free to do anything without any sense of shame, guilt, or remorse.
You might imagine that people like that are pretty rare. One in a million, maybe. Or one in ten thousand.
According to Dr. Stout, those estimates are way low.
According to her, about 4 in every 100 people is a sociopath.
That's pretty shocking. Scary even. It doesn't mean that 4% of all people are psychopathic murderers. Those are pretty rare. It means that 4% of all people match the standard psychiatric definition of "antisocial personality disorder."
The sociopath category is pretty broad. A rare few sociopaths become serial killers. Most of them do their best to fit in with a world of people they can't relate to at all -- people hobbled with consciences.
There are plenty of places to fit in.
An extremely intelligent sociopath can do well in business or politics or the military, where ruthless domination of others might actually be rewarded.
(Obviously not every businessman or politician or military professional is a sociopath.)
Less gifted sociopaths may find a niche in some job where they exercise authority over a few others and enjoy making life miserable for them.
Sociopaths with average talents are often full-time moochers, living off somebody else by arousing pity.
Plenty of sociopaths gravitate to crime. Surprisingly, the majority of criminals are NOT sociopaths. Studies show that only about 20% of prison inmates are sociopaths. But that 20% account for more than half of the most serious crimes.
If you decide that the villain in your novel should be a sociopath, what features should your character have?
To get the fully detailed answer, I recommend that you read THE SOCIOPATH NEXT DOOR or some similar book.
Please note that reading one book on sociopaths will not make either you or me an expert, but these are the high points that I picked up from the book:
* Sociopaths know the difference between right and wrong. There is nothing flawed in their understanding of basic morality. However, when they do wrong, they don't FEEL any sense of shame or guilt. Therefore, they can justify anything they do by blaming the victim or the economy or society or circumstances or Satan or the weather or whatever.
* Sociopaths often are extremely charming. They study normal humans and learn which buttons to push in order to get the responses they want. So the stereotype of the charming villain is based on reality. This skill is critical for sociopaths climbing the corporate ladder or making a career in politics or wangling into a romantic relationship.
* Sociopaths are extremely good at detecting potential victims. Whether they're looking for somebody to marry, somebody to mug, or somebody to mooch, they quickly home in on the one who'll give the biggest payoff.
* Sociopaths don't love anybody. They may say all the right words, but they never really mean them.
* Sociopaths crave pity. This may seem astonishing, but one of the most reliable indicators that somebody is a sociopath is their relentless attempts to arouse pity in the people they're victimizing. A typical sociopath can turn on the "crocodile tears" on command.
* Sociopaths are easily bored. So are children and young teens, of course, but normal people grow out of their boredom as they mature. Sociopaths don't. Because of that, they crave excitement, which causes them to take crazy risks which endanger themselves and other people. Those risks can lead to spectacular successes in business, politics, and war. They can also lead to spectacular failures.
* Sociopaths don't want to get better. They rarely try to get treatment unless forced to, because they think they're just fine the way they are -- it's the rest of the human race that's screwed up.
* Sociopaths sometimes "do the right thing" -- if it gains them something. That may be public approval or it may be a heightened self-image. But their reason for doing the right thing is always based on what they THINK, not on what they FEEL. Doing wrong doesn't make a sociopath feel bad and doing right doesn't make him feel good.
* For a sociopath, life is about winning. Other people are there to be controlled or to provide points in the game. Relationships with those pesky people have no value, unless the relationship contributes to winning.
In writing a character––any character––you must find a way to get inside that character's skin. You must think as they think and feel as they feel.
That doesn't mean that you have to become a sociopath in order to write a convincing villain. It means you need to be able to IMAGINE being a sociopath.
And that's not so hard. Novelists typically have extremely high empathic skills. A novelist is required to imagine that he or she is a person of a different gender, age, ethnic group, social stratum. Many novelists need to imagine that they live in a different time or a different place.
If you can imagine all that, then you can imagine that you have no conscience and don't want one. When you do that, you'll understand your villain in a whole new way.
Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the
Snowflake Guy," publishes the Advanced Fiction Writing
E-zine, with more than 23,000 readers, every month. If
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