Some of us here, myself included, have commented that it can be difficult to get into the head of evil characters. And yet, we often need antagonist characters (not just forces of nature, bad luck, etc.). So what’s a squeamish writer to do?
Assuming we’re not ourselves psychopaths (hey, work with me here), we either have to call upon the portrayals of such people by others, or we have to try and put ourselves into impersonating such a character — wearing him as a skinsuit, as it were — so that we can generate and then examine his reactions and interpretations, and especially his motivations and pleasures.
Now, we’re writers. We can wear aliens and vampires and gods as skinsuits, so what’s so hard about willful evil?
Contamination. Like sin, we fear the contact, as if it might rub off and linger. We look away disbelievingly, when we encounter it in real life, or think we have. I remember, as a child, meeting another child who gave off the stench of psychopathy (he was busy casually torturing a robin with his bicycle) and I’ve never forgotten the way all the hairs on my body rose with an involuntary shudder as I recognized something inhuman. This was not a character I could ever wear, though I’ve read enough versions of one I could represent one by craft alone — just not from the inside.
And, yet, not all villains are psychopaths. All they need is excessive self-interest, an indifference to the needs of others, and the cunning to properly nurture an ambition or a grievance to better themselves. These are characters I can write as necessary, even if I don’t much want to (unless I were writing the sorts of comic villains that never succeed).
What skinsuits are you reluctant to don, and how do you fumigate and clean them up for inhabitation?
Mad Genius Club 
19 responses to “Villains as Author Skinsuits”
One thing I have learned while working with and around humanity is that the seed of evil exists in every human being, just as the seed of grace and transcendent purity does. Look at toddlers- they can be some of the most violent people around! But when they grow and are civilized, they learn to chain those impulses and use their words instead of their fists.
Anyone can fall to evil. The key to making evil characters from good ones (or just normal ones) is to put them into untenable situations, where they are pushed to their limits- and then go further.
There is often something broken in the evil villains. Some kind of empathy or interconnection with others is missing there. Sure, many of us have briefly wished harm on others- the ones that cut you off in traffic, callously caused you harm and difficulty, petty tyrants that seem to revel in the discomfort and frustration they cause in others. But such are passing thoughts. We do not act upon them.
To the evil, perhaps they do act upon these impulses. The victim deserves the punishment. They are not, as we, human. They are enemies, other, and undeserving of mercy.
There can be do-gooding villains too. They simply do not count the cost because the goal is worth so much more. After all, when saving the entire world, what are a few lives that must necessarily be sacrificed?
Not every villain delights in suffering. To some, it is a regrettable necessity to an end. Others get a nigh sexual pleasure from the pain they cause. Still others do evil as a byproduct- they are workaday villains who are just punching the clock.
Getting into villains heads is very easy for me as a writer. Sadists lack compunction, revengers see it as justified, tinkers want to see what will happen if they break this one, zealots count no humans save the faithful, the conman might briefly regret the cost but excuses it with practiced ease.
A villain might want what he wants and damn the cost. Or he might just finally be broken by something and wants to share his pain with the world. Or…
Most, if not all evils seem to be a perversion of good. The coward punishes the brave for what he lacks. The envious hate the charitable. The lusts hate those who love. And so on. Mother’s love for her son? Make it stifling, never let him grow up. A soldier’s humble sacrifice for his home and family? Make him feel betrayed by them and frustrated by their lack of understanding.
Villainous characters can be rational or not, but their character arcs can often be failed heroes. Your heroes are tested constantly in their trials, but what of those that gave in to their darker impulses? Villain material.
Villains need character arcs just as rich and deep as the heroes. The big bads, not the mooks, not necessarily. There is something broken in every villain- but every villain need not be a cartoon character. They may hate the heroes, but love their children. They may be utterly vile, but treat their minions with respect.
One thing every good (bad) villain needs though, is power.
Power does not in and of itself necessarily corrupt. Power is simply the ability to do- whatever. Lift five hundred pounds like it was a cupcake? Power. Assimilate the entirety of the internet in seconds? Power. Command the attention and desires or respect of other people? Also power.
Power is a heady feeling. While it does not push us to bad actions, it reduces or eliminates limits on doing such things. A pretty girl tends to get what she wants from men, because they want things from her. This causes changes in the girls psyche, just as the reaction of too much intelligence causes changes in the smart person’s psyche, and so on.
If you want to know who a man really is, what he really values, give him power. And then step back and watch the fireworks.
This is the basic alchemy of villain crafting. Broken psyche. Power. Two basic elements. A powerless villain is a joke. A powerful man with solid moral character is a hero. But a powerful individual without the limits that proper moral foundation provides, that one is a villain.
And then you are assigning villainhood to Bibi Netanyahu. Who wants to end the threat of Hamas decisively, only to have “Defense Minister Gallant said that was all well and good if it was a decision taken in isolation. But, he asked, “What about when 30 lives are at stake? What do you do?”
I’m afraid that my response would have been a bit less restrained:
“I look at the hundreds of lives when Hamas repeats Oct 7, and the millions of Israeli hostages your crocodile tears are turning over to Hamas’ tender mercies by not ending them, and I remember what ‘Never Again’ was supposed to mean. That’s what leadership is, Defense Minister Gallant. And then I tell you to GFY.”
Life is full of trade-offs. There being perils each way.
Also, I’ve seen some very impressive villains lamenting the death toll in a way that makes it clear they pity themselves for having to do all this dirty work, not their victims for dying.
That reminds me of the reaction I’ve often seen made to this scene from the very well done animated film The Prince of Egypt, when the still an Egyptian prince Moses learns about what his adopted father did to the children of the Hebrews the year Moses was born. At first it looks like he feels remorse over the command he gave as he comforts Moses, and then so calmly: “Besides, my son, they were only slaves.”
As someone else put it, “Pharaoh Seti feels remorse, not that children were massacred, but that he had to give the command to do it.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr6b-CVP7Pc
“We are not in any way responsible for the atrocities committed by our enemies.”
If more people would just say that…
You can’t give the enemy a pass just because they have hostages. They will take more, and more. You have to punish the enemy, not reward them, for doing things you don’t want them to do. ‘Sucks to be a hostage’ may sound callous, and brutal, but it’s the only rational way to deal with those that take hostages. Give today’s terrorists an inch, and tomorrow’s terrorists will do something much worse, and demand more.
Obligatory video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I12j-HQuFYI
It’s a very bitter Danegeld, and the “Danes” never tire of doing it over, and over, and more, and more.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock
A bad guy who is convinced he is the good guy can be absolute evil, because they know they are right and the ends justify the means. They are not necessarily psychopaths, either. Just absolutely convince they are right. I could get inside a character like that’s head, because (let’s face it) we all have that impulse within us. You could even have that character recognize what they are doing is wrong and agonize over it.
It can help thematically if the evil of the villain makes him a foil to the hero. If the hero is tempted by the envy of other’s good fortune that drives the villain.
I can’t write from inside the head of a religious villain (of any kind: Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Shinto, what-have-you). I can’t fake that level of certainty and confidence. Write about them from outside, yes, but not from inside. And a certain type of sociopath that borders on psychopath. Let’s just say that I don’t need to go there inside myself.
A lot of writers can’t, and write them anyway, and never bother to notice they wrote an atheist. . . .
I mostly get around it by not showing the villain much. We see his works, but not him.
That’s a good technique. Tolkien sets the high bar there.
The first chapter of “The Secret of Father Brown” has Fr. Brown describing his detective abilities in much the same way. He calls it a “religious exercise” and is rather reluctant to share it with just anyone.
“I had planned out each of the crimes very carefully,” went on Father Brown. “I had thought out exactly how a thing like that could be done, and in what style or state of mind a man could really do it. And when I was quite sure that I felt exactly like the murderer myself, of course I knew who he was.”….
‘‘No, no, no,” he said, almost angrily. ‘‘I don’t mean just a figure of speech. This is what comes of trying to talk about deep things…..I mean that I really did see myself, and my real self, committing the murders. I didn’t actually kill the men by material means; but that’s not the point. Any brick or bit of machinery might have killed them by material means. I mean that I thought and thought about how a man might come to be like that, until I realized that I really was like that, in everything except actual final consent to the action.”
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.528506/page/n17/mode/2up
Precursor to Will Graham and Hannibal
Rather OT but have you ever heard the story how Hannibal Lecter’s creator felt that, whenever he was writing scenes with Hannibal, Hannibal knew he was there? Apparently he writes scenes by ‘imagining’ himself into them as a silent and invisible observer, with the characters unable to perceive him. Except for Hannibal, who somehow knew he was watching even if he did nothing.
I’ve been told that happens to a lot of writers. They get the idea their characters, at least some of them, know the writer exists. I must be a weirdo, as it’s never happened to me yet.
I haven’t had that yet, although, my hand to Bog, I had a character appear in the back seat of my pickup (I was parked) and demand that I write a story about him. Bugged the heck out of me at the time. Still does.
Never happened to me, either.
OTOH, I’ve heard an author tell of holding mental cast parties after the book is written, where a character takes the character who had played her brother in the book by the hand and leads him off for some privacy.
Well, that’s different. Sounds more like something Osamu Tezuka might have done with his ‘repertory company’. I.e., a standard list of characters he used in his various mangas.