Young Writers Society

In most every story, the main character is good and the enemy is evil. Even some of the best stories of all time have good characters and evil ones. So obviously, it's a good idea to call a character good or evil.

I don't think so. Think about real life, and evil people to us: Hitler, Hussien, and so on. We think they're evil, but are they really? To us, yes, but what about the people they alligned with: some germans thought Hitler was good and we were evil. Don't terrorists say we're evil while they are good?

I think that people need to stop thinking of that person as evil and that one as good. All characters should have motives that they beleive are good for some reason. No one does something evil unless they get good out of it.

Without these labels, characters come to life. Some characters may be evil in the readers eye because they oppose the main character, but it will definitely get the readers thinking of whether they are truly evil, or just misunderstood. With that, you really breath life and purpouse into a character.

hhmm..you've given me alot to think about. I almost popped a blood vessel pondering your questions, but I finally came up with an answer:

You're right. However, I have a kind of standard for evil:
If you think what you're doing is wrong, and it doesn't help anyone, but you do it anyways, that is evil. Doing something for the sake of hurting something/someone else.

Maybe that opinion is wrong, but it's what I believe. Evil is people slaughtering another person for the sake of killing, out of no original motives or beliefs. Like someone just walking down a road and deciding, out of the blue, to shoot their neighbour. That sounds silly, but...*is lost in thought*

In the book that I am writing, or attempting to, the main character is neither good nor evil. She is dark, dangerous, with a dash of cruelty, but she does things not just because she wants to, but because she feels that she must. You know?

This sounds very nice... save for one tiny problem...

In the scheme of human actions, there are good actions, and there are evil actions. Very few actions are perfectly neutral... such as if you are standing in your front yard, stepping to the left or the right a step... unless perhaps it's to dodge a volleyball and send it into the face of the person behind you.

Evil, in the most objective terms, is the privation of some due good. Which means if I have a soda, and you take it, you are depriving me of my due good, which is the soda I had. By this most fundamental recognition, the taking of that which is not ours (including life), or the denial to someone of that which they deserve (like an employer's wages to the employee) are objective evils. They do not merely exist as prejudices or grudges... psychological ideas... in our heads. They are basically a universally recognizable wrong. (If you don't think so, just let someone do it to you, or deny it to you, and see how you think then.)

If good and evil are simply psychological nonsense, then all of us are a bit late on world domination. If we recognize that there are factual evils, then it is not merely in the eye of a beholder. This also goes regardless of what one thinks one is doing.

For example. To choose a non-religious, clear-cut case, a gangster. He may think it will be very good if the opposing gang gets off his turf, because that will cease the bloodshed. He misses the small fact that he does evil in committing that bloodshed to begin with, and tries to place the blame on the opposing faction, and probably the other way around, as well. The real evil, objectively, and not merely by opinion, is the fact that the gang members are killing at all, which is a privation of the life due to their enemy. That's objective fact. They can go on and on about who did what to who... but the killing will remain an evil in this case, because it is not for a just reason, like true self defense. (Eg, going out to someone's house, and shooting them in bed, is NOT self defense.)

The actions of characters are not simply "thought of" as good or evil. Either they would be (were the story fact), or else they wouldn't be. The goodness or evil of the actions do not depend upon the thoughts of the one committing them, but upon objective moral law... that is, the privation or lack of that good which is due.

The question then becomes not whether the religious zealot who believes in killing his foes THINKS he is justly punishing his neighbor for the good due but not given to their deity, but rather, whether that deity exists, whether some good was due that deity by those people, whether it is just for a man to execute justice in any way upon his neighbor in the name of a deity, what actions in justice may be executed in those circumstances, and so forth... Not whether the zealot THINKS he's right, in other words, but whether or not he actually IS right. That reality is not merely in the eye of the beholder, and so it doesn't matter whether or not the characters recognize it or not.

If you think that good and evil are just silly ideas, then you would have every cause to be at war with every kind of authority, and to take up a life of depriving your neighbor of as much as you are physically capable, so long as you felt like it. If, however, evil is a reality, and those actions are evil, than you would be an evil person to do so.

Beyond this, you get into theology... which is probably a topic for another forum.

Hehehe, I think you're right. Hate the sin, love the sinner, no? So even if somebody does evil acts, that doesn't necessarily make that person evil, and so that gives NO reason why you should develop that one evil character poorly, just because he's evil.

Just because they had followers who thought they were good people, that doesn't make them less evil. Sure, perspective is interesting. You could write interesting characters, making them fascinating, amusing, even nice people. But they are still pure evil. One of the best movies last year was The Last King Of Scotland which made Idi Amin charming, friendly and funny.

But he was still a crazy, disgusting f--.

Making good antagonists involves not making them cartoon evil characters, but making them truly evil by making them scary real. But you're right. One of the things I hate the most about old war movies is how they demonize the enemies. Most of the times, "evil" characters have families, and friends of their own.

But you saying the Hitler wasn't evil, or that Stalin wasn't evil, is just wrong from any perspective. In fact, Hitler was a genius. Stalin was pretty smart himself. But they were really, really bad motherf--ers.

Define evil.

Here are some definitions of evil:
morally bad or wrong; "evil purposes"; "an evil influence"; "evil deeds"
morally objectionable behavior
having the nature of vice
that which causes harm or destruction or misfortune; "the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones"- Shakespeare
tending to cause great harm
the quality of being morally wrong in principle or practice; "attempts to explain the origin of evil in the world"
malefic: having or exerting a malignant influence; "malevolent stars"; "a malefic force"

none of these seem really clear cut to me: morales are derived from someone's views, and things that do harm can also be good to others (like conquering an continent)
it's all about perspective

Man, this could get seriously philisophical (and may already have), so I'll just put in my two cents. I think an error that is easy to make is the good/evil, white/black concept. No one is pure one way or the other. By my interpretation of MiwaKi's interpretation, we've all commited many acts of "evil" in our lives, if only minor ones. And I can agree with that. No one is capable of being pure one way or another.

Personally, I strive to put all of my major characters in the gray shade, "good" and "evil". The "wrong thing for the right reason" is a scenario seen often, at least in TV, that I personally like to use. Where would you classify "justifiable homicide"? Rarely is anything cut and dry simple. You have to keep that concept in mind.

Pure "evil" characters sound phony, and pure "good" characters sound simply fake. We as writers have out views on where the lines are drawn between the two, and I believe we will write accordingly. But jonny911 makes a very good point. Every character needs to have a logical reason for what they do. So try to avoid making "good" characters and "evil" characters. Think "Protagonist" and "Antagonist". Trust me, it will make developing a character so much easier, because then you won't be bogged down with thoughts like, "how do I make this guy evil?" Thoughts like that will likely lead to cliches and stereotypes. Personlly, I never use the terms "good" and "evil" when creating characters, I focus on making people, and just who those individuals are. Everyone has a thought process, and that determines the kind of person they are.

We know why Hitler did what he did. He had a reason, cruel as it was. It wasn't simply "I'm going to kill the jewish just because I can" (And I most sincerly apologive if anyone finds the preceding line offensive, but I am simply trying to make a point, nothing more). His reasons were deeper than that. I'm not saying he wasn't evil, but there's a real reason of why we believe he was evil. Some may believe that his actions were logical and justifiable, but there simply is no real evidence that it was.

So, in closing I suppose, no matter who you're character is, they need to have a reason for their actions. If the reson is "because", your writing is going to fall flat. If there is a reason that can be justified, then the characters will seem far more real. If you can back it up in an arguemnt in an even semi-plausable way, then it should be a good enough reason to sound real.

MiwaKi is now my personal therapist/psychologist/advisor.

I love you. :]]

I think the same can go for guilt. Guilt is not the feeling of remorse for a wrongdoing, but it's the condition of being at fault, or something like that. The symptons of guilt can include feeling of remorse.

This is a tough subject.

But then again, who says who is good and who is evil? What is good and evil? Could you be doing good that is evil? Could you be doing evil that is good? We could be eating a hamburger and "sinning", for all we know!

Ehh... I want that hamburger. XD

Ha!

I always thought there was a certain balence between the two. For instance, in Bound for Glory, one of my main characters (quite a few actually) deplore the British Army and their King - George III for yanking the colonial's freedom basically. To one side, in my charaters's point of view, Britiain is now evil.

But...

With the flip of the coin, another, who is British, is the father of my main character, and argues continuously that British subjects aren't hateful and that he is loyal to the British Empire for that is his home. However, the father equally deplores the King's decesions.

Yet... again with the flip of the coin, much further in the book, there is no definate or concrete details of who is the evil or good party. And that's the beauty of my setup. I leave the reader to choose because I've given examples of some horriable acts the colonials have done, like burning houses, while the "Boston Massacre" comes into play.

So to sum up, a writer can have good or evil characters but there has to be a balence between the two. Let your reader decide, rather then craming down specifics into your reader's throat.

You know, there's a great play called "The Painful Story About The Secret Love of Don José Jacinto Milanés". He is a poet who really existed, and is pretty famous in Cuba, who wrote poems about slavery, and how black people should have the same rights as everybody else. As the play progresses, he starts making some real progress, leading hearings against slavery and everything. Meanwhile, the treatment of slaves in the countryside gets worse.

The poet is also in love with a really young girl.

When a revolt breaks out, a riot, and slaves flood the city, burning houses, and raping women, the poet witnesses the rape and murder of this young girl by the hands of the people he had been fighting for all his life. He feels guilty about her death. He feels like it was him who slit her throat.

Anyways, what the slaves did was evil, but... can we really blame them? Slavery itself is a pretty evil did, but does it justify what they did? And is the poet to blame for these actions? To say that evil doesn't exist is foolish, but yeah, sometimes it's hard to distinguish. That's what good stories are made of.

I belive that good and evil is relative, unless we're abiding by strict definitions, in which case, we're just boxing in concepts.