Check out this article from the Writer's Digest. It covers topics like Narcissism, the anitsocial personality, the borderline personality, and the paranoid personality.
Killer Personalities
Craft vicious villains with this psychiatrist's guide to writing bad guys with real problems.
by Charles Atkins
It's such a disappointment to sit down with a scary novel or crime story, only to find that the killer has been portrayed one-dimensionally. Suddenly, the reader finds himself rolling his eyes in annoyance instead of being struck with fear. Readers want their characters—villains or not—to be realistic and multifaceted. They want to know why a character acts the way he does, and they want it to make sense.
As a psychiatrist and author of thrillers myself, I (like many authors) have turned to specific personality disorders to flesh out a character's motivation behind criminal behavior. Most readers are familiar, for instance, with multiple personality disorder (which tends to translate to one personality being good, while the other is a crazed serial killer). Realistically, though, multiple personality disorder doesn't figure into many real-life crimes and, therefore, it would be implausible in fiction. Not only that, but not all criminals fit this mold. Here's a whirlwind review of the dark side of human nature, so you can craft believable villains and direct your reader into the mind of a madman.
Read the rest of the article (with specific interests) HERE.
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