Young Writers Society

Evil is never one sided, unless you are someone like Jack the Ripper, but then even he had a story didn't he. It is hard to create someone truely evil becuase Evil is subjective. Every character/action that we believe to be evil has it's own story to tell, it's own justification for why everything happens. --Take War for instance, no matter how much we or our characters hate it, war is only the fight to protect what you believe in, and that is direct quote from moi.

Lady Pirate

Something I've discovered. Evil and good are both perceptions by humans. Something to help is think of it as selfish vs.selfless.

Your antagoinist might be doing something percieved as evil but think of it as their action is done to benefit themselves.

That's a very good point, Adam. It reminds me of a theme from Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.

According to the main character, it is better to be selfish than selfless. Selflessness, when you think about it, means to have no self. You are basically an empty shell living to please others.

However, if you are selfish, you live to please yourself, you lead a fulfulling, creative life, and the things you create could in the end benefit others. Roark, for example, (the main character) designed buildings and did not pay attention to the current trends in architecture. He built the buildings the way he wanted to, and although he came under fire for not building the way everyone else did, in the end, people came to accept his ideas, and some even embraced them.

I know this is a little off topic from the original topic of evil, but i just wanted to put my two cents in.

(Boy, this thread made my characters spin out of control! I've never heard such bickering. Thanks, lol! )

I have only one, real antagonist. He is quite creepy but evil? No, he is not that all, just misguided in his actions.

So, mentioning one of my characters very briefly, that is my real point. Evil really is subjective or a manner on opinion. The word itself is broad and can branch out in forty directions or more but when I dwell on the actual defination and its relation to a character, it will always return to the basics.

Remember that anyone can develop this character that kills without care or concern. Perhaps he's not a killer at all but a rapist or just another person whom favors domestic abuse upon some unfortunate victim All three examples are basic but serious crimes obviously. However as someone said, most do not act out of the clear blue sky. There is always a motive. So, it is my belief that there is no such thing an evil character but one has the ability to force you get that, "Oh, ew!" or "What the hell? Yikes!" Through those reactions comes the most difficult task - making them human. XD

While this fruitcake of a character is possibly down right ruthless, he (or she) must have a weakness or some known detail for defeating them. I personally prefer a weakness but it's my style to issue several of them. (Poor fools, lol!)

For example, my antagonist is in the army, and well... His treatment of the prisonors; Let's just say by modern views, how he specifically treated them, it would be considered cruel and inhumane. However, the big, mean, man is rather afraid of silence, which is actually pretty funny. When his men are asleep, he loses control over lives. Basically, he lives, breathes, and loves being in power.

Ah but, this antagonist of mine has another weakness, and around we go! Executions admistered by him, since this character is of high rank, he preforms a rather odd ritual before the prisoner's death. I'm not going to tell you exactly what that ritual is, but I will say, at times when stabbing in random directions would have sufficed, when I watch this ritual, I feel an almost fluffy, shock, yuck, kinda emotion rolled into one package. XD

So, your antagonist may be defined as "evil" by you or just a bastard in general, remember to make them human, not an unnatural monster from a Hollywood producer.

Cheers!

Miss Snark (Retired. Sob.) has a post about this.

Why Miss Snark loves Satan

Why I Love Satan

1. He started out on top of the world and fell
2. He hangs out on burning lakes without his hair catching on fire
3. He's a leader of devils
4. He cheats on Death
5. He's not much on Divine Intervention to solve his problems.


you'll notice I don't love Satan cause he's evil.

You might think about that when you're creating villains.


This post is inspired by three query letters describing the villian as "evil". Evil in and of itself is boring. Fallen and flawed angels....that's where it gets interesting.

I try to avoid antagonists, actually. I have "bad" characters in my story, but they are just "flawed" not evil.

In fact, the "good" guys in my story seem like complete protagonists that are battling evil & corruption, but your opinion might change once you start to notice that they don't live in a society where they make decisions for themselves, and that the "antagonists" are actually fighting to protect their freedom.

Basically I want to tell the story and make the characters act and think realistically, then leave it up to the reader to decide who's a good guy and who's a bad guy.

Personally, If I was left behind to die so that my "friend" could escape safely with no risk of not making it out in time before <X Location>. (this is planned to happen to a character in the story.) I would be pretty mad at said character who left him behind, even if the person who he was leaving behind was considered to be "evil".

I think making a character "evil" is a bit too much a one-dimensional way of thinking. I'm more in to Buffy the Vampire Slayer-esque villains. They're more than just "ZOMG I TOTALLY WANNA TAKE OVER TEH WORLD!" Generally, I make them likable, and their motives for doing "evil things" are pretty understandable. Y'know?

I've never had a truly evil character because

a) I've always liked my characters too much, even the bad ones

b) I still haven't come up with a truly good reason for a character to be evil, and evil for evilness's sake isn't a very good reason, as I'm sure has been pointed out previously.

Even your evil characters are human (unless they actually aren't, but even then, they most likely act human)

[quote=Meep]Athanasius isn't evil, he has a skewed moral compass[/quote]
haha, love it.

Really evil, none. I think it takes away the human part of the character.

Hmmm...my one REALLY bad guy is evil, but he's not human and you never really meet him, you just see the effects of him. and some of his effects are to twist very innocent people into grotesque monsters. now THAT is evil. but the people he twists aren't evil in and of themselves, they just chose evil. so - is my antogonist creepy? absolutely. does she give you shivers? heck, she gives ME shivers. but she isn't evil - what's inside of her is.

Well, now that I think about it... I have a cruel character. I love him just like the rest of my characters. I'm guessing he's just cold and dry like ice. Let me see: 1. He's popular between women. 2. He left one pregnant and ran away. 3. He's cruel and merciless with all the people under his command. 4. He "harmed" his own son. 5. He rarely shows his emotions.

"The boy's mother loved him so very much. With all of her heart. She protected him and raised him but there was a bitter hatred in her eyes. The truth was that the boy she told she loved very much every day with all of her love, was the reason she felt pain and sorrow. Every day her heart would fill with hate and descused for the boy that called her mother. The only pleasure she felt around that boy was when she took him to the dark place, the place he feared. His fear filled her eyes with glee and joy. But even this could not stop all of that cruelness in her heart. Every day it just got worse and worse till her heart bursted. And with the darkness of the night she couldn't take it anymore, and with all of her rage and anger. She brought all of her wrath down upon a poor helpless little boy that loved her."

That's the character of the woman from the boy's one sweet memory. She will appear more in the story.

True evil comes from those you love.

Tell me what you think. This is from my story. "The Forgotten One."

I think that entirely evil characters are usually very unrelatable and unrealistic. I personally believe that no one, or at least very few people, are purely good or purely evil. People just aren't that simple- we're not black and white. That's why the concepts of heaven hell don't make sense to me, but that's another story...

For an example of a well-done, complex villain, check out Lady Eboshi in "Princess Mononoke."

To make a character real, they have to have a reason for their actions. That's usually where i go wrong too.
The trick to making someone evil, is not making their actions bad, but the motives too, that's the hard part.
I'd recommend looking up some of 'madhatter's work, he's brilliant at creating evil characters.

In my developing story, the villain wants to kill off a race because a group of that race's fighters killed his brother. I don't think of a character as "Evil". I say that they over react. The villain is clearly over reacting i his actions, causing the illusion of being evil.