Young Writers Society

Look at your characters, you have protagonists and antagonists right? But are the antagonists truly evil? I find that sometimes authors cannot really create truly evil characters. You can make your characters cold and kill randomly, but that doesn't make them evil. How I recognize evil in my writings is when i get that gut wrenching feeling when I'm rereading my work.

I believe that those of us who can't make really evil characters is because we have a conscious, and our concious tells us not to do evil things even in our writing. At least it is for me. While I love creating the truly evil characters i find that i all my antagonists are justified on their side.

While I love creating the truly evil characters i find that i all my antagonists are justified on their side.

Well, in any story an antagonist had better have a justified reason for doing anything "evil" or that story cannot be related to. People don't do things just because. There is always a reason. I don't care if your good or bad, psycho or sane, you always have justification for what you do. Evil must be justified in some way or form or the reader will loose intersest in your story. Period.

But anyway... Have you ever seen Mission Imposible 3? The villian in that movie is the ultimate bad guy. He sends shivers down my spine. . In a story, you have to get a reader to hate the bad guy. You have to get them to want him dead. And when you do kill off your antagonist, the reader should feel a primal surge of sick, twisted satisfaction. That is when you achieve "evil".

Oh, and by the by. Of course we can make evil characters!!! You can still have both a conscience and a bad guy! You don't need to be evil to make evil. If that were true writers would be very limited indeed. You're saying that someone has to commit suicide to write about it. You're saying that someone has to see a murder to be able to put one in a stroy. You have to jump off of an airplane to be able to describe it. Well, we don't. That's the fabulous thing about imaginiation. You can make evil, you can murder a character, you can jump out of a supersonic jet, all within the confines of your laptop.

In conclusion, "evil" is hard to attain...

But not impossible.

I find that evil characters a no-no- even the bad guys have to be relatable. They've got to have motives, and when you're focusing on making someone look cruel, the reader doesn't really get to know what they're like.

Now, if you can figure out how to do evil and still make the bad characters seem like people, then power to you. I'd want to know how you did it.

I'm always a bit iffy when it comes to the "evilness" of a person, as I never will, nor have I ever wanted to make my antagonists entirely evil. Mostly because I don't think that anyone is entirely evil. Sure, you can say, and I'd agree with you, that Hitler was an evil person, through and through. But there will be/have been other people, including himself, who don't think so (I'm assuming he didn't think so). He was, after all, doing what he thought was right, wasn't he? We may never know what they were, but he must have had reasons for doing what he did.

Personally, I think that an all-evil character is just as bad as an all-good character. They tend to be completely flawless, if you know what I mean. That is, all my antagonists do have some admirable qualities, and even if they don't, they do have reasons, however convoluted, for comitting their crimes.

Sure, making the reader hate the antagonist is all well and good. But I think making the reader pity them can be just as effective.

-Kaz

Like Sam said, I think that in most cases the evilness of a character stems from the lack of development of that character; however, I do believe it is possible to create a truly evil character. I don't think that antagonists start out evil, but I think that eventually they reach a point when all else fades in the face of the cause they are bent upon, and the motives that they once held disappear. They just want to hurt everything as much as they can before they die.

Very few of my antagonists are evil - the queen is certainly not evil. In fact, she could have easily turned around and been a protagonist if not for her choices. Hiajan, on the other hand, I would consider evil. He finds satisfaction in making other's suffer and has lost all sight of his original motives.

It's all so complicated and really depends on what you consider evil.

Kylan---of course you can always write about things you haven't experienced, but how do you get the real feeling of jumpping out of an airplane? Thats the only one i don't like. In my opinion if you ever really wanted to convince someone who had done that you'd have to experience it.

And i'm not saying that evil is unabtainable if you have a conscience it makes it a lot harder. At least in my case.

Evil is very hard. I struggle with daily now that I'm into book 2.

My best bet is to focus on emotions which give motive to their actions. I think of irrational Hitler and Stalin. A character who focuses soley on emotion and pays no attention to reason what so ever.

That's how I start. The I alter the irrational to a rational form which seems to help in creating an evil feel. But I really only have one evil character anyway.

Hmm....Rambling a bit I am. sorry..

But yeah, difficult.

As I told one of my friends, "Athanasius isn't evil, he has a skewed moral compass," and that's probably not true just for him, but for Savior as well. They're probably my two "evilest" villians, but really, neither of them is actually just blandly evil. Athanasius really honestly believes that he's doing the world a favor, and Savior ... Savior has an Oedipus complex. In a sick, twisted way, everything he does is to impress his (presumably) dead mother.

I don't think that the reader has to hate or pity the antagonist. I think the important thing is that they fear them. It could be "this boy in class makes fun of the main character" or it could be "this warlord is trying to kill the main character's family and take over the world," but in either scenario, in any scenario, the reader should fear what the antagonist will, could, or would do to the protagonist.

*Bows to Meep*

You totally just helped me so much. That makes so much sense and i'm having all these ideas at once and Oh i could kiss you but that would be wierd so....THANKS!!!

*runs off to write story he's been avoiding*

I'm glad I could help! (Even if I'm not sure how.)

I would say that having a comletely evil character is impossible. The gut-wrenching feeling comes, not by the character acting evil but rather you recognizing that you would have done the same horrific thing if you were in the same character's spot.

Wow, intense discussion!! I thought I'd put my two cents in.

Although Hitler and Stalin are considered evil, what is entirely evil? Is someone evil if they have done one horrible thing and not regretted it? Or must they never have done a single nice thing in their life? Are evil people born evil? Hitler was a choir boy. Think about that. Either he was harboring evil thoughts through his entire childhood, or he became evil sometime during his life. No one really knows

Of all the evil people in the world, I'm sure there is someone who thinks they are nice. Most people have spouses, parents, children, or friends who really like them. Are these people evil too? If you give someone a hug, are you still evil?

As for fiction, I believe that characters who are completely evil are too melodramatic (I am such a hypocrite for saying that. Some of my characters at the moment are pure evil) I read an article about creating evil characters in Writer's Digest. It mentioned one character in a Dean Koontz novel. At first, he seems pure, unadulterated evil, but later we learn about his childhood, suffering at the hands of a tyrannical father. The fact that he was so evil but so human at the same time made him a truly memorable character.

Well, I babbled a bit, but that's my three-and-a-half cents

Jessica

I think Hitler and stalin are bad ideas at what evil is. But I think that about any real human figure. All had different circumstances, and probably reason to turn out how they were.

It's just that in everyone's life, they are the main character of their own story, and everything they do is justified. It's the same for characters. There's people that dedicate their lives to studying people like Hitler, but most never learn anything significant. It just shows how hard it can be to understand other people, especially if you didn't live in their time.

And I'd have to agree with Jessica; Evil's in the eye of the beholder. Well, she said it completely differently, but it's the same. People close to 'evil' people probably love them genuinely. It all depends on your viewpoint. Hitler might be viewed as one of those ruthless work force people these days lol.

... Anyways, I think I got off topic, do I'll leave.

-Mat

I don't for a second believe that anything or anyone is born evil. Hitler, I think, is a perfect example of how different events in a person's life can influence them for the rest of their lifetimes. In this case we don't know what those events are, but I certainly don't think Hitler was born with a hatred for Jews. Ultimately, this all seems to come down to the nature vs. nurture argument, doesn't it. Is one born evil, or does evilness become part of one's personality through different turning points in life? Personally, I believe the latter. But, yet again, we are faced with the question: what is evil? What is considered as an evil deed to one man could be thought of as a life-saver by another. It's a complex issue.

I find that a very cliched reason for evil (and a big no-no for me) is justifying the actions of a evil character simply because 'they are mad'. I doubt anyone who is mad really has the mind to read a novel so it's pretty hard to relate to and it just seems.... bland, really.