Writing For Evil Characters

[Reyn]

For every hero, there is a baddie - someone who wants nothing more than to squish their rival into the muck beneath their boots. And as the saying goes, a story is only as good as its villian. No matter how loveable the hero, without a great villain, the story is only 1 dimensional. The antagonist provides the necessary conflict and action for a story, and they also allow the protagonist to grow as a character.

But can antagonists become more than just the yin to the protagonist's yang? Can they become interesting characters in their own right? Can they become loved?

And if this does happen, can these baddies become enjoyable to write for? Is it more fun to write for bada$$ characters than it is the good-guys? And if so, are evil characters more fun to write for simply because they are evil?

Share your thoughts here.

[simymonna]

Hello

I love to write for bad guys and good guys.

Here is a little spoiler of my season 9 but i have no idea who reads it so i have put it in a spoiler thing.

SPOILER: Click to show

In my season 9 there are 2 girls, Melanie and Klarissa.
But the thing is there are not really bad. They are also good since there were not blood bad. They were made bad by there parents. In fact they are really 2 daugthers of Piper and Paige. And first they are very very evil. But from the 7th episode there is already something revealed. The parents of them the fake ones are the big bad. But they hide themself more then that they show. Sometimes you have real bad guys and sometimes your idea's are bad but it always needs to be good at the end. I love to make my own cliffhangers for story's . It makes people read more. Yesterday i sended an script to an dutch film company and they send me an email back that they will read it and tell what was good and bad about it.. I will see how that goes. But they told me they liked my way of thinking about big bad people. Without bad people an story never excist.

[Deleted]

Hmmm. It's hard to vote for this one, because truly my favorite characters both to read about and to write about are ones that are both. Pure good or pure evil are boring; I like characters who are a bit more three-dimensional. The only time pure good and pure evil works is in soap operas (which is what Kern turned Charmed into during "The Perils of Piper", what he tried to fool us into believing were the last 3 seasons of Charmed) and comic books, not in books or fics that are supposed to be about real life. Those are the only time when pure good should be truly boring.

This is why I loved Prue...she loved and protected her sisters and innocents, willing to give her life for them (both figuratively when she gave up her dreams of being a photographer in order to take care of her sisters and literally when she tried to protect the doctor), but she was also pushy, shovy, full of pride (which became her downfall) and an uber-bitch. I will always say that it is totally Prue's fault that Piper was such a crappy leader because Prue's pride could never let her admit that she could be killed, so hence she never trained Piper how to be the leader, the way Grams had trained her. Truly Paige, as a social worker and an only child (which is much closer to the oldest child than the middle child is), would've made a much better leader.

It's also why I loved Cole in S3, again showing both good and evil.

I love stories best when the actual "antagonist" per sec is the "protagonist" himself/herself. For example in my own "The Warren Curse", although Ruth Cobb shows up to cast said curse, the real bad guys are the good guys: Miss Whinealot and her sister Miss Itsnevermyfault, both who learn very valuable lessons.

But in all situations, a character must be consistent...that's what counts. Here's what a very good friend, Scifi posted at Es' LIBRARY of CHARMED:

Well, I did have a thought on some advice, or at least a truth that I tend to see in the good stories, both in fanfic and in traditional literature. That's the importance of character consistency.

Characters must remain true to themselves if they're going to be believable. Everything they say and do must adhere to the fundamentals of who they are, of how they've been established. In fanfic, generally this means that they act as they would on the show. But even if you're making the characters different than they would be on the show, they need to stay close to the way you've established them. This is not to say that characters should not change in the course of the story; that defeats the purpose of fiction, which I see as a way of showing how people grow -- or regress -- in relation to the events that are happening around them. What it does mean is that if characters are going to change, there has to be some build-up to indicate the reasons behind it.

An example of what not to do is Titan A.E., if anybody remembers that movie. The captain goes from a good guy to a bad guy really suddenly. That's not too hard to swallow, since it comes out that he has been a traitor all along. But at the end of the movie, he turns good again, without any motivation other than the main character needs a way out of a tense situation, and the captain having this sudden change of heart is a convenient way for the writers to do that. It is completely contrived and unbelievable. That's the kind of thing good writing should avoid.

In the Charmed universe, a good example of how a character can change and be believable is Bianca from "Chris-Crossed." There is a history between her and Chris, one that is not to be thrown away lightly. The audience understands this. We see how sweet she could be in the flashbacks, but there is also the indication of her toughness. The Bianca who comes to the past has seemingly embraced that cold side, and Chris acknowledges that there must have been something that, over the course of time, turned her back to evil. While we don't get to see those events, we get the indication that there was a reason. We can also see in the scene with her mother, that even in this assassin-mode, Bianca is conflicted. The internal conflict shown here and in her discussion with Chris just before she takes him back to the future makes it believable that she can do yet another turnaround and help Chris against Wyatt, even at the cost of her own life -- we get the indication that Chris's best interests were in her mind all along. Her actions are consistent with what we can glean of her internal motivations. She has been established as a conflicted character, and that follows her through until she finally puts an end to that conflict. That is what I mean by character consistency.

~~Scifi~~

For more Scifi advice, check this link: Scifi's Two Cents.

[epiphony]

This is a tough decision. Although I do agree that a story is only as good as it's villain, I do not know which one I prefer writing. Or if I even prefer writing any of them? I would say I would have to go with evil though. There is a lot more running through their mind and it's interesting to explore an evil psyche because well I'm not evil so I know a "good psyche" quite well. But I find that when writing evil you write a lot of violence. But I think thats just a given, the two go hand in hand really.

[RJF]

This is why I loved Prue...she loved and protected her sisters and innocents, willing to give her life for them (both figuratively when she gave up her dreams of being a photographer in order to take care of her sisters and literally when she tried to protect the doctor), but she was also pushy, shovy, full of pride (which became her downfall) and an uber-bitch.

I would say that, a lot of the time, these traits didn't present themselves in the writing, rather Doherty's personal portrayal of the character, which was probably one of the most consistent things that ever appeared on the show.

I think, in regards to Charmed fiction, it's a little hard to write a three-dimensional evil character after the show itself kind of overloaded on caricatures of demons and other evils. So to try and throw in a multi-faceted opposition when we've really seen nothing but homidical morons, is a bit of a challenge because we honestly can't see the COs in this situation. I would say that evil characters are extremely fun to write though, as it's usually their motivations for their actions that are the make-or-break for the reader, rather than the actions themselves. Morality switches are even harder to pull off because, like JustEs said above, you still need to keep the core components of the character and make sure they're not fundamentally changed by the side swap. If anything, evil is harder to write because good is so much simpler.

[Astral Martin]

To tell the truth, I really don't know how to write for evil villans. I'm trying to make them not only just the other side of the fic. I want to make them the people you love to hate you know? I'm gonna see if I can actually give them a background and not just born and raised evil...maybe something more. What do you guys suggest?

[Marshmallow]

But can antagonists become more than just the yin to the protagonist's yang? Can they become interesting characters in their own right? Can they become loved?

Of course, they can. First off, morality, thus malignity as well, is a subjective term. A Texan rancher, who eats cow meat, wouldn't call his eating behaviour immoral, would he? But a Hindu would. Someone, who was raised in a cannibalistic clan somewhere in Oceania, would not call cannibalism immoral, but someone else, who was raised in an occidental family, would. What I want to say is that evilness and goodness aren't black and white, as it was erroneously represented in charmed. Evil parts of humans' personality are natural, and they show the complexity and three-dimensionality of human mind.
Now, the question, whether an 'evil' character can be loved, depends on the character's identificational potential and his motivation, which has to be implicitly big enough.

[Jake]

Like many people have already said, I love when people right their antagonists as three dimensional, and that they believe they are right and other's are wrong. Something Charmed and many other series haven't done. I also love fics where the reader has to make a tough decision on whether they agree with the protagonist or the antagonist.

But I will also say that antagonists are hard to write for and be able to make them three dimensional, so anyone who does do this I applaud them.

[Reyn]

For me, I think it is much easier to write an evil character that readers love to hate - that's just your stock-standard baddie (for the most part). The character who does bad things because they just don't care. The one who's selfish and arrogant and has a total disregard of morality or the law. As a reader, you want to see the good guys truimph because the bad guy has no redeeming features at all.

I much prefer writing evil characters that readers hate to love - the ones who are clearly the baddie, but who readers still love reading about. The character who the reader knows they aren't supposed to like, but likes them regardless. You know that if they continue down the track they are on, eventually the 'good guys' are going to defeat them, but you hope against hope that before they get to that place, the baddie will reform or have a change of heart. Because somewhere in the course of their story, you've grown attached to them, and (if they are written well) you understand their reasoning behind their actions. You might not agree with it, but you can see that for that character at that time, it was understandable they felt that way.

I think one of the main attractions for writing for evil characters is the freedom it gives you. There are so many types of evil characters and so many motivations for their actions. Having a season-long baddie gives you lots of opportunities to develop their character, but even the 'baddie of the week' can be multi-dimensional if written correctly. One of the things that annoyed me about Charmed was their stock standard approach to crafting baddies - the majority of them had the same motivations and mentality (Kill the Charmed Ones/Take their powers) and the only thing that differentiated them from the baddie of last week was different prosthetics. I think that is a shame, because when the writers dedicated screen time to antagonists, they made some great foils for the Charmed Ones. Unfortunately, though, there were a lot of 'Demon #3429' caricatures, and as Marshmallow said, a lot of black/white characterisation.

[RJF]

I much prefer writing evil characters that readers hate to love - the ones who are clearly the baddie, but who readers still love reading about. The character who the reader knows they aren't supposed to like, but likes them regardless. You know that if they continue down the track they are on, eventually the 'good guys' are going to defeat them, but you hope against hope that before they get to that place, the baddie will reform or have a change of heart. Because somewhere in the course of their story, you've grown attached to them, and (if they are written well) you understand their reasoning behind their actions. You might not agree with it, but you can see that for that character at that time, it was understandable they felt that way.

I do think that you need to be very careful with this though. Sure, have your characters in a morally grey area, but if you go too far with both sides, you might end up confusing the reader and have them switch sides. At the end of the day, you still want your protagonist to be your protagonist. Even if you don't agree with what they do, they should still be the one you're hoping an eventual win for.

[Harrison]

I actually prefer writing for my protagonist(s). Even though you can add more backround info for baddies to make them more interesting characters I find that you can do the same with good characters. When writing a protagonist you can more easily connect with them IMO because they can go through stuff similar to you. Unless you're a convict and you like to hurt and kill people I'm not so sure you can connect with a badie in the same way you can for a protagonist. Also when writing a good character you can put more down on how they overcome the tests and trials that the antagonist puts them through. I think that with protagonists you can evolve and advance the personality as well as other things throughout a story. Like I said- this is all in my own opinion and I do see your views on why writing a baddie would be fun.

[Dark Witch.]

I love writing for evil! It is the best! Especially ones that are supernatural. I am not an evil person, far from, but just the idea of how they are, how they come to be who they are, and what they can do. I like that. That is partially the reason in Seer I made Phoebe part evil. that way you sort of see how evil has more fun in a way. But as people say, in the end, good is the better choice because of morals and all.

[Reyn]

Jul 20, 2008 22:44:55 GMT RJF said:

I do think that you need to be very careful with this though. Sure, have your characters in a morally grey area, but if you go too far with both sides, you might end up confusing the reader and have them switch sides. At the end of the day, you still want your protagonist to be your protagonist. Even if you don't agree with what they do, they should still be the one you're hoping an eventual win for.

This is true. Having shifts in morality between antagonists and protagonists is not something that should be done on a grand scale - although I think 'turning the good guy a little darker' and 'making the baddie a little more relateable' is interesting to watch (if done well). I agree that the protagonist should always be the one the the audience is wanting to win, but I feel their eventual 'triumph' can be more poignant if the audience has empathised with the antagonist and seen them as more than the 'foil' to the protagonist.

And I think as well - sometimes letting the protagonist lose (the battles of course, not the war) allows for some great self discovery that might not be achieved if they always win.

[LadyDisdain - Liane]

I do like good characters, but I LOVE writing as an evil character or an "inbetween". I think it's because there's an element of mystery? What will they do next? sort of thing.

I think that so long as the writer is creative, any character can be fun. So good characters are just as interesting as the evil ones, and evil ones can be boring if you're not creative with them.

[Lexi]

You know, I've had a little writer's block so I decided to go through some old threads on here to maybe help get the creative juices working again.

Anyway, as for evil characters - they are fun to write and like you, Reyn, I love writing characters that yo love to hate and also hate to love. And going into that grey area to make them relatable can be fun and also tricky to do. It does have to done right and carefully.

Although, characters that are pure evil can work too - as long as there's a reason to why they are pure evil. If there's a good backstory, a pure evil character can be fun and interesting not just to write but also to read. Take the Source of All Evil in Charmed (the very first one and before he became so well known. When he was the character pulling all the strings and the hooded figure that was after The Charmed Ones, he was a really interesting character even though he was pure evil and didn't have a relatable side to him.

Characters that have been great when they've changed - Spike in Buffy, pre mid season 6. I loved him in Season 2, he started off as a bad guy who just didn't seem to care and then his true nature started to come out and he turned from a character you loved to hate into one you hated to love (at least that's how I felt). As the seasons progressed his character changed for various reasons and he became one of the good guys - although not initially out of choice. I loved his scenes with Joyce (I think the way he was around her was the best ever).

Now then, good characters, can they be as fun? If they're believable, hell yes! But they can't be good for the sake of being good, they also need a backstory. Like Es, Prue is my favourite sister because yes she was good but she had that pushy, bitchy side, which I loved to see. She wasn't a total angel (and it was the same with Phoebe when she first showed up).

You've got to find a balance between all your characters to make them interesting. With a balance, the good guys and the bad guys can be just as interesting to write (and also read).