How bad is too bad?

[Heliotrope]

I find, for myself, it helps to read books that heavily rely on these sorts of characters, like TAS mentioned. When I can see how other authors did it then I can use some of the same techniques.

The Collector by John Fowles is a short read, but pretty good for the getting into the MC's head (who is a sociopath who loves a girl and kidnaps her).

The Tell-Tale Heart by A.E. Poe is an obvious example, but a really good one.

And my all time favourite villain, Junior Kane, in Dean Koontz' masterpiece From the Corner of his Eye is really well described and the reader spends quite a bit of time in his head.

What I like about these three examples is that the entire time the villain justifies to himself why what he is doing is right. You understand his motives (even though they are warped) and you see him as rounded, albeit crazy. They aren't just evil for evil's sake.

 

[Xitra_Blud]

I usually try to make my villains likeable, but I don't mind going all the way. The way I see it, in fiction, there is no limit if it tells a great story.

 

[Penpilot]

I agree with pretty much everything T.A.S. said.

Speaking only for myself, I think one of the reasons I don't have solid lines that I can draw in the sand is I've taken a lot of philosophy courses in university. Truth be told, when I graduated, I believe I was only a few credits shy of being able to list that as a minor.

In reading my share of philosophy papers, essays, etc. I had to be able to understand things from from viewpoints that ranged from similar to mine to headache-inducing, mind-boggling, WTF, completely off the wall, couldn't be more different than mine.

Having to do this for my philosophy courses, and to some extent my major, trained me in a way that I'm able to shift gears in the way I think and see things from a different perspective. I may not agree with this perspective, but I think I can understand, at least to some degree, the foundation on which this different thinking is based on.

Yes, it can be icky. Yes, it might be a dark place that most, including me, don't like to go, but I don't fear it. And maybe part of why people fear going there is they fear that they might actually like it, and it might say something about them and the darkness within them.

 

[Banten]

And maybe part of why people fear going there is they fear that they might actually like it, and it might say something about them and the darkness within them.

That line alone shows that you took some philosophy classes
In my specific case i can assure you that i am not afraid of liking it. I wanted to study criminology since a young age (didn't do it) so i am familiar with some of the most despicable of people that have been around. Not a single part of my pacifist body wants to be like these beasts.

I understand what you mean though. I have a good interest in philosophy as well. My schooling in the subject does not go much further than watching "the school of life" channel and the "8bit philosophy" series on youtube however (i recommend both). I have little problem inserting myself in another person's point of view, but a depraved mind like the ones i am talking about is just beyond what i am comfortable with, due to the alieness of those people.

I am still really surprised that no one else has a strict line. Does this mean that people aren't thinking in the extremes that i thought of? Or is my hesitance to write about characters like this indicative of something in me?

Philosophy debate?

 

[Devouring Wolf]

When I write characters like this, I always keep in mind that even if they know a particular action is bad, what they're fighting for in the end is in their eyes good.Really, I don't find it difficult, I can draw on myself. I think we all have the ability to do horrible things, perhaps not to the extreme degree that our characters do, but I know I at least have done a great many selfish despicable things. My characters are a reflection of myself. I'm able to write evil people because I accept my own capacity to do horrible things.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

...is my hesitance to write about characters like this indicative of something in me?

I don't know you personally, but from what I'm reading here, this only says you don't enjoy writing or reading these types of characters. That alone is a perfectly legitimate reason to avoid them altogether.

 

[Heliotrope]

Banten I'm not sure how much you buy into Meyers Briggs, but remember when you did the test and you got infp? I told you I was infp too? It is a pretty rare personality type. What is wonderful about infp personalities is that we are super idealist, we are the Pollyanna's or the Anne Frank's of the Meyers Briggs test. We believe in the goodness of everyone and we are very deeply wounded when we hear about bad stuff in the news. It is harder for us to detach. We tend to be more emotional, taking on the emotions of others until we are exhausted. We have a keen ability to relate to others and understand others, which earns us the title of the "mediator" or the "idealist healer". We want to fix everything. We don't like conflict and we want everyone to be ok.

I'm the same as you when writing these characters. I'm more comfortable writing man vs. nature or man vs. self, but man vs. evil man? Count me out. I get so worked up over it that is consumes me and I'm a wreck for weeks. I cry. I can't let my mind go certain places. I can admit I cant watch Game of thrones on tv because it is too intense for me. How can others watch this stuff and not be effected? I saw the episode where Cercies men killed the baby in the brothel and I lost it. Was a mess for days.

I get it. It may be that you are just more emotional, like me. Things are too real. That is ok. Where we excell as writers is in getting into the deep emotions of our characters. Really understanding them on an emotional level. Did you know that they think Shakespeare was as infp? And Tolkien too? We are in good company

INFP Personality (“The Mediatorâ€Â) | 16Personalities

 

[DanJames]

They'll be as evil as is required. I recently wrote story about a king who outlawed chairs (it really needs more context ), it doesn't sound that evil in the grand scheme of things, but no one in the kingdom was allowed to sit, anywhere, no matter the circumstance. Sitting was, best case scenario, punished with time in the stocks, and at worse punished with death. It's a pretty vile act, when considered, but at the time of first reading could be seen as a sort of laughable one.

Rape, torture and other evil acts are fine for characters, as long as they aren't just applied because 'LOL VILLAINY'. Just because you're an evil baron, who rules with an iron fist, doesn't mean you'll rape a milk maid just because you can. Every act a character commits should be to serve their development, the plot, or at a stretch, a recurrence of themes. That kind of goes for all acts, not just villainous ones.

 

[Brian Scott Allen]

This bad is too bad...unless you are a smooth criminal.*drops the Mic.

 

[Penpilot]

I am still really surprised that no one else has a strict line. Does this mean that people aren't thinking in the extremes that i thought of? Or is my hesitance to write about characters like this indicative of something in me?

Philosophy debate?

8-bit philosophy is cool. Ran across that earlier this year, and instantly dropped that into my subscribe feed.

Looking at myself, the number of characters that I'd classify as being depraved I could count them on one hand. One of them was a BS story in which I unjustly screwed with the reader's trust. My writing teacher scolded me for it and rightful so.

I don't think I've pushed things into the black as hard as others have done, but I tend to dwell in the gray a lot. My antagonists tend to be redeemable if only they'd want it. For me, it's just more interesting to write.

I remember there was a similar thread to this, and I answered that if there was a line I wouldn't cross, it'd probably have to do with harming children.

This isn't to say I wouldn't do it if the story called for it, but the type of story that would call for it isn't necessarily something I'm interested in writing, at least now.

So maybe, I'm cheating a bit with my answer, and I'm in the same boat as you, and I'm just not willing to admitting to myself that I have a line. Or at least I haven't pushed myself towards it close enough to see.

 

[glutton]

Banten, it might come down to how far you go into the villain's head.

This is an important point. If your bad guy who is trying to find the secret to immortality by kidnapping and dissecting people gifted with special powers, babies included, is only discovered by the heroine a few pages before she mocks him and tools him in every way imaginable, physically and mentally, that will probably be easier to swallow than if he is a POV character for much of the book.

Nothing like a verbal owning followed by physical beatdown followed by outplaying of contingency plan to restore order XD

 

[Caged Maiden]

As with any negative act, there are degrees. I was a bit horrified when I was meant to read from the POV of a child (age 14) who rapes women after he's sacked and burned their villages in Prince of Thorns. That being said, I liked much of the writing style, but found some subjects distasteful enough that I didn't buy the other books.

I think this is sort of how it goes. Could the story have been written without the raping of peasant women? Certainly. Would it have affected me as a reader, if Jorg was the lone outlaw who felt it beneath him? I dunno. I guess I could have bought it if it was because of his age, or maybe he had a physical condition or something. But it might not have made much sense, because as it was portrayed in the novel, rape was a sort of treat for those who sacked villages. A payment they could count on receiving even if the town had no loot. Disgusting as I personally find the subject, I suppose I can understand. Or not, it's sort of turning my stomach talking about it.

Anyways, in my real life, I don't believe there's ever a reason to rape someone. I understand it happens, and I'm not sure why, but it does, and I accept it as a part of life, if not a symptom of our inability to fully eradicate the causes for such violent behavior. That being said, there are degrees of rape, and there is no similarity between a willing woman plied with a little too much booze, and a violent assault on a stranger in a park, or the forcing of oneself upon a prepubescent child. I've mentioned it before, but nature doesn't advocate sexual attraction to children. Nature does, however, support the other two, in a sense, because anyone who has more opportunity to mate, likely has more progeny. NOW, the down side of this is that people were civilized before they built their first mammoth-bone hut. If a man you trusted assaulted your women, you'd kill him and gut him, and let your women spit on his corpse--so that couldn't have been a trait often passed on, maybe until recently, when people had the ability to survive as anonymous beings, separate from a clan?

Anyways, my point is, if you asked me whether I could torture someone, I'd say hands down, yes. I could certainly enact cruelty on a body. All it would have to take is me knowing why I judged them deserving of my wrath. And that's the main point I'm trying to make. I could do unspeakable things to people who abuse children and animals. I can certainly pay them back for their cruelty. But I couldn't grab some random person and enact violence upon them. I wouldn't be able to. They would be like that animal or that child. They wouldn't be deserving. And I think therein lies the difference.

When you debate whether you can write a depraved person, I understand and I find it as distasteful as you do. But I could certainly sympathize with a person who has a motive to do a depraved thing. It would all be down to their motivation.

So in one of my stories, my MC is raped in a kidnapping situation. Now, I have looked at the scene from a lot of angles, to make sure I'm not doing it for shock value, but it's an important scene because it speaks about a larger theme in the story. She's powerless and captive, and the man who's keeping her locked up thinks she knows a secret, and he thinks her male friend (locked up in another cell) knows it too. So when he assaults the woman, it's not to get her to talk, because he knows she won't. He assaults her in front of her friend, because he thinks it'll get the friend to spill his guts.

Is it cheap? I dunno, maybe. Is it wrong? I didn't go into a lot of detail, summarizing the assault in a few sentences, so as not to try for shock value or dramatic effect. But I can't tell whether it's something that would make readers cringe. To me, I think it's sort of a desperate and cruel act on the captor's part, but I can understand why those tactics work--because someone would rather be hit in the face than watch their loved one hit in the face. They'd rather throw themselves in the way of the moving car, to save their child. We know that people who want power often take control of weaker persons to flaunt their supremacy. It's a sort of natural order, in a way. Until the scale tilts and the powerful becomes the powerless, because either his tactic didn't work (as in my story, when the characters escape) or when someone more powerful knocks him off his pedestal.

Write what you feel comfortable with. I do not have a single "evil" person in any of my stories (well maybe some shorts, because I have about 100 and can't recall them all right now), and I don't think you ever need to really put yourself in an evil person's shoes. I know I haven't. And I've done a fair amount of writing. I have some characters with some scars from the past tragedies of their lives, and I have some people who have neared that line of "not okay", and again, all I'm saying, is there are degrees to any antisocial behavior, and most people don't live on the other side of that line, irredeemably so. Some people have done off-color things and repented. Others have neared and danced around that line for most of their lives, but fear truly jumping over it. Still others don't even think about the line, but might shoot you dead if you cut them off in heavy traffic... I mean, where does it begin? Who knows.

 

[Cobwebs]

I find rape, young character deaths, and torture easy to use a leverage on your readers when it comes to "look how bad this dude is, look how terrible!"

Think of it this way: If you have to "prove" your character's "evilness" by making them do something that is (for the most part) taboo for the sake of being taboo, then you've gone to making a bad character who is ultimately one dimensional and forgettable. When you craft a villain, you want them to have as much purpose in their lives as your protag does. What are their goals? Hopes? Dreams? Why are they as twisted as they are? Why do they do the things they do and believe so vigorously that what they're doing is pleasurable or correct?

I am reminded of some friends' characters who twist the values on oppression, war, and death among the masses of their people. One being a "good guy" and upholding the peace in his kingdom, but by doing so with aggressively oppressive rules and a strict government regimen that all but suffocates his people into silence. The other is a "evil queen" who dearly loves her people and will stop at nothing to annihilate any kingdom that so much as threatens her peoples' way of life, thusly creating a massively strong military and sweeping terror across other kingdoms. Is one more evil than the other? Perhaps not, but they're wicked in their own ways and it lets the reader pick a side. I'm also reminded of a character from the webcomic The Meek, in which he kills his own wife to start a war by blaming it on the other kingdom.

Wickedness comes in may packages, and can be grown and cultivated in such a way that it becomes awe inspiring. Whether or not your readers like your villain isn't really the question, you want them to be attracted to their character enough that they come back to read more of the story.

For my story, I have several who can be classified as villains. One of which is a massively successful merchant who has an insatiable thirst for immortality, born from his near hysterical fear of becoming ill (illness in the world- both mental and physical- plays a major point in the world's lore). Out of this innocent people are slaughtered and a young woman becomes a vessel for a violent, malevolent demi-god's spirit who in turn uses her to gain leverage in the current government. There is also his bodyguard, a fellow who killed the Queen in order to wear her skin as a disguise and influence the court in the merchant's favor. On the other side of the coin, they love each other and it becomes more and more apparent as the reader goes on.

You want your readers to feel conflicted about your villains, and you want your readers to feel like they need to come back and read more or finish that last chapter before bed to find out what your villains are about. They're still characters, and making them rapists for the sake of raping or killing children for the sake of killing (Darth Vader had a reason for it, so he is excused)- it just dilutes the character to be something unmemorable.

If you really do want your character's main evil to be focused on rape or torture, you have to dig deep into the psychology of those subjects before you go about writing them. Rapist mindesets can stem from a lot of issues and behaviors, the least common of which is for legitimate sexual gratification. Torture is much the same way. If you look at reports of famous serial killers throughout history, you'll find a lot of people who are scared, filled with cowardice, and have one or two events in their lives that serve as the major drive for their abhorrent crimes.

I hope this shed some light on this, and that I haven't echoed the other users too much!

 

[Velka]

If I have a line, I haven't found it yet. That being said, while I have written pretty graphic fight scenes/battles, I've never had the need in my stories to go down many squicky rabbit-holes of human awfulness.

I've written torture, it wasn't easy, because a character I really liked was on the receiving end, but the torture scene was important because: 1. It demonstrated the unwavering loyalty of the character being tortured (they refused to give the location of their friend up to the torturer) 2. It showed how desperate the torturer had become in their quest to find the person.

Also, I think what one person finds "too bad" is very subjective. I have to say one of the most nefarious instances of a bad guy being really, really bad, in my opinion, was in a recent episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Spoiler: Spoiler Alert

Grant Ward is trying to get to somewhere in ass-end Russia. He gets on a passenger plane bound for Moscow. While in flight he flirts with the flight attendant to get a few airline bottles of booze in the back cabin. She invites him to visit her in her layover in Moscow, and he replies that his destination isn't Moscow. He then leans into her and whispers in her ear. She goes deathly pale and straps herself into a seat.

Ward then gets on the PA system and announces that everyone will soon experience turbulence because the side of the plane is about to be blown open, resulting in cabin pressure and temperature drop, and that they will soon freeze to near death before all dying in the plane crash.

He then blows open the side of the plane and parachutes out.

To me, this is a really, really, evil move. He could've just blown open the door and jumped, but he took special glee in informing everyone on the plane of their imminent death. This is a man who needed to get to ass-end Russia quick, so killing a plane full of people so he could parachute out as the flew over his destination was, to him, a perfectly reasonable solution.

 

[ascanius]

All three replies lost to oblivion, save this fourth.
Today I have read and am galvanized to a response,
A response not lost or forsaken to ram.

I say write and to hell with sensitivity.
Man the sails and show me humanity,
in all it's deprived horror lest I forget it's glory.

Remind me of those behind bars of steel,
tell me of those too poor for a meal,
and show me those lives we repeal.

make me feel for that girl in a dark cage,
remind us for what we should all rage.
rage, against a number on a page.

Their tortured, unsought stories have value
even if cast upon a bloody violent hue
we forget they are not a statue.

Show me my humanity, lest we all forget.
Don't let us hide behind entertainment.
make me shed a tear rent.

hehe that was fun.

 

[NerdyCavegirl]

I don't believe anyone or anything is truly good or evil. It's all a matter of perspective. And considering that I'm sure many of you have realized by now that I have little care for human laws or expectations, it shouldn't surprise anyone that I go to very dark places in my writing. I do have some personal moral values, but it's all too easy for me to see through the eyes of what would be considered the truly depraved. I imagine that I could justify anything if I felt the cause warrants it. That said, I'll be the first to admit I'm a little uncomfortable with how my mind works. But only a little. I'm comfortable painted a dark shade of gray, and regardless of my thoughts, I know I probably shouldn't do certain things for moral or legal reasons. I'd have to have a damn good reason. That applies to my characters as well; every twisted action has some purpose, even if that purpose seems no less twisted. Nothing is insignificant.

 

[The Stranger]

me personally, i like to explore the darkness of the human soul. i cant make my villeins bad enough in my opinion. this often gets people questioning why i strive to make such depraved and sick characters, to which my simple reply is "evil never holds back". it can be an interesting mental exercise to devise the most disgusting and abhorrent crimes i can think of for my villains. i once wrote an entire cult dedicated to the murder, reanimation, and fornication of corpses for example, and it was incredibly entertaining for me as a writer

 

[Miskatonic]

You can hint at the horrible things someone has done and the reputation it has given them without having to go into graphic detail.

 

[Miskatonic]

me personally, i like to explore the darkness of the human soul. i cant make my villeins bad enough in my opinion. this often gets people questioning why i strive to make such depraved and sick characters, to which my simple reply is "evil never holds back". it can be an interesting mental exercise to devise the most disgusting and abhorrent crimes i can think of for my villains. i once wrote an entire cult dedicated to the murder, reanimation, and fornication of corpses for example, and it was incredibly entertaining for me as a writer

And how did it go over with the readers?

 

[Velka]

i once wrote an entire cult dedicated to the murder, reanimation, and fornication of corpses for example, and it was incredibly entertaining for me as a writer

Ok, found my line.