How do you handle creating vile and evil characters in your story?

Question

I believe that when writing fiction, if you create a character that is so vile that there is no reason to like that person, you need to make the reader care about that person more and add some dimension to the character, or you risk creating one dimensional characters. You do something to make the reader feel some empathy for him. A murderer, for example is easy to despise, but you'll maybe feel bad when he is either jailed or killed because he leaves an adorable child behind who loves his daddy and does not how evil he is. And, he also leaves behind a wife who is unable to care for this child and pay the rent, etc.
How do you make the reader connect with the evil ones in your stories so that they are not one dimensional beings which can be crushed like cockraches without a second thought? Or, do you like purely evil characters?

Answer 1

I hate one-dimensional characters - but one-dimensional villains are the worst. Nobody rolls out of bed in the morning and decides to wreak havoc in the world just for the fun of it. (Okay, maybe they do in James Bond movies, but that's a special case.)

I think the best way to handle villains is to forget they are the villain. Treat them as you would any other character - as someone who has a motivation for doing what they're doing. They're either a psychopath who believes the bad stuff they're doing is completely right and moral - or they're someone deeply conflicted about the path they can't seem to get off of.

Answer 2

I agree, not only with villains, but with simply unlikeable and likeable characters as well. There must be shade and light in each character. The reader must have reasons to like and dislike ALL characters, so there is some form of judgment and realism in your story. No person is all good or all bad, so people in your story shouldn't be.
As for making this life-like illusion of a mix of good and bad, you should make a list of motives, past, circumstances, faults, and dreams of every character before starting a story. For the evil ones, make little bits of innocence, sadness, madness, and regret peep out throughout the story. For good characters, make greed, anger, faults such as impatience, and etc, show. This will help add depth and layers to your characters. Another interesting way is to show a "bad" character from the main characters point of view, indulging the person in hating the "villain" but describing the actions in a mild way. This will cause the reader to insensibly dislike the "villain" even though the details you provide simply show this person isn't, for example, sociable, but shy. BUT your character thinks him rude and evil, so the reader forms that idea too. Then in the end the truth of the character comes out, and the reader learns a lesson. Good luck!

Answer 3

Everyone is doing that "fair and balanced" thing with their bad guys now... it's kind of boring really.

The best way to illustrate a "purely evil" character - in my opinion - is to make them the black sheep of their peers. This is tricky though, because any prejudice you have about people in society will come out through your writing.
That is why we have many evil people in movies and books who come from broken homes or are sexually ambiguous... because the authors were not clever enough to disguise their prejudice of gays and divorced people...
If the villain is entirely EVIL then they must be an extremist and have a bone to pick with the world that they live in. It is a conscious decision that they have made at some point to become just as twisted as they can be...

Good Luck.

Answer 4

well, it depends. i always look to comics for this kind of thing. lol. hopefully you'll follow me here, these are characters i grew up reading, and i think they still work today.

i think that for an evil character to work, he needs to have a reason for what he's doing, or just be a total whack job. but, either way, it needs to be done in a way that gives him depth.

magneto, from the xmen comics/movies.... now, this guy is a holocaust survivor, he's seen how ppl treat those that they consider "different" or "inferior", and knows that his kind will be persecuted for the simple reason that they're not the same. and he's not really wrong, he's just going further than most of us would in his place. but he believes he's right.

or take the joker, from batman. now, theres a guy who's just plain off his nut. he doesnt see any difference in laughing at a funny joke, or someone getting hit in the nuts with a soccer ball, or getting hit by a truck, or getting shot in the head. he only knows a base instinct to amuse himself. and, in the comics, he got that way because he couldnt handle the irony that caused his own situation. -- he was a working stiff who tried to be a comedian, but failed. to provide for his wife (who was pregnant) he turned to petty crime. he didnt want to, but he felt he needed to. on the last crime he was going to pull, he tried to bail, but the others involved said they'd kill his wife. so, again, he's doing it for his family's benefit. but, then his wife dies anyhow in an accident. now, he has no reason NOT to do it. he breaks into a playing card factory, things go wrong, and he falls into a vat of chemicals used to make the ink for the cards. now, he's just plain whacko because he cant handle all this trauma at once. and being a comedian, he sees the irony of the situation quite clearly, and it drives him over the edge.

so, i hope that helps. i feel that both of those characters are really strong examples of how different a villian can be, but they both have depth, and make sense. as opposed to say, some of superman's early villians, who just want to destroy the earth without any real idea as to why they're doing it.

lol.... hopefully this helps.

Answer 5

Purely evil characters are BORING.

Create interest by giving them a reason for being evil: a bad childhood, a lost love, etc.
Or give them one redeeming trait: a strong love of a child, a tendency to give charity, etc.

For example, Heathcliff in "Wuthering Heights" is a horrible villain who pretty much killed his own kid and beat and tortured whoever he could lay his hands on. He is made interesting by his past: he was despised and abused by his foster brother and later lost the woman he loved. Only as a result of his crappy childhood did he become the monster he was.

Answer 6

Think of Hannibel in Silence Of The Lambs... could you have empathy for him? No, and he held the interest. I don't think you need to create empathy for a villain. Why? He's the villain. People will be interested if he keeps doing evil things - and if you go into the psychological aspects of his behavior. Unless they are sociopaths themselves, why would a reader want to identify with the antagonist? That would zap some of the suspense, I'd think....

Answer 7

I try not to use completely evil characters, or at least make them evil for a reason. Maybe it's abandonment issues, or maybe there was just plain no good choices for the supposedly "evil" character.

Answer 8

read some mosely or parker but listen there are people ive know in the street that are totaly cold hearted and would sell there children and kill their mom to get money or drugs so there are plenty of folks with absolutely no redemptive qualities and wishing wont make them human theve sacrificed that for the pursuit of power or greed and then theres the real psychopaths the folks without one human emotion just a layer of manners til they go off that can operate in society til the buttons are pushed or their basest desires are triggered they are usualy white men and soo check out the Dr Cross series he runs into some really bad ones as a FBI profiler

Answer 9

Pete's Dragon wasn't evil. Atrayu had a sort of a dragon that chaperoned him. Movie: The Never-ending Story. The GEICO Gecko isn't evil.

Answer 10

give the reader more insight about his background. why did he turn evil? did he go through something thats sad and shocking? that way the reader can also feel some pity and sympathy to the character because they know that deep inside hes a hurt human being or something.