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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/31186
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The trick is to never humanise the character, and this may be done a little differently than expected. THe trick is to never let the reader get to close to them.

As human beings we have a huge amount of empathy, and we are ready to give it to any monster.

Let's imagine a novel about Hitler. In an alternate reality he is captured by the allies, and sentenced to execution. The novel then told from Hitler's point of view as he sits in his cell and waits to die. There is no way that by the end of the book most readers would not emphasise with Hitler, and fell bad about his death.

Let's rook at Ramsay and Joffrey now. I am going to stick to the books here. There are lots of characters that gets their viewpoints in GOT, but never them. They are never seen alone, and instead are always portrayed from the eyes of people that hate them. This is what keeps them as these evil characters that we are happy to see die.

Saturday morning cartoons mess this up all the time. They set up villains, and they are all villainous until the moment here is a scene of them plotting. The moment we see them alone, and having goals, we suddenly want those goals to succeed. In GOT the Red WItch gets a couple of pages from her point of view, and all her evil just dissipates even as she wants to burn children.

Also never let us see the evil character suffer. We love to emphasise with suffering. If they have a small loss to the heroes, don't let us see them react in any kind of weak way.Even just showing anger to a loss is enough to make someone into a human.

So to make someone evil, have them do bad things, but never show them alone, always only show them through eyes of characters that hate them

Original score: 6