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Q&A What to avoid when writing a villain that is insane?

Make the insanity questionable. Think of Macbeth, he falls into madness as the play goes on but he might not be diagnosable. "Insanity" can be brought upon by something other than a mental illness....

posted 7y ago by JMan‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T07:23:13Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/31567
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar JMan‭ · 2019-12-08T07:23:13Z (almost 5 years ago)
Make the insanity questionable. Think of Macbeth, he falls into madness as the play goes on but he might not be diagnosable. "Insanity" can be brought upon by something other than a mental illness.

The villain can be tormented by his past and hell-bent on some other goal which he's just using to try and deal with the old trauma.

The villain can become a nihilist and expressing how nothing matters good or bad everything is relative and it doesn't matter if he kills a woman or loves her. (Ex. Hamlet: "Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so.")

The villain could be a fanatic of some sort of ideology or ideals, even if the ideology is well intentioned, the villain followed it to its natural conclusion and brought great suffering. (Ex. Government/Socialism/Communism)

Try to make the villain's insanity somewhat logical so the audience can understand them and see the villain in themselves.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2017-11-21T01:59:07Z (about 7 years ago)
Original score: 2