Why do readers enjoy reading about "bad" or evil characters?
I've changed a secondary character into a murderer, and it changes everything. This change also opposes my core philosophies, that life and art should strive to reach something higher - not something more base. I don't want gratuitous anything.
I made the change, because it can be undone and I think there is value in exploring a bunch of different possible paths. And - Now - I recognize that this change 'works.' It hypes up the scene, pulls into past scenes, plays into future scenes.
And now, I wonder philosophically what it means to represent something reprehensible (like cavalier murder) in fiction. Can a good character be a murderer? What does it say about humanity if we want to read 'that kind of struggle?' A character stewing over the people he killed years ago? Are we all murderers at heart?
My (secondary) character is remorseful and lives an exemplary life. But come on - if my neighbor killed two politicians years ago, I don't care that he is a good guy now. He broke the freakin law. Report him! Haul him off! In other words, real life and literature are quite different beasts.
Surely the reasons for the disparity between fiction and life are understood? Can you give me peace about writing a sympathetic murderer?
Question: Why do bad characters sell, and does this ultimately serve base instincts or higher instincts?
A good answer will draw from either respected works, or will reflect considered thought about why so much of popular writing is driven by the darker side of humanity.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/35058. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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The virtuous transgressor is one of the oldest and most popular figures in literature. We find them everywhere from Robin Hood to Dirty Harry.
How can a transgressor be virtuous? We all have basically the same attitude towards the law: it should constrain me as little as possible and other people as much as possible, or at least as much as is required to make sure they don't interfere with me and what I want to do.
Naturally, no one set of laws is going provide that for everyone, so the law is a set of compromises. I accept a set of constraints imposed by my neighbours in exchange for them accepting a set of constraints imposed by me. This does not prevent me from campaigning to have the balance of constraints shifted in my favor, which is why politics is eternal. If there were one perfect balance of constraints that all could accept, we would have found it by now. Instead, we have a constant shifting of constraints as people continually work for their own advantage. This process was very much on display this week in the Mark Zuckerberg hearings on Capitol Hill. At stake are the appropriate constraints on the collection and use of personal data. One set of constraints would ruin the Facebook business model. Another could undermine democracy. The struggle continues.
The business of defining constraints falls to the elites. Most elections are contest between two sets of elites. (A good thing, since elites are made up of people who are good at stuff. The odd time a true peoples party gets into power the result is inevitably blood and ruin.) This means that most ordinary people live under a constraint regime that favors the elites. (The calculation of the elites is to make the laws favor them, but not so much that the resentment of the governed flairs into open revolt.)
So where does this leave Joe Q Public? Living under a regime of constraints which he to some extent finds irksome and in which he sees that the rich get richer and, often, get away with murder (both literally and figuratively). Personally, he lacks the courage to rebel or resist. He has too much to lose (the elites have made sure he lives well enough to have something to lose by rebellion). But who is his hero? The virtuous transgressor -- the hero who breaks the laws he, Joe Q, thinks unjust but dare not break.
But his admiration for the virtuous transgressor is not confined to the altruistic transgressor. The virtuous transgressor does not have to be Robin Hood. Indeed, convince yourself of the injustice of the laws (and even just laws seem unjust when they constrain our desires), and transgression itself becomes a virtuous act, regardless of its consequences. We are, after all, selfish creatures at heart, we would like to take what we want without consequences. As the Great Big Sea song says, "I want to be consequence free" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGp9bnDm0n0)
Follow this to its ending and merely the act of successfully living outside the law becomes attractive. Thus Jesse James became a folk hero to people living outside the range in which he robbed amd murdered. I want to be consequence free. Failing that, I want to read about people who do live that way.
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It can serve both base and higher instincts.
On one level people appreciate a character whose response to provocation is more dynamic than the response they think they would have themselves. This seems to work best when supported by a compelling back story (Hannibal Lecter, Dexter Morgan), though there's always an addictive glee in the classic moustache-twirling pantomime villain (oh no there isn't...).
On a higher level, people like to see consequences. Even if the murderer continues to get away with the crime, the struggle to remain undetected (or, like Raskolnikov, to reconcile their actions with the sort of person they think they are) appeals to a sense of karmic justice.
A story about someone who always did the right thing would soon start to read like a sermon. On the other hand, illustrating why people might not - and what happens when they don't - is a classic piece of show-not-tell.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/35069. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Yes, we are all murderers at heart. We are all killers at heart, for food.
Some evolutionary scientists believe we would not have evolved brains without eating meat on a regular basis; regardless we are particularly well suited to long distance running which is probably how our earliest ancestors in Africa hunted: Running all frikkin' day, chasing animals. Because with our sweat glands and light body hair, we can do that, and they cannot: They die of heat stroke in a matter of hours if it is hot; we do not. Our sweat cools us off; a deer can only pant. (Like a dog, dozens of young dogs in the USA die of heat stroke every year because their human owners run with them for five miles in warm humid weather, and their obedient dog has a stroke and dies).
It is in our nature to kill large animals for food, and it is also in our nature to fight and kill our rivals. There are no "base" instincts and "higher" instincts. There are instincts, and they are all equally valuable, and equally weaknesses or strengths.
In that sense, the rule "an eye for an eye, a hand for a hand, a life for a life" is just restating a part of our basic instinct, but even such a simple law, while defining fair retribution, falls short by failing to define the circumstances in which it should be invoked: Specifically, a selfishly taken "eye, hand, or life". Most agree if a man takes a life in self-defense, that might be fair even though his life was not taken. But perhaps not fair if he had an easy alternative to avoid attack, or was taunting his attacker, or was raping his attacker's daughter when he was attacked, etc. So our sense of fairness is not super simple, and so difficult to define precisely it almost always falls short -- Which is unfair! Laws should never be taken as gospel in determining whether a treatment of a person is "Fair." If I drive at ninety miles an hour on city streets I am breaking the law, if I run red lights and refuse to stop when chased by cops I am breaking the law, but most juries will exonerate me if my brother is bleeding to death in the front seat and I am trying to get to the Emergency Room. That is "Fair" because of the exonerating circumstances.
There is a biological reason the average male is 25% larger than the average female, and more prone to muscularity, height and speed: The male body is designed to FIGHT, particularly each other for the right to mate. The same is true in the super-majority of other species; males are specially adapted to fight other males for mates, and females are not. Throughout the animal kingdom, the majority of males have no offspring at all, while the majority of females all have offspring. This is due to the minimal amount of time and energy it takes for a male to father a child, and the maximal amount of time and energy it takes for a female to bear that same child; in humans that can literally be a few minutes versus nine months of increased calorie requirement and about five months of increasing disability, a 200,000 to 1 disparity, not to mention two years of continuing care for the infant!
This disparity in efforts for reproduction has led evolution to produce not just physical differences, but psychological differences that are gender-linked, and those in turn create cultural differences across the world in how women are treated, protected / enslaved, pursued, and mate (whether by choice or coercion).
The evidence for this is on the ground, the vast majority of murderers, worldwide, are men. The vast majority of rapists, worldwide, are men. The vast majority of sexual slaves, worldwide, are women, owned by men. (However you wish to define it, I define it as any woman repeatedly forced by the same individual to have sex she doesn't want to have.)
There are cross-overs, both in sexual preference and murderering, rape and slavery, but we should not expect anything in biology to wind up 100% iron-clad, even physical gender can be mixed, it should not surprise us if psychological attributes that are highly correlated to one gender are sometimes found in the opposite gender.
We are murderers at heart. There are few emotions that did not serve us at some time or another in our rise to humans. Anger and rage and violence serve a purpose still. Murder worked positively to stop predation on people by other humans long before we had any laws. Murder of rivals, kidnapping and rape of women, violent competition for women and resources (including all out war) all worked negatively in pursuit of the only thing that ultimately drives evolution, reproduction. A man's competition cannot threaten him or out-reproduce him if the competition is dead. (Of course then, the winner's male offspring may inherit his physicality and psychology and have to compete against each other...)
Violence and killing come naturally to women, as well, defending themselves and their own offspring, hunting for food (they need meat to fuel their brains as much as men do), and so on. I am not suggesting here that women are incapable of violence, but statistically speaking, worldwide, they just do not murder as many rivals as men do, and nearly never forcibly rape anybody.
It is not in our nature to respect "the rule of law," otherwise we'd never overthrow a despotic king. More generally, how would we ever know to make a law against something, what in our nature makes us say "that should be against the law?"
What humans (and chimps, dolphins, elephants, corvids and perhaps other species) are born with is a not-too-simple but not-too-sophisticated sense of FAIRNESS. It is that sense upon which "law" resides, and it is that sense that tells us when a law is unfair, or something is happening that is unfair and we should make a law against it. The words "justice" and "just" and "unjust" all derive from the Latin "Justus" which meant "Righteous, Equitable". Equal. The law is a poor and often vague implementation of the fairness most of us have an instinct to demand, and take when the law fails us. It is why are Lady Justice holds a scale, which is fundamentally the metaphor of determining whether things are unequal or unfair.
So yes, we readers understand when a character kills somebody else, whether for their own selfish reasons (the killer deserves punishment!) or altruistic reasons (the killed deserved punishment, and equivalently this prevents the killed from doing additional future harm).
Both scenarios are in our blood. The first is there because "selfish" is quite literally what we are doing to reproduce our self! The second is there out of our inherent sense of fairness: If we believe somebody is doing great harm and will continue to do so, especially if they have the power, resources or contacts to circumvent punishment by the law, then we feel it is still "fair" if they receive punishment, and we don't really care what the law may be: Fairness comes above law.
Rage may seem destructive, but it serves an evolutionary purpose, in some circumstances completely ignoring consequences and trying to commit murder really is the only way to have a chance at spreading genes or protecting the genes you have already spread (children). It may fail, but it may succeed where surrender, submission or refusing to risk death or refusing to murder is guaranteed to fail. Similar arguments apply to other emotions, like jealousy, hatred, vindictiveness, etc. Due to biological imprecision (and not growing up in anything like natural setting or social environments) these are frequently misused, but they have perfectly valid evolutionary justification for existing, they have contributed heavily to our development and intelligence.
If you want to write about the human condition, it is possible but difficult to do while skipping the most important part of it. There will always exist some psychopaths in our midst, perhaps 1/4 to 1/2 percent of people are born with flawed feedback nerves in their brain that prevent them from feeling guilt or empathy. That is also part of our nature, having to deal with such people, and they are the enemy of mankind driving most of our law since the modern human brain emerged in force about 50,000 years ago (and the first woman with it may have existed 100,000 years before that).
Killing people to prevent their future action is a part of us, and is one of the easiest things we can identify with. It is only "murder" when done for selfish gain or pleasure; we tend to disagree with the label "murderer" when we speak of soldiers killing the enemy, or a girl being raped shooting and killing her attacker. We don't even think the soldier or girl should suffer regrets, and if they do, we feel sorry for them being traumatized by having killed.
On the other hand we are appalled when a murderer feels no regret, then we revile them and think they're defective ... and deserve to be killed to prevent their future actions! Because gain (in property, money or pleasure) by murder is fundamentally unfair no matter what the "law" says, and if the law does not agree, then it is the law that is flawed, not the instinct.
Why do bad characters sell, and does this ultimately serve base instincts or higher instincts?
Bad characters sell because the vast majority of us possess the instinct for fairness and we want to see the bad people get their fair due, that is entertainment for us. This serves instinct in general, I reject the division of "base" and "higher" because I think both are critical for a healthy mental life, and understanding what drives both helps us navigate life being fair to others: Which sometimes necessitates punishing them.
I believe a valid distinction that can serve is "selfish" and "altruistic" instincts; but killing is a tool and not automatically one or the other: If Joe killed a man in order to protect a woman, he is altruistic. If Joe secretly killed a man loved by a woman to get that man out of the way, Joe is selfish.
So it depends on why your character killed a politician whether the reader will consider it a murder or a justifiable killing.
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tl;dr: Due to the long nature of this answer, you can skip to below the line below. If you want the explanation, you will have to read the whole answer.
Some of these answers have suggested that we secretly enjoy reading about murderers. I find this preposterous, and I will present an example to show you why.
In Eoin Colfer's popular series, Artemis Fowl, the MC, is a criminal. He's no murderer, but he does steal purely for power and money, and has even gone so far as to kidnap an innocent, all within just the first book.
Knowing only that, can you honestly say you would like to read about this character? There might be some passing interest and tension in the heist (if Colfer focused on it, which he does not), and a reader could be interested in the clash of wits during the kidnapping, but all that interest is passing. In the end, you are reading about a character who cares only for himself and those he knows, and doesn't care who he hurts or steals from to get more power and money.
The authors of certain answers can try to explain how all readers secretly want to read about such a character. I do not, and I find it hard to believe that I am alone. We want to read about characters which we seek to emulate. That's the simple truth of character development.
Mark Baker suggested that we all want to read about the character who rebels against the rules we see as unjust, and maybe that's true. But a criminal is more than a rebel. He's someone who hurts others, purely for personal gain, without a shred of remorse. Is it being suggested that we all want to read about someone like that, as well? Even to emulate them? I certainly do not.
Artemis Fowl is in fact a very successful series, and to me it is obvious why. No novel can last with a MC no one wants to read about, so clearly Eoin Colfer knows how to handle such a dark protagonist. Assuming we all do not secretly wish to hurt others for personal gain, what is his trick?
Artemis is a thief, and cares only for the family fortune. No way around it. Neither does he show any desire to turn from his dark path. He does, however, have a mother. His mother is ill in her mind, confined to her bed, seeing and hearing things which aren't there. Sometimes she recognizes her son, sometimes she doesn't. Sometimes she thinks he's much younger than he is. Sometimes she thinks her husband - missing for years now - is with her.
This by itself might create some sympathy with Artemis - simply because we see him as the victim - but that sympathy will vanish when he turns back into the predator he is. Colfer knows Artemis needs something more, and he delivers it in one line. Artemis has just returned from another criminal enterprise, and visits his mother.
"Artemis, darling. Where have you been?"
Artemis sighed. She recognized him. That was a good sign.
"School trip, Mother. Skiing in Austria."
"Ah, skiing," crooned Angeline. "How I miss it. Maybe when your father returns."
Artemis felt a lump in his throat. Most uncharacteristic.
In that final line, the reader suddenly sees the light at the end of the tunnel. Artemis is not all dark, no matter how much he thinks he is, or even wants to be. That one line gives the reader hope. And throughout the series, Colfer continues to reinforce that hope. Artemis continues his criminal underlife, but we stick with him because we now know he is more than just a criminal. Even when Colfer introduces the 'police', we stick with Artemis. Not because the 'police' are evil. Simply because we already can see that Artemis is a better person than he would like to admit, and are cheering for him to win out over his own darkness.
So, why do readers enjoy reading about bad or evil characters? They don't. The only way to make these Dark Protagonists work is to give the reader a glimpse, a shred of evidence, that the character is not as dark as they seem.
A murderer can feel remorse over what he's done, even if he continues to do it. A thief can feel guilt over what he's stolen and the people he's helped, even if he steals night after night. In Artemis' case, a criminal can even want to be cold-blooded and dark, but if you show that they aren't, at least not entirely, the reader has hope.
The same holds true for every criminal. Without that light at the end of the tunnel, the reader would quickly grow to dislike the character, and discard the book.
You of course have already done this in your book, as your murderer is remorseful. That's all you need. The reader will sense that there is hope for this person, that he is more than just a cold-blooded killer. Recognize that hope. Bolster it to the reader. Even if the character remains a killer for the whole novel, keep that hope alive. Do that, and you keep the reader.
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