Thoroughly Despicable Characters
I'm midway through a Masters in Creative Writing. My tutor recently told me (something like): each character deserves a chance to be liked by the reader.
I didn't want people to like the particular character I was working on and so it got me to wondering about the circumstances around thoroughly despicable characters.
When I think about it, I don't even know if it's advisable to write such a character. I mean, it seems to be that there are always extenuating circumstances and excuses and evil-happenings-in-childhood that can make the character someone a reader can sympathise with - no matter what the character does. But still, I'd like to write an irredeemable character.
So, under what circumstances is it okay to write a thoroughly despicable character with no redeemable qualities?
Just to clarify - I don't need to know how to write complete monsters because I can do that already. What I'm asking is when is it okay to write a complete monster in terms of producing a story that will get a good reaction from readers.
I don't agree that all characters need to be likable. Take Joffrey in Game of Thrones (I've only seen the HBO shows, not …
6y ago
There is a phrase that I picked up somewhere and integrated into my life. It helps tremendously with interpersonal relat …
6y ago
A thoroughly despicable character with no redeemable qualities can be absolutely likeable. Avoid conflating the notion …
6y ago
I am not sure what "under what circumstances..." is supposed to mean. Whenever you want! IRL violent psychopaths are p …
6y ago
Evil-happenings-in-childhood and similar "extenuating circumstances" are a trope referred to as a Freudian Excuse (TV Tr …
6y ago
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There is a phrase that I picked up somewhere and integrated into my life. It helps tremendously with interpersonal relations, but it works for writing as well:
Nobody is the villain of their own life story.
Everyone, even the outwardly most evil person, has some internal logic behind their actions, and could probably explain to you why they are actually the good guys. It doesn't matter which Hitler, Stalin or today Warlord, Terrorist or from history, tyrannical king, child-abusing pope you pick - inside their own minds, they have good reasons for what they do and the best intentions.
This will be true for your unlikeable character as well. I believe what your tutor means is that unless that core belief shines through somewhere, your character will feel Hollywood-style one-dimensional. There is going to be some angle to his story where he can rationalize himself as being right, just or at least doing-what-needs-to-be-done-for-the-greater-good.
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I don't agree that all characters need to be likable. Take Joffrey in Game of Thrones (I've only seen the HBO shows, not read the books). He is absolutely despicable, we can't stand him.
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I am not sure what "under what circumstances..." is supposed to mean.
Whenever you want!
IRL violent psychopaths are perhaps 0.1% of the population, one in 1000. With about 3 billion adults on the planet, there are about 3 million of them in the world, and unfortunately for us their IQs follow the same bell curve as everybody else. So about 1% of that 3M are are also extremely intelligent violent psychopaths, smart enough to get away with their crimes. That is 30,000 of them in the world.
Naturally the chances of some random individual encountering such a person are rare, they are 1 in 100,000 people. But we do interact with hundreds of people in our lifetimes, so there is a chance, and these 30,000 adult, smart, violent psychopaths are all going through life victimizing one person after another for their own personal gain or pleasure.
Focusing a story on ONE of them is not implausible, and they ARE irredeemable! Recent plausible medical explanations are they are born with brain malformations that simply cannot be corrected, they are missing the linkages that make empathy, sympathy and guilt possible at all. Their behavior does not have to be founded in some childhood trauma, a violent psychopath is born that way and no amount of love or kindness can change them.
Your creative writing professor is wrong (and as a university professor myself I have no problem questioning the reasoning of another). People like stories of irredeemable evil, they recognize it in their own lives (generally from afar) and know it exists IRL. Some are terrified of it; some have experienced it or personally know someone that has (I know at least two).
Go ahead and write it. Make them strong enough and clever enough and ruthless enough to scare the crap out of readers, it will make their demise that much more deserved.
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A thoroughly despicable character with no redeemable qualities can be absolutely likeable.
Avoid conflating the notion of likeable with any form of goodness. Plenty of irredeemably monstrous characters are relatable in one way or another. We can potentially become fascinated with, and by extension, like, any character trait that resonates with us. Particularly if:
- the traits result in actions which, if not necessarily predictable, make some sort of cohesive sense in the context of the character.
- those traits are combined to create a novel personality that makes us feel something differently, or more strongly than usual - including loathing, disgust, and, especially, fear.
Consider Anton Chigurh, the assassin from No Country for Old Men. He kills coldly and brutally, and we are offered no real hints about his "backstory" that might provide insight into his chosen profession, methods, or indifference to death and suffering. Yet he is a popular villain. This owes in part to the slow reveal, over the course of the story, of his attitude and moral code.
The reader is permitted to build a sufficient (if not complete) picture of his nature, and by the end of the story we get him. He believes that he acts as an instrument of fate; going so far, from time to time, as allowing a coin flip to dictate whether or not he takes a life. Despite this, the reader is likely to feel that Chigurh is less random a killer than others, that we have a strong sense of how he might behave in a particular situation. It is clear that his philosophy is the result of substantial thought and consideration, even if its internal logic is alien to us.
On the contrary, a villain who lacks both novelty and complexity isn't much of a character at all - rather they represent a hurdle to be overcome (or succumbed to) by the protagonists, the way a natural disaster might. And like a natural disaster, if a villain is truly banal, the details might be best omitted, so that the unimportant parts of the story do not compete for the reader's attention.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/36412. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Evil-happenings-in-childhood and similar "extenuating circumstances" are a trope referred to as a Freudian Excuse (TV Tropes link). The main problem with this trope is what it implies: because character suffered whatever. it is now OK for them to do Bad Thing. Ergo, it is OK for anyone who suffered whatever to do Bad Thing. Ergo, anyone who suffered whatever can be expected to do Bad Thing, and cannot be blamed for it. Accepting the validity of the Freudian Excuse deprives the person who suffered whatever of free will, de-facto dehumanising them, making them "heroes" just for not doing Bad Thing and acting like normal people instead. It also lowers the morality bar, making Bad Thing acceptable if one can offer a Freudian Excuse for it.
This is extremely offensive to those who have suffered either whatever or Bad Thing in real life. Also, it is a fallacy: everyone has had some sort of negative experience. Anything can be used as a Freudian Excuse. Which would make the acceptability of any crime a matter of rhetoric - can the criminal (or someone on his behalf) tell a sob story to offer a Freudian Excuse? THIS IS BAD.
Despicable people exist. There is nothing redeemable about a serial rapist, a mass murderer, a child molester, a terrorist. They might love their mothers, or their little daughters, or they might save a drowning puppy - those are Pet the Dog (TV Tropes link) moments. They do not redeem a character. If played right, they make a character more monstrous. Compare minion-killing, randomly-sadistic, manic-laughter bad-movie Dark Lord to real-life Doctor Mengele:
He was capable of being so kind to the children, to have them become fond of him, to bring them sugar, to think of small details in their daily lives, and to do things we would genuinely admire ... And then, next to that, ... the crematoria smoke, and these children, tomorrow or in a half-hour, he is going to send them there. (Source)
Which one of them gives you the chills? And which one is a caricature?
The thing is, real-life monsters don't spend 24/7 being randomly Evil. If they were, it would have been easy. But instead, they still love their mothers, they still look and act like humans most of the time, so you look and wonder how this charming kind doctor could be doing these things. It's almost incomprehensible. And yet, there it is.
So when is it OK to write someone who is completely irredeemable? When the crime is irredeemable, when you know it to be the act of a monster, you face it with honesty and integrity as a writer: you do not shy away from passing judgement. You do not pretend there are excuses and extenuating circumstances. You make any "Pet the Dog" moments, any "positive" traits, your tools in revealing the face of a monster rather than means to make the monster appear human. Anything less, and you belittle the monstrosity of the act, you hide away from what you have written and cheapen it.
tl;dr: When you write a monstrous act (such as mass murder, serial rape and worse), do it the decency of looking at the monster and calling him a monster.
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