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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42199
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42199
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

You say you've been lucky - nobody has given you a cause to hate them. Now imagine someone, or some group, laid **deliberate, continuous, unjust abuse on someone(s) you cared about.** Or imagine your own welfare and happiness being continually put under threat by a person's or group's deliberate actions. And the system gives you no way to do anything about it - in fact, the system might be the perpetrator, or it might be tacitly supporting the perpetrator, leaving you **helpless**. Those are the keys here: harm is deliberate, unjust, and "justice" isn't being meted to the perpetrator - they can continue perpetrating, and enjoying the profits thereof. And it is personal - you or somebody you care about are threatened, or actually harmed.

(Harm can be perceived. [Blood libels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel) were a common excuse for anti-Semitism, never mind that they were _libel_ - surprise, surprise, we do not, in fact, eat children.)

Because there is no legal recourse to your fear and pain, a boiling need to change things rises in you - to hurt those who have hurt you, to make it so they can't hurt anyone ever again. Only, you can't, at least not without paying a heavy price. And that too is unfair. This boiling cauldron is where hate is born.

That's something you need to understand, when writing: **hate is a strong emotion**. Hate is passion. Hate is a fire inside you.

There is another element: each character, like each person, has an "inner narrative", within the framework of which they understand the world. Evidence that doesn't fit into this narrative gets tossed away as "a lie", "pretence", etc. So, if a person from a hated group suddenly helps your character, it's "clear" to your character they're only doing this for some nefarious hidden agenda of their own. Basically, **hate colours their inner narrative, and they understand the world in light of their hate.** Even a cry of pain can be construed as "they're trying to manipulate me, they should be punished for this."

Original score: 3