Baddies and motivation

I think the bad guy is far more believable if he believes himself to be the good guy, in his own mind. Like Batman's Joker. Twisted by fate, not born bad.
 
The truth is that no one's born evil; we make the devils ourselves. We make them who they are. We make people lose faith, lose hope, start having a flawed logic, become misguided warriors who think they're right and others are wrong, make them jealous or envious to start doing something to attract our attention. Or give them too much attention to think they're above others and have the right to abuse power and be hard on others, etc.

It's always been like that. People make the evil who he/she is, whether by choice or not. Yes, those people chose to become what they are (at least most of them did), but they aren't the only responsible.
 
A. S. Behsam said:
The truth is that no one's born evil; we make the devils ourselves ...
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Yes, like Lucifer, the fallen angel of light.

Shakespeare's only truly born-bad character is Iago, in Othello. So my school English teacher assured us. And when Iago confesses his motivation (I like to pull the wings off flies, etc.) it's almost funny, like comic relief. Even Shakespeare only just manages to pull it off: Iago being an exceptional case, and Shakespeare being Shakespeare.

Black&white baddies like Voldemort and Darth Vader looked childishly one-dimensional, almost comical, until in later sequels their creators realized they had to give them some human motivation in order to keep them going.

Boneman: I agree about Thomas Covenant. A very difficult man to sympathize with, in spite of leprosy and all his problems. I couldn't go on reading either. But don't give up on Stephen Donaldson. 'Gap' is quite different, another side of Donaldson ...
 
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Boneman said:
To a greater degree, yes... he was so boring, I gave up reading - couldn't stand his self-pitying whining one page longer.
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He' a very copmplex character, and yes he's boring more often than not; but surely that makes him more 'human' and realistic?

There are LOADS of baddies in fiction whose past is not revealed to show why they are evil; once you do you can start to empthise with the character and give them excuses for what they do.

There are loads in Shakespeare's plays, my favourite being Richard III. He brings the audience in to his plotting , and although all of his actions are evil you can't help feeling some sympathy for him by the end.
 
springs said:
Mark Lawrence's Prince of Thorns portrays an unremittingly dark character, without apologising for him
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Prince of Thorns Spoiler:

It does to a degree, though - at the end it's shown that he was under the control of another character's control - who simply took his raw anger and directed it for his own purposes.
 
Damn that butler. I always suspected him. It was the stag's horn hat (and the pistol).

Thank you, Brian :)
 
Some of the scariest baddies have been the ones without a real motivation. The two that come to mind are the guy from the Torchwood episode, Countrycide and the one from Perfume. There are others but with the former the only reason was it was what people do and the latter he was born that way.

Keep mulling it over - I had a similar issue with my big baddy and trying to work out why she was evil. Some of her minions I understood but she was a mystery. It took ages for her to drop into place and I realised she wasn't evil but it was her job to ensure good and evil were balanced.
 
With Perfume I took it to be that he was mentally disturbed, and he only had the capacity/lack of self control to follow his one overriding desire, which was the thing he couldn't have (ie scent). So for me, he's not evil, but I'm not sure I can quantify why. I always see 'evil' as a pretty one-dimensional character trait anyway.
 
For me, as others have said, the 'pure evil' and 'pure good' characters fall flat. If I see a character that does nothing but completely evil things, treats people horribly, and doesn't have a single good thought, then I don't believe in them as a real character. Nobody is that evil. If they continue to do horrendous things without any second thought then I find the character one-dimensional.

Giving antagonists backgrounds can be used to make them seem not so evil and more believable.
 
Warren_Paul said:
For me, as others have said, the 'pure evil' and 'pure good' characters fall flat. If I see a character that does nothing but completely evil things, treats people horribly, and doesn't have a single good thought, then I don't believe in them as a real character.
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Exactly. That's one big reason why I dislike good-vs-bad fantasy. It's not the "bad guys" I find less convincing than the "good guys".

If an author gives me a bunch of characters and a society that must be accepted as pure and great and good, then I am going to regard those same characters and that same society as Nazi. Unless explained otherwise. Real cultures have flaws. History demonstrates those that claim otherwise have terrible secrets to hide.

Just as protagonists must be given reasonable grounds to think and act the way they do, so the same for antagonists.

Then again, truly evil characters can be very good for stirring up reader emotions - GRRM's Ser Gregor and Bolton are very good at this - but even GRRM does not make these main players, but peripheral characters.
 
I said:
Then again, truly evil characters can be very good for stirring up reader emotions - GRRM's Ser Gregor and Bolton are very good at this - but even GRRM does not make these main players, but peripheral characters.
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I'd say that, if GRRM did make them main characters, we would see another side to them that wasn't currently apparent. Because they aren't main characters that we see a lot of, he gets away with using the Mountain as an evil plot device. I don't 'hate' Gregor Clegane.

Ramsey Bolten though, I think he is GRRM's worst character. The character seems to lack any motivation past it being fun to torment people, and as such, seems completely forced to me. Do we all hate him? Most definitely, we see enough of him to hate what he does. So I suppose in that respect, it works, but I still don't believe in him as a real person. Scenes involving the ******* of Bolten are very painful to read I find, especially from the tortured PoV of Theon. But I agree with your point; he is written in such a way to wind us up. Much the same as how Joffrey was written. And for that, it works.


I suppose the question comes back to this: does the writer want us to hate the antagonist, or feel sympathy at their plight, however misguided it may be?
 
Oh, dear, i find ramsey's scenes some of the ones that kept me reading, and there weren't a lot in the last two books that did, more from horrified fascination than anything.

Do I want you to feel sympathy for her? Um, i think with any trilogy it builds and she grows more sympathetic in book two once she has been knocked off her pedestal and that continues to book three. But in book one: no, not especially. But i do want the reader to understand what motivates her, and I would say most, but not all betas, have got that over the whole book and certainly those who have read the second seem to ( any that haven't please pm me for an interrogation. :D) i mean Hex had it pretty spot on, that she is only odious in certain circumstances, and it takes someone very focused to hold the empire. No one else manages it.

Do I want you to hate her? I think if you like the protagonist it should be hard not to. But what i am doing with her is something very black, the anti- maternal, which is hard for any to sympathise with. Do i think the first book, the one i am trying now, needs written to explain her? Yes, but i hadn't the skills before. I don't know if i do yet, but it seems to be coming a bit easier.

I think it comes down to what we see as evil, and i might have a higher parameter than most, but i do like my horror. And therein, perhaps, lies the problem. Like with kevin it isn't so much is she warped, but what that warped-ness does.
 
Personally with evil characters (that aren't one of the pov characters in your novel) I see the challenge more to get the reader to feel fear; that putting themselves in the place of the protagonist, they feel the same fear and/or trepidation they do. For example in LOTR I don't ever feel myself 'hating' Sauropn, but I do feel some of the fear that Frodo, Sam (and Smeagol) would have felt when entering his domain.
 
I recently read a book that had several characters that had shady pasts and it was necessary to delve back into their backgrounds to explain why they were able to go from respectable to despicable at the turn of a dime.

As a counterpoint the real evil had to look worse than they were so I think there was at least to the author a necessity to show some of his motivation.

For the overall plot it was necessary because the reader was going to need some explanation for the events near the end. Unfortunately for myself it caused the whole story to seem a bit too contrived by that time. If not just a bit convoluted--too many shady characters.

So, the answer might be sometimes we need to show motivation but we need a balance even with that so that we don't strain the reader's perception of credibility.

Sort of like finding just the exact right amount of back story and motivation to drive the story to a satisfactory conclusion.
 
I have never started out a story knowing who the baddy is which has helped round them out. The main villain was a real surprise and is a very innocent character in my first story.
 
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