Good characters and bad characters

[Ethan Jones]

Hello everyone,

I'm sharing a few thoughts on good characters and bad characters.

Enjoy,

Ethan

In general, fiction books show most of the action from the point of view of the good characters, the good guys.  The agent infiltrating a terrorist network and bringing it down.  The private investigator getting to the bottom of a kidnapping and killing the perpetrators.  The police officers finding the bank robbers and the stash of money.  While it is widely accepted that good guys will always win at the end––or at least even out the score––it is important to make the bad guys look good, at least with regard to their personality, their human dimension.

While the motivation of the good guy, the one we are cheering for, is often quite clear, sometimes authors spend little time developing the character of the bad guy.  But we need to get inside the mind of the villain and understand why he is scheming and planning those horrible things.  A strong motivation is necessary for the bad guy to risk his life and set in motion the events the good guy must stop.

Bad guys are often presented as mad, crazy or plain stupid.  A great bad guy could be a worthy opponent for the good guy.  The imminent and unavoidable showdown can increase the suspense and the expectations of the reader.  Bad guys are expected to be the dark equivalent of the hero, with similar or greater strength, abilities and wit.

Most times, a fiction book ends with the bad guy dead, severely wounded or escaping by the skin of their teeth, in order to allow room for the sequel.  Rarely, we see a reformed bad guy, but overall, bad guys serve their purpose in the book by their death in the hands of the good guy, which in fact does not really want to take their lives.  There is a lot of untapped potential in the bad guys, which authors can use to craft great bad guys, along great good guys.

[DebBennett]

I think the bad guys have to be bad for a reason. Rarely is anyone just born evil (unless we're talking demons, devils etc). Usually there's a turning point - a bad childhood experience or something that makes them the antagonist. Characters are far more rounded and real if you can show why they're the way they are.

[Millard]

Shades of gray, baby, that's where the interesting characters live.

[◄ Jess ►]

I prefer books without simple good and bad characters. I do enjoy two or more sides working against each other, but I want to understand and emphasize with all the characters, even if they do things I don't personally agree with. I really like when the author narrates both sides of the story and I end up switching my allegiance back and forth. Makes things much more exciting!

[PAWilson]

I like it when the bad guy is the hero of his own story. Someone who thinks he (or she) is doing the right thing and the Hero is doing the wrong thing. If your bad guy is killing people, it's interesting when the reason for the murders is to save someone - even if that is a warped view of reality.

[Sean Patrick Fox]

Shades of gray, baby, that's where the interesting characters live.

Exactly.

Good vs. evil is probably the oldest story ever told, but there's got to be a little of each in every character. The good guys can't all be saints, and the bad guys can't all be maniacs. For me, the most important element in crafting a well-written character - good or bad - is making them think and act in a way that's believable and in line with their life experiences.

[J Dean]

I like G.K. Chesterton's quote:  A madman is not somebody who has lost his reason, but rather somebody who has lost everything except his reason.

[JohnsonJoshuaK]

I think two of the better authors that I've read I'm respect to making the "antagonist" realistic are David Weber in his Honor Harrington series (more so since book 10 or so) and George RR Martin.

George more so in that he has characters on all levels of the spectrum: from solid good to good going bad, bad going good and solid bad.

In my current universe I'm trying to start out with 2 protagonist sides whose antagonists are each other.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

[Kathleen Valentine]

Someone once said that the most interesting characters are the ones with a secret -- whether good or bad. I tend to agree. I've rarely written a character that was all good or all bad. Even my most dastardly evil character, Sinclair Delacourt in Each Angel Burns, had a good side.

[K. A. Jordan]

That is a REALLY good point.

Especially in Romance, Paranormal and Fantasy there is a lack of motivation in the antagonist other than 'Well, you see, he's evil. He's SO evil he eats babies for breakfast. Yeah, EVIL!"

After awhile it just doesn't work for me.

[Linda Acaster]

That is a REALLY good point.
Especially in Romance, Paranormal and Fantasy there is a lack of motivation in the antagonist other than 'Well, you see, he's evil. He's SO evil he eats babies for breakfast. Yeah, EVIL!"
After awhile it just doesn't work for me.

It never worked for me. I liken it to the summer blockbuster movies which turn out to be all special effects and no storyline. A good novel should stay with the reader after the reading has ended, not just in a sense of satisfaction but in the questions the novel has raised but didn't quite answer. It's characters that delivery that, not plot.

[K. A. Jordan]

It never worked for me. I liken it to the summer blockbuster movies which turn out to be all special effects and no storyline.

Good point! (+2)

I don't mind putting the extra time into an antagonist, and I don't mind having reader having mixed emotions about them either. I made my first 'bad guy' look like he was going to be the hero, and my hero was scruffy and looked like a loser. 

Then the second time around I spent a little more time on character development and even I ended up wondering which side he was on...right up until the end.

Why should all heroes LOOK like heroes when they are introduced? Even if Romantic suspense, shouldn't there be some doubt...you know - suspense - as to who is whom?

I'd be bored to death writing something so...plain.

[George Berger]

Especially in Romance, Paranormal and Fantasy there is a lack of motivation in the antagonist other than 'Well, you see, he's evil. He's SO evil he eats babies for breakfast. Yeah, EVIL!"

A character in Terry Pratchett's latest book is a monster who, it's revealed about halfway through the book, has literally eaten her own child. She's portrayed quite sympathetically, actually.

I was moderately in awe of Pratchett (not for the first time) when I realized this...

[Linda Acaster]

Good point! (+2)

Why should all heroes LOOK like heroes when they are introduced? Even if Romantic suspense, shouldn't there be some doubt...you know - suspense - as to who is whom?

It rather depends on your genre, or sub- of that genre, as to reader expectations. I've read quite a few posts on this site where a Romance just *has* to have a happy ending, even in a book of a series. But that's not what Romance is to me. It's about sacrifice, and facing up to not being who you think you are but doing whatever the necessary *it* is anyway to pull of a satisfying denouement.

There again, I was always out of step...

[WHDean]

“Grey characters” are one of my pet peeves because those the good characters usually identified as “grey,” meaning morally ambiguous, are actually just limited ones—i.e., like all human beings, their knowledge, abilities and virtues are limited. Greek tragedy, for example, is built around limited characters (e.g., Oedipus’ ignorance of his origins), and most realistic literature (of whatever genre) contains limited characters.

Moreover, no one would sympathize with a truly grey protagonist because no one could identify with one. Even if the character is shady or morally compromised, we must believe in his ultimate goodness to follow his story.  All the same, we might watch in disgust or with prurience as evil protagonists get their comeuppances, e.g., Iago (Othello),  Alex (Clockwork Orange). 

[StephenEngland]

I don't enjoy creating black and white characters. They remind me too much of the one-dimensional heavies of the old B Westerns. When a villain dies in my books, I want the reader to feel as though a force has left the narrative. Mixed emotions is what I'm looking for--it creates a whole new spectrum of raw tension for the reader.

@WHDean: I agree with part of what you're saying. However, almost the entire spy thriller genre(my genre) is built around getting the reader to identify with a character whose values are at the very least much different from normal society. Few protagonists are truly amoral, but some of them get quite close.

[MaryMcDonald]

Shades of gray, baby, that's where the interesting characters live.

I agree. It was one regret I had with my second book that I couldn't find anything redeeming about my bad guy. My first and my soon to be released third have 'bad' guys that are varying shades and those shades change through the books. It was so much more interesting to write when I could find a bit of humanity in them.

[J.R.Tate]

I have an idea for the next book I'm going to write where the main character is a "bad" guy. I know lots of readers want to read about a character that has redeeming qualities, so I'm hoping to loop the plot all together with this in mind. 

As a personal preference for me, I like POV's from both.  There are times I'm reading a book or watching a movie and I cheer for the bad guy. I guess I'm morbid that way.  It depends a lot on what makes the character "bad" too. 

[Rin]

While I have my designated bad guys (an anti-fae-paramilitary-cult-thing) who are pretty much painted with the one brush in canon, I try to even if it out by the fact that one of the main cast used to be a member of the bad guy's organisation, and he really speaks to how ordinary most of the people are, how they truly believe they're doing the right thing (or were tricked into thinking so). It helps to add some shades of grey to the organisation as a whole, and it'll let me make more sympathetic bad guys as the series goes on.

[George Berger]

I have an idea for the next book I'm going to write where the main character is a "bad" guy. I know lots of readers want to read about a character that has redeeming qualities, so I'm hoping to loop the plot all together with this in mind. 

Like everything else, redeeming qualities are often subjective.

I read a contemporary mystery a while back where the (apparent) baddie was pretty much a complete, if low-grade, monster... except he liked children. It was clearly supposed to be his there's-hope-after-all, redeeming quality thing, something about how he could recognize the purity and innocence of youth, or whatever.

It pretty much just made him seem like a child predator, to me...

[Kevis 'The Berserker' Hendrickson]

Shades of gray, baby, that's where the interesting characters live.

Meh. I like my bad guys helplessly evil and my good guys saccharinely good without all of that pseudo-Freudian pscyho babble introspection. I'll take Darth Vader and Satan over Magneto any day. With that said, Magneto is a cool villain.

[Kathleen Valentine]

I've read quite a few posts on this site where a Romance just *has* to have a happy ending, even in a book of a series. But that's not what Romance is to me. It's about sacrifice, and facing up to not being who you think you are but doing whatever the necessary *it* is anyway to pull of a satisfying denouement.

I absolutely agree with this but, boy, did I get kicked around when I said it.

[William Woodall]

I like complex characters, and exploring their thoughts and motivations is (for me, at least) one of the most interesting things about storytelling.  But it's more than just motives and traits, too.  I like it when the good character is honestly unsure sometimes what the "good" thing to do might be in a given situation.  Moral uncertainty is fascinating.  Not only that, but the bad guys ought to have something similar. . . a desire for something which anybody would recognize as "good" as far as it goes, but a desperately wicked determination to get that good thing at any cost, regardless of who it hurts in the process.  That way they can have some complexity and moral development, too.  This is partly theology, of course. . . the idea that evil is a parasitic thing, just spoiled goodness, so to speak.  But it makes for really good stories, I think.

I never did enjoy flat, one-dimensional characters, except occasionally when I just have the urge to see the bad guys get blown up in a really cool explosion with no second thoughts. lol.  Those kinds of stories are fun once in a while but they aren't the kind of thing that draws me in or makes me think too much.  Junk food for the mind, I guess you could say.  We all like a bag of greasy chips and a Coke now and then, but a regular diet of it wouldn't be too satisfying.

[ChadWilliamson]

I think I might have read it on here, but a great way to look at creating characters is to consider that every antagonist thinks of himself as the protagonist of his own story.

Going the film route, think about HEAT, where it's never sure exactly WHO is the "good guy," or THE TOWN, where the antagonist (the FBI agent) is who would normally be the protagonist.

I think we've all gone past the point of cookie-cutter, black-and-white characters. Morally ambiguity is a beautiful thing.

[WHDean]

Stephen England,

I don’t think we disagree. Take Michael Corleone, someone who should be an exemplar of the morally ambiguous or grey character. He’s not. Within the constraints of the world he inhabits, he’s a white hat, pure and simple. Similarly, a terrorist-chasing spy with a drinking problem, or one who accidentally kills an innocent, etc., has weaknesses or limitations. But that doesn’t make him morally ambiguous. True moral ambiguity would be a terrorist-chasing spy who also happens to be a serial rapist—now that’s moral ambiguity, a real grey character.

I think it’s safe to say that I’ve never seen a truly morally ambiguous protagonist in genre fiction. And that’s just as well because what makes characters real isn’t moral ambiguity, it’s that they do not transcend human limitations.