Motivating the Bad Guys
I can't finish the David Baldacci book. Can't. Do. It.
Maybe it's because the book was written in 1999, but the bad guy . . . I just have seen him before. For all I know it's because OTHER writers have copied Baldacci and I am just late to the party. But the ruthless CIA director who wants to hide his secret funding for the war on terror, who does it because he loathes the FBI . . . I just ain't feeling it. What I actually liked about the CIA guy in this movie was how off-kilter Phillip Seymour Hoffman was (and face it, the guy could act out my grocery list and be brilliant). I know it was based on a true story, but his oddity made him real (and obviously, in that movie, the CIA were the "good" guys).
I like oddity. I AM oddity. But I digress.
Not finishing the book? This started me thinking about the motivations for the bad guys. And how cliched they can get if you're not careful.
My best friend Pammie was trying to read a thriller about a guy who was kept captive on an island because all the covert stuff in his head was too dangerous if we were somehow caught by the other side. Her reaction? They'd just double-tap him and kill him. I mean, come ON! (And I have a SNEAKING suspicion my best friend leads a double life as an assassin, because man . . . ruthless about believing in the double tap).
Bad guys do not give soliloquies and stand there for fifteen minutes telling you their motivation so the hero can rush in and KILL said bad guy. I hate when that happens.
So what motivates bad guys? And what makes for DIFFERENT motivation?
There's bad for the sake of being bad. Generally, what makes these bad guys different is their creativity. I mean, who will ever have chianti and fava beans ever again?
There's bad for a cause. What is imperative here is that the writer make you absolutely believe, 100% that someone would do very bad things for the cause.
There's bad for delusion. Same thing. It falls to believability.
There's bad for personal gain. I believe this motivation quite often.
And in all these cases, either the bad guy must feel personally torn--and that must be shown effectively. Or the bad guy feels NO guilt, in which case, you damn well better make them EFFICIENT. No soliloquies. Efficient killers are quick and ruthless.
Thoughts? Had a bad guy recently been very well-portrayed for you? Or hopelessly cliched?
And I bet you're jealous that YOUR best friend isn't a secret assassin.
34 comments:
I was recently a judge for the Thriller Award and as a result, read about 30-35 thrillers in a very short period of time. Now, I love the genre and all its assorted moving parts, but I think there's a good reason my reading in general has gotten broader lately to include YA, MG, SF, NF, etc. My judging partner and I agreed that although most of the books were really pretty good ("pretty good" don't win you now Thriller Award, folks), it doesn't take long before you think, "Been there, done that." Over and over and over again.
I think that's true in all genres. It really does take something amazing to rise above the crowd. (Note to critics and editors: difficult to read, dense and obfuscatory does not necessarily translate into "good" or "literary.")
As for good villains, let me pull up the list of this year's reading to-date:
HALO: The Cole Protocol by Tobias S. Buckell. Yeah, based on the video games, but his villains were really interesting, aliens with complex motives and motivations, backstory, culture...
Nightmare Academy by Dean Lourey. Oh yeah, the villains are, uh, monsters that want to take over the world, but they have to cooperate with each other to do it, and that's tough.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by JK Rowling. Let's face, Ms. Rowling gave us so much backstory on Voldemort we almost felt sorry for him. We sure as hell understood what motivated him.
Mark:
Great comments. I just WANTED to like the book. I really did. But I was, by chapter two, going, "THIS cannot be what he's hanging the villain hat on." It just didn't work for me (on the flip side, Absolute Power, I had enjoyed though I read it AGES ago)--the idea of the thief witnessing it from a panic room or safe or whatever it was . . . liked it.
I think with my thriller . . . the demons are evil just for kicks. But the conspiracy around them is by some very compelling church people who believe a surviving document from the Middle Ages (an actual document) as doctrine. The people that followed that belief system in the church survived as a sect for hundreds of years (also true). I think the motivation is pretty believable. In fact, I could argue dogmatically for or against the document pretty well (which I've done in my head for years as I've sort of let this thing develop).
E
Don't you find it interesting that in fiction the villains need clearer motives than they do in real life?
Mark:
Not really. Because if you think about it, WE have conversations in real life. Our characters have dialogue. Meaning all extra fluff and nonsense in the conversation has been condensed to the most important stuff. In my comedies, my characters are funnier. They generally don't have baby spit-up on their shirts or kids who feed the dog Raisin Bran. Fiction is real life only better and more focused.
E
I have a bad gal in my book. She's rich, gorgeous, married, and bored - a perfect home-wrecker. She's all about herself, completely narcissistic - the kind of gal you love to hate.
Debra:
I KNOW people like that. I remember this one mother where my kids used to go to school. HUGE fake breasts, very attractive. She did not know how to talk to a husband--other women's husbands--without hanging on them. It was really kind of gross.
E
You know, I think they can be without any conscience and still not be efficient... I can't think of an example offhand, but I've seen some pretty good horror/thriller killers who like to play with their food. Not efficient. Gives the hero time to escape. But done well, can be totally believable. Okay, got one - Kiss the Girls.
But for the most part, I do hate that, when the villian keeps the hero alive for no particular reason other than to give him time to escape and win... it's annoying. I can see sending a minion to kill the hero and having the hero overpower the minion... I can even suspend disbelief if the antagonist needs specific information from the hero and so he doesn't kill him right away because he needs to make sure he knows everything... but if these things are done badly, or if the bad guys' motives are totally cardboard... yeah, I get bored.
And these aren't even my regular genres... I read a little of everything, but I would guess these things annoy the hell out of someone who reads crime fic. as a favored genre.
Of course, I'm jealous.
Harry Potter - Voldemort was a bad guy who couldn't stop talking about himself. He did kill quickly if he had nothing to say to the particular victim. If he was obsessed, then he chattered non stop.
Merry:
"Play with their food." Yes. You are totally right there. And I was frankly pretty scared in Kiss the Girls. It was one of the last books of that genre I read.
E
Sarah:
LOL! But she emailed me today to remind me I have now blown her cover.
E
Did you ever see "The Incredibles?"
There he goes, monologuing again.
Mark:
LOL! Yes. Though I really didn't expect a double-tap there.
E
Character wise, I'm a plain vanilla cone who's barely dripped on anyone. HOWEVER, I would do evil, awful things to protect my children. Right now I can't stand my son's teacher; I've badmouthed her to others in the neighborhood. NOT something I usually do. But when I see my kid losing his self-confidence because of how this woman behaves--and yes, we've tried to talk to her--I really can't help myself. Not proud of it, but there you are. Properly motivated, anybody can do nasty things. So I try to start with that.
Having written them, I know how tough demons are!
Hi Sex Scenes:
I have been quite ugly about a bully teacher or two--like you, not my nature. But it IS my nature when someone is demeaning to my child.
With the right motivation . . . I hear you.
E
I mean, who will ever have chianti and fava beans ever again?
I laughed out loud at that!
I agree about cliched bad guys. I've tried very hard in my ms to avoid having everything explained before the shooting starts. My bad guy is driven by money and power and doesn't feel a need to explain anything, but some of the lesser bad guys aren't as confident. Hopefully it works.
melanie:
I know. My oldest daughter had questioned a motivation in Invisible Girl, and I thought I had explained it pretty well . . . but in hindsight . . . maybe more would have been better.
E
How about bad for religious reasons? The ultimate prototype? Osama Bin Laden. But believe me there are others who are not Muslims. Neo-Nazi religious groups, crusading knights, Catholic and Protestants in Ireland. You could make a huge list.
I meant to write Catholic and Protestant MILITANTS in Ireland.
Joe:
Yes . . . good example, and having seen the tenor of people like Coulter and others in this country, I actually do believe that it can be a very believable scenario. I think to make it non-cliched, though, the writer has to really try to "drink the Kool-aid" from that perspective . . . so it's not cliched and feels very real from a fervor standpoint. If you have ever read any of the memoirs of women who have escaped polygamy cults, for example, it's absolutely terrifying. You have to get INSIDE that mindset. Otherwise it can feel just as cardboard as any of the other cliches.
Did you see American History X? Edward Norton was astounding in it. Totally believed his portrayal.
E
I think this goes with Joe's comment-bad for "religious" or moral reasons. One of the most detestable characters I've come across is Jack Twist's father in Annie Proulx's short story, "Brokeback Mountain." Being raised in a certain culture with certain beliefs about what is "right" and "wrong" can lead people to do horrible things.
But with Jack's father, you get the feeling there is a cycle of abuse at play. So I would also add being wounded as a motivation for bad acts.
Jennifer:
Oh . . . that short story broke my heart. And the movie . . . broke it again.
E
Erica, would you believe I have never been able to bring myself to watch the movie, because the short story broke my heart so much?? One of these days I'm sure I'll do it. It is my very favorite short story.
The terrorist that kidnaps the first female President's daughter (Long Live the Queen by Ellen Emerson White). He was quite terrifying to me because he was so normal.
I think a villain can sometimes be scarier if we don't completely reveal his/her motivations. For example, Thomas Harris ruined Hannibal Lecter for a lot of people by writing the book Hannibal Rising. It demystified the character, yes, but I think Hannibal was more frightening cloaked in a bit of mystery. TMI, you know?
Jennifer . . .
Heath Ledger--incredible. He should have won the Oscar that year.
E
FF:
Hmm . . . the scary as ordinary. Yes. That can be really scary!! I am convinced one of my neighbors is a serial killer. No proof. Just creepy. As is my mailman. My parents lived with me for a couple of months this winter and it cracked them up that I would NEVER go outside when the mail truck was here.
E
Jude:
I 100% agree with you. I think it's scarier to think some people are born that way.
E
Sometimes I think I've lost perspective on what constitutes evil, because I'm so used to trying to see things from other people's point of views. I can pinpoint "annoying" really well, but I'm bad with evil.
This is a TV series, not a book, but I find the evil cyborg impersonating a woman in Terminator 2 - The Sarah Connor Chronicles an incredibly chilling evil character. The complete lack of humanity gets to me.
the scary as ordinary. Yes. That can be really scary!! I am convinced one of my neighbors is a serial killer.
Okay, this cracked me up... it never fails to amaze me that when someone gets arrested for mass murder, they interview friends and neighbors on the news and they always say something like, "He was so quiet and normal. Never thought he'd do something like that... never saw it coming."
I mean, seriously, in one of these cases wouldn't you think someone would say, "Yep, saw that comin' - guy was a total wing-nut!" But no, the wingnuts maybe make it harder to catch them or something... so I think normal is scary because we can't see it coming... but we know anyone's capable just from past experience.
Oh, and I love this:
I can pinpoint "annoying" really well, but I'm bad with evil.
What about someone who thinks he's right, and will take his "rightness" to the extreme? That's the motive of a villain in my wip.
My ultimate favorite bad guy EVER was Sloane from Alias. I can't think of a single bad guy that comes within ten feet of him. You felt for him all the way, even though you were rooting for Sydney (and the world, LOL).
And then there's Sydney's mother: So often she did the right thing, and she loved her daughter. But you never knew, and even until the very last minute, you hoped she would not remain the villian, that she would put things to right, that she could be a "good guy" again.
It was a brilliant series.
Robin:
I think, generally, that we have so much more grey as a society . . . which I suppose, going back to my debate with Joe Konrath last week, makes it harder to create a bad guy without going to depraved indifference.
edie:
Again, I think when people really crawl inside that head . . . when authors do that . . . it works. We have to really BELIEVE that someone could have that "right" delusion.
In one of my books, the bad guy was a cop on the take who saw all the wealth around him in Las Vegas and truly believed he had a "right" to share in some of it since it was corruption gains anyway. I felt that was believable and not a stretch.
E
spy:
I know so many people who were into that show . . . one of these days, I'll have to watch it on DVD.
E
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