Characters Who Do Bad Things

Handwriting, boredom

Ran across an old interview with Kevin Canty, a novelist and short story writer who teaches at the University of Montana in Missoula. At the time of the interview, he had some observations that seem particularly germane to writers of crime fiction.

To start off, he observed that people—readers, and maybe, sometimes, writers too—typically think “people who do bad things are a different class of people,” separate from the rest of us. Part of the writer’s job is to establish common ground between character and reader, no matter how alien—figuratively or literally—the character is, so that when the character does that bad thing, the reader believes in it and feels the pain of it.

The example that comes right to mind is the loss I felt when I realized Michael Corleone was beyond redemption. I had my hopes until then. Another is the character with the doomed-to-fail love affair (Carey Mulligan in An Education). Or the character who’s struggled to get clean who is again tempted by drugs (practically every musician biopic you’ve ever seen). Noooooo, we say.

These bad choices can’t just be dismissed, because, as Canty maintains and every war has proved, there are a lot of capacities in each of us. As a writer, what he tries to do “is reduce the distance between the reader and the character,” so that capacity remains viable and their choices and desires retain meaning.

At the same time, he makes sure the story actions “somehow reflect the characters, the people that are in them.” Whether bad or good. I recently read a thriller in which the main character joins the French Resistance. There were many excellent reasons for a Frenchman to do so, but most did not. So what was it about this character that propelled him to that choice? The author didn’t convincingly say. The important insights revolved not around the fact that he joined, but why he did.

“Love your bad guys,” writing coaches say.

Photo: Florian Pircher for Pixabay

2 thoughts on “Characters Who Do Bad Things

  1. Excellent advice, Ms. Weisfeld. I also try to write my villains as heroes, from their POV. They may be wrong to us, but are perfectly justified in their own view. If that character can make a plausible argument for his/her POV, all the better.

    • And, when you think about it, humans’ capacity for self-justification is so enormous, the plausibility that characters would have plausible arguments is enormous! Thanks for the comment.

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