I am not very good at listening.
So, as I told you here, my paid editor didn’t like the villain in my current romance novel. She thought the bad guy needed more than just a sense of greed and entitlement.
So, I added another character that was supposed to be the star-crossed villain, doing evil things out of love. I revamped the original villain to be more sympathetic. I did everything the editor said I should.
And it didn’t work.
Why?
Because now I like the characters, and the new “villain” developed their own character in the process. Becoming a person that wouldn’t actually commit murder.
*throws hands up*
I know. I hate it when characters stop listening to their author-god and go do their own thing.
But see, here’s the thing. People do bad stuff all the time. People are motivated by greed, and fear, and lust. Not everyone is altruistic.
I’m not even sure everyone is a hero in their own story.
Yeah, I know us writers are fed this a great deal. But I’m not sure it’s true.
Not everyone thinks they’re blameless. Some people know what they’re doing is wrong and do it anyway.
I want this thing, so I’m going to take it. Yeah, it’s wrong. So what? Yeah, it may hurt someone, but I’m going to take what I want.
Don’t believe me?
How many con artists are scamming people out of their money and justifying it to themselves on some higher moral ground? Because there’s totally heroic reasons to call a grandmother pretending to be her granddaughter in a horrible car accident and beg for money in the form of non-traceable gift cards so the hospital will admit her. *that was sarcasm*
Or calling parents and telling them their child was kidnapped and demanding ransom money or they’re be killed.
So, maybe the villain in this story really is just in it for money. Maybe they’re willing to steal an old man’s retirement savings by pretending to be the love his life. Or maybe they’re willing to kill a scrupulous duke to keep gold flowing.
It’s my story. And while this villain may have had a traumatic childhood on the streets of Aerius, that’s not the story.
I don’t care why he values money over someone’s life. He does. And a flip through the news will show he’s not alone.
“I’m not even sure everyone is a hero in their own story.”
I think the idea that “everyone is a hero in their own story” and thus (supposedly) not bad because they don’t see themselves as bad came out of thinking hero is the same as protagonist. Of course every person is the protagonist (viewpoint character) of their own story, but that doesn’t make them the hero, just the person through whose eyes the “story” is seen.
Personally, I hate stories in which the villain is presented as ‘just misunderstood’ or ‘not really to blame for all the horrible things they do because [insert unhappy childhood details here].’ For one thing, it’s an insult to every real person who had something bad happen to them and yet didn’t become evil. As you say, sometimes the motivation is just greed of some form or another. (An antagonist being presented as a basically decent person who has made some bad choices is another matter. Sometimes, an antagonist may even be a good person who happens to be opposed to the protagonist. It happens, and sometimes “good vs. good” can make for a very compelling story.) I want to know the villain’s motivation, but I don’t want the author making excuses for them or telling me, the reader, that I should feel sorry for/sympathize with someone who thinks they have the right to hurt people for their own entertainment or whatever.
Yes!!
Many people lived through traumatic childhoods. That is not a reason to do horrible things.
Good vs good could be an interesting story. A very interesting story. Willing to sacrifice perfect for good…
Not trying to fix your story or even debate you, just something your post and the comment above made me think of.
One of the best takes I’ve ever seen on ‘not really to blame for all the horrible things they do because [insert unhappy childhood details here]’ was Alan Moore’s “Killing Joke,” a take on Batman’s Joker that was pretty revolutionary at the time. It set the groundwork for Heath Ledger’s Joker and an unfortunate overuse of the character.
The Joker attempts to prove that anyone who’s been through what he’s been through would be just as bad and he sets out to prove it, with disastrous consequences.
One of the thing that makes it work is it’s obvious that he’s wrong. The story gives villain believable motivation without justifying him even a little bit.
I am not a huge comic book fan as for a long time, they felt like they weren’t directed at me. However, I *loved* Batman the Animated Series. The take on the Joker there was interesting to me, and I can see how that would be a fascinating villain to develop. However, comic books get an entire comic series to do that. I get one novel to have a romance (main plot), with a murder to solve (sub plot). Romance novels seldom go past 350 pages, so not a lot of space for the villain to get “his” story. Which I sort of don’t want to give him. Maybe he had an awful childhood. So did a lot of people, and they don’t go around killing folks that get in their way.