Characters, the Good, The Bad, The Ugly

[Brutal_One]

Another character thread. What is your view on writing your characters and having the different flavour of characters? Most will want I guess readers to relate to and like your characters in the main, it’s true too they should probably have character flaws and traits. But as for truly evil characters, the types that may do things you don’t want to write about and would be rejected but maybe can be mentioned as a passing reference.

Has anyone thought about this issue and if so how have you handled it in the writing?

Brutal One

 

[RetroFan]

Some of my female characters would be classified as sociopaths, such as Breanna from my fetish story series 'Trailer Trash Teen Hates Rules.' One reader described Breanna as the most hateful character he had ever read about.

Breanna, a nymphomaniac trailer park girl from the wrong side of the tracks, uses the toilet with the door open to shock and offend people; throws her used sanitary pads on the floor; shoplifts, steals money and commits a robbery; plays mean-spirited pranks on people; uses physical violence such as throwing a bottle at her brother's head; sprays graffiti; mocks disabled people; hates homosexual men despite being bi herself; and cannot go a sentence without using the word shit, fuck or cunt.

 

[lovecraft68]

Most of my stories feature some conflict, but only in the sense of I want to, but should that you mind in most stories that have more depth than stroke.

The truly evil characters are reserved for my off lit work

But Siblings with Benefits featured two seriously messed up characters, and it was in interesting game, the brother would be totally unlikable to most for a variety of reasons, but he went through hell with drug addicted and all around fucked up sister so he became sympathetic to the readers.

Megan received more that than any character I've ever created, until the end when I managed to redeem her.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Some of my female characters would be classified as sociopaths, such as Breanna from my fetish story series 'Trailer Trash Teen Hates Rules.' One reader described Breanna as the most hateful character he had ever read about.

Breanna, a nymphomaniac trailer park girl from the wrong side of the tracks, uses the toilet with the door open to shock and offend people; throws her used sanitary pads on the floor; shoplifts, steals money and commits a robbery; plays mean-spirited pranks on people; uses physical violence such as throwing a bottle at her brother's head; sprays graffiti; mocks disabled people; hates homosexual men despite being bi herself; and cannot go a sentence without using the word shit, fuck or cunt.

Wow, Breanna sounds like a real piece of work. But now I want to read about her.

I found this quote from playright David Mamet, "I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.”

I just can't look at the world that way. I usually find redeeming features in the people I write about. Probably my most unsympathetic character (a woman; I haven't published the story yet) is more "disturbed" than consciously evil. She does cause quite a mess for someone else in the story.

 

[lovecraft68]

Wow, Breanna sounds like a real piece of work. But now I want to read about her.

I found this quote from playright David Mamet, "I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.”

I just can't look at the world that way. I usually find redeeming features in the people I write about. Probably my most unsympathetic character (a woman; I haven't published the story yet) is more "disturbed" than consciously evil. She does cause quite a mess for someone else in the story.

You sound like my wife, with the best in people, and everyone has redeeming qualities. Of course she's a life coach so that's her job to get people to bring out their best...she's also in ministerial school(I know, like how are we married?)


But me, I believe most people are inherently selfish, ignorant and crap. I believe in base human nature. My motto is no matter how low of a bar you set for people, the fuckers will still manage to slink under it.

 

[Bramblethorn]

For the most part I write about mostly-good people who have their flaws. That's more than capable of producing interesting drama.

But occasionally it's fun to write an outright villain. Dr. Marchand from "The Floggings Will Continue..." was one of my favourites to write, and I hope to revisit her some time.

 

[sirhugs]

Drama classically requires at least one protagonist and an antagonist.

While not all Lit stories require drama, it often is part of a story. In those cases, you want the protagonist to be as likeable and relatable as possible, and the antagonist to be less likeable- though sometimes in a complex story, such as a novella, the antagonist may become a sympathetic character in their own right, with exploration of the motivations or circumstances which place them in opposition to the hero.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Drama classically requires at least one protagonist and an antagonist.

While not all Lit stories require drama, it often is part of a story. In those cases, you want the protagonist to be as likeable and relatable as possible, and the antagonist to be less likeable- though sometimes in a complex story, such as a novella, the antagonist may become a sympathetic character in their own right, with exploration of the motivations or circumstances which place them in opposition to the hero.

You beat me too it! What he said^^^^^

 

[ElectricBlue]

I've written a narcissistic manipulator who meets her match in a younger switch and a confident man. She was a ton of fun to write, and I knew I'd written her well when several readers who know my content said, "I really don't like Madelyn." Mostly though, I write positive, empathetic characters because the world already has enough assholes, and how are they erotic?

 

[AlinaX]

Most of my POV characters are either Neutral Good or Chaotic Neutral, but there's a few Lawful Evil in there as well.

 

[Brutal_One]

Most of my POV characters are either Neutral Good or Chaotic Neutral, but there's a few Lawful Evil in there as well.

Spoken by a true aficionado of AD&D - yes the references you know well. The Neutral characters can seem bland but Chaotic Neutral is difficult to play well without pissing off the other characters. Lawful Evil is where I pitch a character who is just pure evil. Chaotic Evil is just a psychopath basket case and would never be a character you could write about.

Brutal One

 

[PennameWombat]

Another character thread. What is your view on writing your characters and having the different flavour of characters? Most will want I guess readers to relate to and like your characters in the main, it’s true too they should probably have character flaws and traits. But as for truly evil characters, the types that may do things you don’t want to write about and would be rejected but maybe can be mentioned as a passing reference.

Has anyone thought about this issue and if so how have you handled it in the writing?

Brutal One

How do we define 'evil'? One of my favorite characters is Janet, from my Nude Day 2019 entry, "City of Angels." (Link in sig.) It's in Erotic Horror.

I don't know if she's evil though. But we meet her as she's in a library and hypnotizes two women to get naked and initiate an orgy to take attention away from her seducing a college-age male so she can have sex with him and suck out his life force

She goes on to do similarly to a female coworker who'd been secretly in love with her, Janet uses that to get them in a situation where they're alone.

Then she hypnotizes the adult congregation (after getting families with children to leave) of her church after Sunday services so they engage in a frenzied orgy through the streets to cause a scene to get news coverage. In the process she sucks the life force from the Reverend and he dies (she doesn't intend this, but doesn't care. Her other victims are left in vegetative comas.)

Of course, "Janet" is actually the parasitical alien who took over Janet, a religious twenty-something young woman. She feeds off the life force of people after taking over Janet and causes the news ruckus so her mate (a male alien who was separated from her) will see news reports and guess she's in Los Angeles (thus the title.)

But Janet is friendly, outgoing, joyous, loves children and her missing mate, loves sex... But she's also amoral in when she needs to feed, well, she goes with gusto. But she also wants to avoid attracting the police, etc.

I wanted people to, in a way, be upset at what Janet did but also to understand why she did it. She didn't cause chaos and death and pain for jollies, but that it was essential to her survival and finding her mate (he had most of the same traits but she was my PoV character.) I still have twinges of regret at Marsha's fate, the lesbian coworker who'd had a crush on Janet for quite a while. Janet had rejected her but once "Janet" had taken over she used the crush to get them alone, and, well... Last we heard of Marsha she was in a coma in the hospital and presumably died there eventually...

Her daughter Asha is one of the two main female leads in my "Geek Pride" (link in sig) series, she shares some aspects with Janet in needing to feed but she's much more circumspect about not damaging people any more than necessary. But, if you read the series, she's not averse to doing so if it's for 'good' reasons... And she's very, very talented with knives. But she's certainly not evil in part because she understands her nature and works at not following her mother's path.

Speaking of "Geek Pride", there's Jed Miller. He's pretty evil and on a crash course to Asha and her friend Tracy. But I give less background for him, we never get his PoV but we know he raped Tracy's friend Dixie and left her for dead. But he's presented as decently handsome and with a level of rough charisma that he uses in his criminal endeavors (mention of him is made in a number of my other stories in this shared universe.) Other members of his little criminal gang show up in "Geek Pride", "Tale of Two Parties" (link in sig) and Chasing Robes and Shadows and while criminal, they range from brutes (Gail, Nixon) to a quite sweet couple (Wolfman and Bonnie) who just fell into criminality.

There's also a pack of 'White Hair' terrorists in Geek Pride in the UK, we meet them at Stonehenge and things are, um, bad... For now, though, we don't yet have their whole story. That's unfolding across a few stories... Since the tabloids came up with the phrase "Summer Solstice Slaughter" to describe what they did, we can assume it was bad.

Adrift in Space has a variety of shifting characters. The alien leader (Queen Anna) might be seen as evil for kidnapping a human couple, but her reasons unfold. But there are other aliens amongst her crew who eventually cause a disaster. It was important to me that the readers had some idea of how the characters got to where they did, again, it wasn't evil for the sake of evil.

Finally, we have "Chaos" Kelly Zabriskie. She's never been on stage, but memories of her antics have been related in various stories and there's always slight fear she might reappear from the thin air into which she'd disappeared. The view isn't so much of evil but of a person with zilch in the impulse control department and no filter on whatever she might say.

Of my various other characters, my effort with Queen Anna was to present an ultra-self-confident, intelligent, well-meaning and commanding female character. But who had a couple of blind spots that left the opening that led to the disaster. That's one of my overall goals, not be explicit about flaws but let them 'show' by effects on the stories. Mainly, if they KNEW of the flaws, they could address them...

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Most of my characters are basically good, but flawed. Who wants bland anything? Salt and lemon juice and cayenne - in the right amounts - can turn bland into delicious.

I have a few baddies, but not that many and most of them are simple amoral rather than truly evil. My 'eloi' in E.V.T. were simply utter selfish dedonists - more uncaring or unthinking. And yes, I've written a couple of truly nasty characters, too, but not that many, given the generally desired pleasant tone of this site. (Who goes to an erotica site to feel bad?)

 

[RetroFan]

I've written about stories characters who are completely unsympathetic. For example, in my story 'Sexy Savannah From Number 9' which is set in Melbourne Australia in 1997 the lead character is a young man named Dino, and he has a rotten lot in life. His authoritarian father yells at him like a military man and his mother is just the same, they favour Dino's high achieving twin sister over him and make Dino go back to high school at age 19 where the kids all give him a hard time and are constantly getting him into trouble, especially one girl and her boyfriend. We also meet Dino's principal and guess what? He's an arsehole too. But never once do you feel any sympathy for Dino as he is a misanthropic, self-pitying, lazy and selfish slacker.

 

[SimonDoom]

Most of my stories do not have true villains, but some do. The usual pattern for my stories is to have a main character with an unfulfilled need on some sexual subject, and another character with a different need that comes into conflict with and/or spurs the main character to action, thereby driving the plot that culminates, usually, in sex of some kind.

Sex in my stories is almost always portrayed positively, as a source of liberation and self-discovery. So I seldom have need in my stories of truly evil characters.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Most of my stories do not have true villains, but some do. The usual pattern for my stories is to have a main character with an unfulfilled need on some sexual subject, and another character with a different need that comes into conflict with and/or spurs the main character to action, thereby driving the plot that culminates, usually, in sex of some kind.

Sex in my stories is almost always portrayed positively, as a source of liberation and self-discovery. So I seldom have need in my stories of truly evil characters.

Precisely. I wish I had been that eloquent, Simon.

 

[Emirus]

I’ve only written two stories, in my extensive (?) repertoire, in which the main characters have no redeeming features whatsoever (Cherry and Sandstone Cottage) and they were deliberately written as such. Annabelle was very self centred and very little about her was likeable. Someone recently said Hela (Consequences) was unlikeable but I would argue not for the majority of the story, just in instances. For the majority of the story she was shown as a friend and, in one instance, an ordinary and vulnerable human being who was taken advantage of by someone she trusted and with whom she was falling in love.

I don’t deliberately set out to write villainous characters, nor saints, it’s just the way they turn out as my writing progresses. I’m probably the same as other writers in that I know where my story begins and how it’s going to end and it’s just what happens in between I have to think about.

 

[NotWise]

Quite a few of my stories have antagonists, but rather than being evil they are normally just self-interested. Their interests conflict with the interests of the protagonist(s). Sandoval in "Tamsin of Sky Village" and Kylie in "The Third Ring" are exceptions. They're evil.

 

[Omenainen]

Evil people don’t turn me on so I don’t write them.

 

[KeithD]

I don't do prewriting character builds. I set up a scenario and throw the characters into it and let them be what they are going to be. I don't think any of them are pure "good" or "bad." The divide seems to be that some are needy and others are grasping.

 

[AlinaX]

Evil people don’t turn me on so I don’t write them.

There's a certain pleasure in seeing assholes get fucked...

 

[Omenainen]

There's a certain pleasure in seeing assholes get fucked...

I still prefer nice people fucking nice assholes.

 

[yowser]

Right. The old one about when life gives you lemons...

What happens when life only provides assholes?

 

[Omenainen]

Right. The old one about when life gives you lemons...

What happens when life only provides assholes?

Don’t know what is an asshole equivalent of lemonade. Maybe if I did I’d write about it.

But that’s why I invent my own nice people. Like glorified imaginary friends.

 

[gunhilltrain]

You sound like my wife, with the best in people, and everyone has redeeming qualities. Of course she's a life coach so that's her job to get people to bring out their best...she's also in ministerial school(I know, like how are we married?)

But me, I believe most people are inherently selfish, ignorant and crap. I believe in base human nature. My motto is no matter how low of a bar you set for people, the fuckers will still manage to slink under it.

Well, I'm sixty-five, so I'm basing this on my own experiences with people. I can't say I've ever really hated anyone I've known personally. The people I've had trouble with were irksome rather than truly evil.

But oh yeah, there are some nasty things out there. I've heard about a kind of mortgage / title fraud where people get the ownership of their own houses stolen from them. It's all done with computers and paper. I'd have more respect for a guy who robs me at knife or gunpoint. At least he's taking some risk, and he has to look me in the eye when he does it.