by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
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| Image by Daniel Gies |
Most people aren’t 100% good or 100%
bad. There are bits of goodness and
badness in all of us…including villains.
Flat villains with no dimension to them
are just as uninteresting as Pollyanna protagonists. As a reader, my interest
is always piqued when I get to see another side of a bad guy…if he does
something unexpectedly kind, for example.
I usually wonder if there’s an ulterior motive—and wondering is good for
readers. It helps keep them engaged in the story. Even if there isn’t
an ulterior motive, it’s interesting because it offers another side to the
character.
In mysteries, this is especially
important because we don’t know who the bad guy is until the end of the
book….or we shouldn’t, if it’s a traditional mystery (thrillers operate under
different rules.)
In one of my books for Penguin, I’d
turned in the manuscript for editing. My
editor emailed me back and told me that this time she’d been able to figure out
who’d done it. She pointed out that the
murderer was also the most unpleasant character—that it was too obvious for
readers...that they’d want that person
to be the murderer, anyway, and the element of surprise would be gone. My choices were to make the killer more
likeable or to change the murderer altogether.
I decided to make the murderer more
likeable (although I frequently do change the killer for my editor…in fact, I’d
already changed the killer once for that very book.) This was easier than it might sound. I changed dialogue where the killer came off
sounding snarky and made the statements sound more genuine. I showed the killer being a good citizen. I
showed the murderer helping the sleuth.
I made the killer reluctant to gossip about the other suspects. I nice-d
the killer up. Reader response later
indicated that the murderer’s identity remained a secret until the end (well,
some readers always guess the right suspect. Sigh.)
For non-mystery writers, showing your
villain’s good side has other advantages—mainly to add complexity to the
character and make them more believable.
And keeping the reader…and your protagonist…guessing is also a nice side
effect. Maybe it even gives your
protagonist second thoughts about the bad guy.
It could also make the protagonist trust the antagonist again…which
could make the protagonist’s life more complicated. Confusing the protagonist could be another
strategy to throw a bit of conflict in there.
Do you have any favorite multidimensional villains? How do you
like to display other sides of your antagonist?