arms, trying to fly? Or trying to kiss everyone at a party? Or walking in the snow without shoes? Readers are interested in the out-of-the-ordinary. All these questions involve the character in action, the ideal way to characterize.
Last, imagine your character in the nude. This one almost always works if you portray your character in the nude honestly and in detail. People in the nude become especially vulnerable. This doesn’t mean you should necessarily portray your character actually in the nude. Your character may not want to get undressed, or may want to dress quickly to cover up. Or your character can just be thinking in the bath or shower. An author of mine, Edwin Corley, had a remarkable success with a first novel called Siege, which started with a scene of a black general in his bathtub. Everything the general did later was more believable because a person seen realistically in the nude is immediately credible.
CHARACTERIZING VILLAINS
Once upon a time, readers tolerated mustache-twirling villains with no countervailing virtues in their makeup. Today’s readers can be roughly divided into two groups, those who accept the fantasy villains of childhood, as in the James Bond stories and Arnold Schwarzenegger films, and those who insist on credibility. In life, villains do not uncurl whips and snarl. They seem like normal human beings. But normal humans are not villains. What distinguishes the true villain is not just the degree to which he hides his villainy under an attractive patina to snare his victims, but his contact with evil. There is no social solution to the true villain’s villainy, he cannot be reeducated and become a nice guy. His villainy is an ineradicable part of his nature.
In the successful TV series NYPD Blue, a senior police official from outside the precinct makes the precinct captain’s life miserable at every opportunity. The official is not a nice guy, he is a bad guy. The audience dislikes him more than it dislikes the criminals who are brought in. Every time the official hurts one of the good cops, we wish something bad would happen to him. Then, when the official overreaches and blunders, we are exhilarated. The official has boxed himself into a corner. We like that. Finally, when the official has to choose between defending a civil lawsuit he can’t win and resigning from the force, we are joyful. The villain is getting his due.
What the writers have been doing with this character all along, of course, is manipulating our emotions, which is exactly what your role is when you are pitting characters against each other to create a story.
Some suggestions to consider in characterizing an antagonist:
Can he have a physical mannerism that would be at least slightly disturbing to most people, for instance an involuntary blinking of one eye? Or sniffing? Frequent nose-wrinkling? Earlobe-pulling? Elbow-scratching? It is the repetitive nature of such mannerisms that grates on readers.
How does your antagonist behave toward people he’s never met before? Does he effuse charm, is he overly deferential, or is he discourteous, uninterested, openly bored, arrogant? All of these are characteristics that would help form the reader’s attitude toward your villain.
Another possibility is to have your antagonist do something frequently that most people do only occasionally. For instance, does he blow his nose every few minutes (though he is not sick), does his forehead sweat a lot though it is not especially hot, does he scratch himself, cough unnecessarily, wink at others as if there were some implied meaning in what they or he were saying?
To weave individual characteristics into a story, as much as possible let them come out during or as part of an action. The object is to avoid holding up the story and to keep the writer’s explanations out of it. To see how it’s done, let’s examine a work-in-progress in which a successful young businessman, driving to work in what becomes a
Last, imagine your character in the nude. This one almost always works if you portray your character in the nude honestly and in detail. People in the nude become especially vulnerable. This doesn’t mean you should necessarily portray your character actually in the nude. Your character may not want to get undressed, or may want to dress quickly to cover up. Or your character can just be thinking in the bath or shower. An author of mine, Edwin Corley, had a remarkable success with a first novel called Siege, which started with a scene of a black general in his bathtub. Everything the general did later was more believable because a person seen realistically in the nude is immediately credible.
CHARACTERIZING VILLAINS
Once upon a time, readers tolerated mustache-twirling villains with no countervailing virtues in their makeup. Today’s readers can be roughly divided into two groups, those who accept the fantasy villains of childhood, as in the James Bond stories and Arnold Schwarzenegger films, and those who insist on credibility. In life, villains do not uncurl whips and snarl. They seem like normal human beings. But normal humans are not villains. What distinguishes the true villain is not just the degree to which he hides his villainy under an attractive patina to snare his victims, but his contact with evil. There is no social solution to the true villain’s villainy, he cannot be reeducated and become a nice guy. His villainy is an ineradicable part of his nature.
In the successful TV series NYPD Blue, a senior police official from outside the precinct makes the precinct captain’s life miserable at every opportunity. The official is not a nice guy, he is a bad guy. The audience dislikes him more than it dislikes the criminals who are brought in. Every time the official hurts one of the good cops, we wish something bad would happen to him. Then, when the official overreaches and blunders, we are exhilarated. The official has boxed himself into a corner. We like that. Finally, when the official has to choose between defending a civil lawsuit he can’t win and resigning from the force, we are joyful. The villain is getting his due.
What the writers have been doing with this character all along, of course, is manipulating our emotions, which is exactly what your role is when you are pitting characters against each other to create a story.
Some suggestions to consider in characterizing an antagonist:
Can he have a physical mannerism that would be at least slightly disturbing to most people, for instance an involuntary blinking of one eye? Or sniffing? Frequent nose-wrinkling? Earlobe-pulling? Elbow-scratching? It is the repetitive nature of such mannerisms that grates on readers.
How does your antagonist behave toward people he’s never met before? Does he effuse charm, is he overly deferential, or is he discourteous, uninterested, openly bored, arrogant? All of these are characteristics that would help form the reader’s attitude toward your villain.
Another possibility is to have your antagonist do something frequently that most people do only occasionally. For instance, does he blow his nose every few minutes (though he is not sick), does his forehead sweat a lot though it is not especially hot, does he scratch himself, cough unnecessarily, wink at others as if there were some implied meaning in what they or he were saying?
To weave individual characteristics into a story, as much as possible let them come out during or as part of an action. The object is to avoid holding up the story and to keep the writer’s explanations out of it. To see how it’s done, let’s examine a work-in-progress in which a successful young businessman, driving to work in what becomes a
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