Since the publication in 2005 of Save the Cat: The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need, Blake Snyder’s best-seller has morphed from a book about screenwriting techniques into a plotting method and beat sheet using the three-act story structure.
The term Save the Cat was coined by Snyder as a reference to a pivotal moment early in a play or novel in which the protagonist does something admirable, thereby winning the audience’s loyalty and admiration. Some say it comes from the movie Aliens (1986) in which the audience is drawn in emotionally by the disappearance of Jones, Officer Ripley’s cat.
Engaging your readers’ emotions is a powerful tool, but does it apply only to the good guys? Can the technique be used to create more complex and believable bad guys as well?
I remember my Scottish grandmother chatting about a young neighbor who’d just been arrested for a series of crimes. “He’s a bad one, all right,” she said, “but he was always good to his mother.” Everyone has at least one redeeming quality, right?
A few years ago, I was invited to Zoom-in to a book club. They’d read one of my books that month and wanted to meet the author. One question surprised me and made me think. In the book they’d read, I’d set up some red herrings that pointed for a time to a likeable character as the killer. One member of the book club said, “I was so upset I almost stopped reading.”
Fortunately, she didn’t stop reading. But the question made me think about bad guys in crime fiction. How bad should they be? Is it a mistake to make them too bad or too likeable?
The first thing to say is, if there is a correct answer to this question, I don’t have it. What I do have are a few thoughts.
New authors are frequently told to create fully rounded characters. Our protagonists aren’t perfect. They have faults, flaws, fears, and failings like all people—or should have. These human imperfections make them characters readers can identify with. Faults can deepen the backstory, ramp up tension, create opportunities for change and growth, and create interest.
But how about our bad guys? Nobody (or almost nobody) is completely bad without any redeeming qualities whatsoever. Well, maybe there are such people (Hitler comes to mind), but they are so unique that they become literal icons of evil. With the possible exception of some international thrillers, few mysteries feature bad guys that awful.
So, do we humanize the killer? Does he save an entire litter of abandoned kittens or send a portion of his ill-gotten gains to a charity for the homeless? How much is too much? How can you make your bad guy human and yet deserving of his fate?
Knowing there are always exceptions to the rule, here are my thoughts:
1. Bad guys are usually self-deceived.
Very few people believe they are horrible human beings. They think they have good reasons for doing what they’re doing—getting revenge, for example, or making up for what they see as life’s unfairness. They got a raw deal. They deserve more than life has given them. One way to humanize a bad guy is to show his actions, however evil, as understandable and acceptable to himself: “I have good reasons for doing what I’m doing.”
2. Bad guys can actually have good reasons for doing bad things.
I just watched an episode of a crime drama on TV in which the killer did what she did to protect someone she loved. Maybe someone is holding her child hostage or he’s a victim of blackmail. If his secret is made public, innocent people would be harmed. Yes, he must be stopped, but his downfall leads to the real bad guys behind the scenes.
3. Bad guys might be the victims of circumstances.
In real life, people can start down a wrong path in life because of events not in their control—inherent deficits, an evil environment, the bad choices of others, adverse conditions, poverty. But you don’t want your bad guy to be a complete victim. In that case, bringing him to justice won’t feel like a satisfying resolution. If your bad guy is the victim of circumstances, give him at least one moment when he is forced to make a choice: “Do I continue down this path, or do I stop right now and choose another path?” Most readers of crime fiction like an ending with order restored and justice prevailing.
4. Bad guys can be mentally off-kilter.
This one can easily be overdone. Creating a scenario where insanity is the only motivation for evil is a cop-out. Even if your bad guy is mentally ill, he should have believable reasons for his actions, and his illness should be understandable and realistic. An interesting resource for mental disorders and phobias is the DSM Guide (Diagnostic & Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders), found in most libraries. You can also consult online websites such as www.psychiatryonline.org. If you’re going to use a mental disorder, at least make it interesting and believable.
5. Bad guys can sometimes be redeemed.
There’s always hope, right? If your bad guy has a really pathetic backstory or is the victim of circumstances, readers will agree he must be punished, but they will also accept and applaud his redemption at the end—even if it comes too late to save him.
Can a bad guy be too bad to be believable?
How might showing your bad guy doing something good—like saving the cat—create more depth and interest?
What a great topic, Connie! It is interesting that as much as we want to build complex, realistic characters, sometimes people like to see a wholly unlikeable baddie so that their downfall is all the more satisfying. I recently had a beta reader tell me that she wanted my villain to be more evil, so I’ve been thinking about this dilemma. Your ideas for how to balance this out really help. It seems like the key is that the crime makes sense from the villain’s perspective. Even if it’s clear to others that they’re deluded in some way, it needs to feel believable and human on some level.
You’re right about sometimes wanting a bad guy to be sooo bad that we rejoice in his downfall. Not sure what that says about us human beings, but it’s true. I think that happens mostly in thrillers, although I could be wrong since I don’t read many. But in traditional mysteries it is often interesting to have a bad guy who’s good to his mother 🙂
My writing colleague Melissa Westemeier gifted me a copy of Save the Cat and I use it all the time. Your points are ones I ponder when creating a truly bad guy. In The Golden Hour, the baddie is known to the reader immediately, a true psychopath— and yet I show him calling his gardener to remind him to deadhead his beloved roses. I also wrote a scene that shows the incident from his childhood that set him onto his crooked, obsessive path.
A perfect example, Marni!
Hahaha, Marni, did you watch the documentary on Martha Stewart? She does exactly that, talk to her gardener about beheading her beloved roses. She’s almost the perfect example for this topic. Connie, thinking about Martha Stewart, I can add one more bullet point to what makes a baddie bad: gender perceptions. The characteristics people will think make a male character great, can often make readers think badly of a female character.
Oooo, that’s good, Emilya
This is a great post. I always struggle because my ‘bad’ guys end up being very nuanced and sometimes it’s not clear who the bad guy is and who the good. It’s a problem when writing thrillers or suspense. At a certain point, it’s important to land in one camp or the other with a character.
Love this post. I always give my baddies some redeeming characteristics. Regarding your Hitler comment: comedian Jimmy Carr says that Adolph Hitler has one redeeming characteristic: He did kill Hitler.
Oh, he did! Good point.
A great post, Connie! I love booing the bad guy, but I still think a three-dimensional, complicated villain is just more believable and more interesting to the reader. And to your point that, “bad guys are usually self-deceived,” a writer friend of mine says that villains always think they’re the hero of the story. That shift in perspective has helped me out in crafting my villains.
Excellent point.
Interesting post, Connie. I find fully realized villains not only more interesting but also scarier. When someone saves a cat, who can resist thinking well of them?! We know to avoid someone flagrantly cruel but are vulnerable when that evil is masked.
I can’t help thinking of all the real-life serial killers, whom the neighbors described as the nicest people!
That’s so true. I think it’s scarier, too, because you’re not forewarned, so it comes as a plot twist.