The Freezer Bunny Club - A Reading Circle

"Duvelina;c-17555559" wrote:
I also have a discussion question for the group. How would you write a nuanced morally grey villain, a villain with a soft side? You don't want people to dislike them outright. You want to create some likability so it's hard to hold on to a grudge even though you really want to. He/she does some evil stuff one moment, but shows a vulnerability you can't ignore the next. How do you write someone like this in a subtle way so it doesn't seem wildly out of character?

I loved this question! Discussion questions like this are really useful for my writing. When it comes to my story, I have had a few villains but I never want to make them too evil because... well, because I like creating stories where everything has a reason for being, and my villains all have more to them than just being rude, or mean, or evil. If I think about my villains, I can think of a few (and no spoilers since we haven't discussed my story yet); an immature womanizer, an insensitive and catty drama queen, a rude wannabe mastermind, and a truly dark character, and they each get some sort of moment where they're seen as not just evil. I try to do this in a way that seems natural and, as you say, not out of character. My story develops mostly in real time (as set by the story), but there are special chapters where I go beyond the main story and I try to use these as a way to add depth to the personalities seen in the main story. This is where I like to slowly add nuance to characters, especially ones that aren't as likable. I think that this can be achieved by giving insight into why the evil characters do what they do or by showing some sort of vulnerability or insecurity that could explain their actions, and this can be done by writing sections where the characters are fleshed out. Though this doesn't necessarily absolve them of their bad actions, knowing more about their stories is a natural way of having sympathy for them even while still disliking them. And I think this is way more effective than having, say, a main "good" character asking for sympathy for an "evil" one or by having the "evil" one somehow taking a 180 turn; it's cool if someone expresses sympathy for or doubt about an evil character's nuances, but it's even better (for me) when the readers can judge this for themselves by including writing that can humanize the evil characters.

Sometimes this works, I think, and sometimes it doesn't! But I think having more details about someone can help in our perception of them. I'm no expert by any means, so I'm not sure if this is truly an effective way of writing a nuanced, morally grey character, but it's something that makes me more open to them and I try to include this in my writing.