The Making of a Villain

Retro Villains @ arcanestore.com

I'm working on the "bad guys" for my new novel when a thought occurs to me, "Who is the villain in the villain's story?" I mean there's got to be one. Babies are not born "bad". They are little blank slates that take in the nature/nurture (or lack thereof) in the world around them. It's a question I've never really given much thought to before, but it's certainly got ahold of me now. Part of that comes from the fact that nearly all of my characters are people or amalgams of people I know in real life, so despite the staple of every story having a villain, I know that real life people, THESE people have stories that are much more complex! What makes a baby grow up to be an awful human being, while another grows into someone who is kind and has a good heart?

Aunt Mattie was always a champion for the "underdog" as she called it, those people who seemingly have little or no redeeming qualities. Perhaps she was this way because she saw something deeper in them, a "what might have been" that prompted her to be compassionate. She certainly believed that everyone contained at least a little bit of purity in their hearts, a kindness I am not always able to see.

As I wade from one scene to the next in the novel, shaping the events and actions, characters and circumstances, the moral question keeps popping into my mind. Frankly, I don't want my readers to feel any hint of compassion for some of these people, and yet...hmmmm. *sigh* In the end, we all must decide for ourselves whom we will or won't give the benefit of the doubt to based on our own set of values. Do we judge others solely on the actions we see? To my mind, that call rests on a much higher and more benevolent power than me.