Writing and Kindness
Flattering Light for the Darkest Characters
Welcome to the time of year during which I should be writing articles about how to make yourself do stuff when you don’t feel like doing stuff. Tis the season for articles of this nature. I’m an expert on this topic because I do not feel like doing stuff and yet here we are: Doing stuff.
We have a myth here (under capitalism, I mean) that it’s virtuous to be productive all the time. It is not. There is a surplus of productivity, it’s just mostly going toward further enriching people who are already wealthy. We don’t need more productivity. Less would be fine.
Likewise, we have a myth that states “winners never quit and quitters never win.” This, too, is false. Quitting is great. If you’re in a situation of any kind that is not working well for you, and if you have an opportunity to quit that situation and enter a potentially better one, you should always do that. I’m a big advocate of giving up on personal projects and leisure activities that stress you out and make you feel bad; ending relationships that bring you more unhappiness than happiness; and quitting your job if you’re not happy in your current one.
The quickest I ever left a job was eight weeks after starting at a Fortune 100 aerospace company. They did not provide coffee for employees. I resigned after six weeks and gave them two weeks’ notice. I’ve quit jobs without another job lined up when I could afford to take that risk and I’ve quit jobs to begin another job immediately when I had to but I have never regretted quitting a job. I do, however, regret staying in a few jobs longer than I should have due to the toxic myth that every situation deserves a good-faith effort to acclimate yourself to it before you walk away.
Truth: If something sucks, stop doing the thing that sucks or get yourself out of the situation that sucks as soon as you are able to do so. Truth: Quitting is good for you (see, eg, cigarettes). Truth: Hanging around and doing nothing with your leisure time is good for you. It is winter and most of us have a surplus of food. Just hibernate like the good Lorde intended.
All of that is irrelevant to the article today, it was just on my mind and I do what I want and no one can stop me. This is “No One Ever Tells You No: The Okay Outcome.” Compare with “No One Ever Tells You No: The Bad Outcome,” which is Elon Musk’s current hairstyle.
Today I want to talk about some of the ways that kindness intersects with fiction writing. It’s something I think about a lot when I read and when I write. In fiction, not every character has a kind disposition. Those characters will not think kind thoughts or take kind actions. Stories always have antagonists, and sometimes they have real villains. Some people are motivated by qualities we think of as evil ones, like greed or envy or hatred or bigotry.
This is not an article about being kind in your writing because you are a kind person overall, nor about how to be kind in your writing. This is an article on why and how thinking through your writing with kindness on the brain leads to more realistic and compelling fiction in the end.
Sometimes I absolutely hate a character I have to write. I don’t know if this is true of everybody or if I’m some kind of “method writer,” but there are certain types of behavior that get under my skin and when I want to write a character who invokes a specific type of anger response, I will ascribe those behaviors to them. I know this is effective because I get reader feedback along the lines of “holy cow, I hate this character” and I cannot help but agree: I hate this character, too. I made this character to be hated and in this endeavor I was successful. Good job.
The problem with this writing process is that very few people in the real world are so objectively terrible that they, themselves, would recognize their own actions as objectionable. In the real world, unless someone is actively trying to make you angry by doing or saying something awful, then it is much more likely that the thing they are saying or doing that is making you angry is something that makes logical sense to them—that, in their own mind, is either likely to produce a different reaction or at least is motivated by something that is not objectively horrible.
When people are motivated by greed, for instance, they don’t typically see themselves as being motivated by greed. I suspect most greedy people do not look at themselves with the level of self-awareness that allows them to say “gosh, I’m greedy.” They might instead see themselves as being motivated by something else, like:
Taking very reasonable precautions against future scarcity (or the possibility of it); or
The desire to amass personal wealth for a purpose they see as noble.
As writers, readers, or just observers of our fellow humans, we can look deeper than these surface motivations to consider whether someone is reacting to trauma caused by resource scarcity earlier in their life, or whether they might want to build great wealth for the purpose of impressing or showing up those they perceive as having wronged them.
Any one of these motivations is more interesting than “greedy person is a greedy McGreedyPants.”
There are all kinds of antagonists, villains, and evil people—in real life and in fiction. Where I think the concept of kindness or fairness plays into writing fiction is when we write the visible (actions) and audible (dialogue) manifestations of these characters’ inner motivations.
As the author, I might hate this character; but as I’m putting actions and words down on the page that represent their motivations, I need to be ever mindful that this character does not hate themself. I hate them, but they don’t hate them. Hateable characters often think very highly of themselves, in fact.
I talked about this in early Shelf Life article Unforgettable Villainy. A truly memorable and compelling villain is the hero of their own story. They believe that their actions are right, righteous, or at the very least justified. They don’t come to their actions from a place of wanting to do wrong; they want to do right—their belief in what is right is just skewed according to the reader’s moral compass.
People who think highly of themselves treat themselves with kindness and respect. I know this for a fact because I am a person who thinks very highly of myself, and also I’m a person who has been to therapy a lot and several therapists have reinforced this concept. People who think well of themselves, and who believe they are doing righteous and/or justifiable actions, act logically in accordance with that belief. They’re not going to engage in cartoonish villainy for the sake of villainy. If they are committing villainous actions from a place of hatred, bigotry, greed, jealousy, and so on, they have a different understanding of their own motivations and the justification for those.
For instance, acting out one’s anger, jealousy, or sadism under the guise of “upholding authority and the rule of law” has produced some supremely hateable villains, like Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter, Elaida Sedai from The Wheel of Time, and Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. These are characters who undoubtedly have evil motivations but believe their methods are justified because they have the word of the law on their side and have a position of authority from which to enforce it.
Back to when I am writing a character like this: I’m usually writing from the perspective of a character with whom I sympathize, and one who can recognize a villainous character’s actions for what they are. When I’m “method drafting,” I really end up angry at the character’s behavior. Inhabiting this anger (or fear, or embarrassment, or whatever strong emotion is needed to write the scene) helps me write it in a very visceral way—which is great. No complaints.
But there is a second step involved in this process and it’s somehow even less comfortable than being furious while I’m writing. (And it is already very uncomfortable being furious while I’m writing, especially if it’s during a group writing session or if my long-suffering partner accidentally interrupts me.) The second step is to go back through the scene putting yourself inside the head of your villain and reviewing their words and actions from their own perspective as a person who has done nothing wrong, thank you very much. It’s a slimy feeling.
This is why I like writing Shelf Life. I rarely feel angry and never slimy; mostly I just feel smug because I think I’m real, real smart.
If you’re writing (or want to write) fiction with a beating, blood-pumping, emotional heart, you have to cultivate a deep understanding of what motivates people to act the way they do.
I really believe that most people believe that they are good people. I’m not saying that most people are good people. Only that I think most people believe that there is more good in them than bad. When a person steals something from another person—an act that most of us would agree is wrong—I don’t think the thief woke up that morning and thought to themself, “How can I wreck somebody’s day today?” and settled on stealing something.
I think most people who steal do it because they realize they have a need, or believe they do, and don’t know another way to fulfill it. Or because they feel envy for another person’s possession, and believe that if the world were more just they would possess it themself, and so it’s not really wrong to steal it. People steal for envy, greed, desperation, hunger, necessity, or for the thrill of getting away with it—but probably not because they just take joy in doing something that is morally wrong.
Likewise, when I say that most people do not think of themselves as racist, I certainly don’t mean that most people are not racist. I mean that many people who are racist do not think they are racist. They believe their feelings toward people of other races, ethnicities, or nationalities are correct or justified. They don’t wake up in the morning and think “today’s a great day to be a racist, let me get out there and hate some people who look different than me.”
The resulting actions are the same, regardless of the motivation. A racist statement is a racist statement, whether the person who said it spoke from a place of ignorant malice or a place of knowledgeable malice. A theft is still a theft whatever the reason for it might be. What makes a villain cartoonish versus compelling is whether their actions or words feel authentic from the perspective of someone who feels completely justified in their behavior, or perhaps feels their behavior is not bad or wrong in the first place.
Get your mind firmly around a villain’s motivations: How does this person justify their actions in their own mind? What mental gymnastics have they done, without even realizing it, to believe that they’re in the right? Inhabit the mind of that person who has found a way to believe their actions are right and justifiable, then read back through the parts of your draft where they appear.
Are these the words, the thoughts, and the actions of someone who loves and admires themself? Of someone who treats themself with kindness, respect, and the spirit of generosity? Of someone who has an unshakeable belief that what they’re doing is A-okay?
The characters who receive these words and actions will interpret them differently—hopefully, as the reader will interpret them. If you’re writing from the perspective of the character on the receiving end of these actions, this character will likely interpret the words and actions of your villain in a bad light (or their worst possible light), and this is totally fine. Your characters don’t need to have a shred of kindness to waste on giving your villain the benefit of the doubt. The goal is to ensure that the actions and words themselves, putting aside other characters’ value judgments of them, ring true to the person who is doing and saying them—and the generous interpretation of their own behavior they are sure to have.
Anyway good luck writing rage-inducing, crazy-making villains. I’m actually trying to experience less anger lately so don’t send me your well-written villains until the new year. Serenity now.
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