How do you make a character badass?

I've met some really violent guys who were complete pussies.

 

Right, I was looking for something more along the lines of a clear cut accepted standard, rather than an assortment of scattered opinions.


From dictionary.com,

Badass.

1. (of a person) difficult to deal with; mean-tempered; touchy.
2. distinctively tough or powerful; so exceptional as to be intimidating.
noun
3. a mean-tempered troublemaker.


In this case, the mom who feeds her starving children would NOT be considered a badass. I don't see Cogito's example fitting in that tightly either.

 

If he is a psychopath, it would mean he doesn't kind about innocent bystanders.

 

True, although it might be good to note that even dictionaries aren't infallible, and their definitions may be dated or lacking some of many connotations/meanings tied to a word, especially with words that are more open to interpretation than others, as seems to be the case here. That being said, despite that dictionary's definition, I'd still consider the aforementioned mom a badass.

Besides, if you read a bunch of scattered opinions, you'll probably start to see a pattern, like you would based on the posts in this thread even if some contradict one another.

 

Badass has become a very vague word, that in most cases seems to imply "impressive." You can see that from the opinions posted on this thread alone.

If the OP had asked, "how do you make a character impressive?", then for sure all the aforementioned answers would apply.

I personally had always grown up understanding badass to mean what I happened to find in the dictionary.

The problem with accepting loose interpretations is that two of them might contradict one another, and then where does the OP find himself?

 

Ask the Fonz to define cool. Do you think he'd pull out a dictionary definition? Or would he just laugh ("Hehh") at such a definition and leave Potsie holding the book?

Dictionaries are a valuable resource. But they have their limitations.

 

double double post post

 

Or you could just say, "I know it when I see it."

Oh wait - that's something else.

Carry on.

 

Hey, you can be as cool as you want outside. On the writing forum, I try to keep it academic.

 

Passion isn't academic. Soul isn't academic. Beauty isn't academic.

There are some concepts that slip completely from view when you try to try to precisely define them.

 

And this is why we write. This is why the human race has told stories for as long as it's been around. If there was a word for the emotion John Steinbeck wanted to convey when he wrote Of Mice and Men, he'd have just said that word and skipped writing the story. If there were words for the emotions Beethoven wanted to convey when he wrote the Ninth Symphony, he could have just said them and not bothered with all that composing.

Art exists because language isn't sufficient. Dictionaries are useful, but you can't pack minds, hearts, and souls into dictionaries. Language is nowhere near complete enough, comprehensive enough, to allow us to communicate what we need to communicate. So there's art. In our case here on this forum, there's writing. Storytelling. Mythology. Fantasy. Poetry. We create people and universes for them to act in and stories for them to make manifest, so that when someone asks what we mean, we give them our stories and say "THAT'S what I mean."

I hate it when someone asks what my story is about. If I could sum it up in a couple of sentences, I wouldn't have to write the story.

 

I agree with those sentiments of course, but you're taking things out of context of the OP's question. If you can't define badass, there's no point in even trying to answer it. The OP will either capture it or he won't, and even if he does, not for everyone.

If one person thinks a badass is a tough surgeon, and someone else thinks its some guy with flaming swords, neither person is really telling the OP anything other than personal preference.

I would add that soul, beauty, passion, and art, are all are all defined as being depended on perception or to some extent sensory, whereas the definition for badass is much more rigid. So I wouldn't say the comparison is very good.

You can argue all you want about the validity of varying opinions and leaving things undefined, but I can tell you that if the OP is asking about an archangel who uses demon twin guns (whatever that is) and a holy sword, and someone else is telling him about a mother trying to feed her starving children, it sounds to me like we're having two separate conversations.

 

It's as many conversations as there are examples. No one is missing the point of the OP's question, unless it is the person falling back on a dictionary definition. The diversity of the answers IS the answer to the OP's question.

 

The grit that enables that surgeon to continue operating under dire circumstances and that which inspires the guy to pick up swords in the first place are both on the same spectrum of emotion.

 

This. Badassitude (badness of ass?) has nothing to do with what weapons the character may use, nor what skills he may have acquired. It has to do with the inner strength that allows the badass to face and overcome big challenges - challenges others would shy away from.

 

i was thinking more like, one of the characters is esteemed for her internal characteristics, the other for his physical attributes. I have no idea whether some fantasy demon with flaming swords, ripped straight out of a video game, has any sort of grit.

 

actions and reactions, the amount of times ive been called awesome, for just going against the grain, being who i am and not giving two hoots and a flying monkey (i thought that better than swearing) about what others thought, said and did toward me, trust.

get your character to prove people wrong, people hate being proved wrong. how the character holds themselves is a good one, ive kept a calm appearance even when battling my own internal demons, have them keep an air of serenity (he's a type of angel after all) even when he is fighting himself, and only let him melt when he is alone, weakness can take away from being a BA

 

That is why most badass cops get kicked off the force, until they save the day.

 

He needs a cause worth living and dying for. Characters without a mission to fulfill will never come across as badass, no matter how hard the author is trying to make them seem as such.

 

Everybody is going to have a different idea of who is or isn't a badass, but I agree with Cogito on what makes a badass.

Being a badass has nothing to do with you stance on authority or rules. A badass doesn't have to make his or her own rules. They can be afraid of breaking established laws. A badass doesn't have to fight, and can often be more badass for not. They don't need cool weapons. They don't need to kill or maim. They can be afraid.

My rule of thumb for determining what is or isn't badass is to use the "Subjective Badass" test: Would an average person of this character's ability back down when opposed by a force as great as the one they are confronted with?

Most of what it takes to be a badass is internal. The character's actions have to match their internal mindset, but the determinate factor is what happens inside the character and not whether the character succeeds externally. A badass isn't somebody who knows they're going to come out of a fight without a scratch. The badass is the person who knows he or she is going to get an ass beating six ways to Sunday and goes in anyway. Badasses aren't born when they're loaded for bear. They're born when their tank is dry and they say, "I'm still going, and the only way you can stop me is to put me in a body bag."

I'm often wary of characters who are described as "being badass" because, more often than not, those characters seem to show only the surface level attributes of a badass. They fight a lot. Don't play by conventional rules. Are stoic. Always have a good one liner. A badass can have those traits, but that's not what makes the character badass.

I like the example of the surgeon because it's not what people conventionally think when they hear the term "badass" but illustrates the point wonderfully. There is no fighting, and nobody dies. There isn't even threat of death, minus the person on the table, who doesn't really count for the point being made. But the surgeon has indomitable spirit. There's a job to be done, and there are a lot of external and personal issues counting against her, but she says "We're doing this, I don't care what else comes flying at me," and works.

Superman was mentioned a few times, and most seem to agree he's not badass. Superman is, at least in most cases, seen as fighting below his level. He has all the superficial qualities of a badass--neigh unstoppable, on a mission, fighting dangerous opponents and overcoming powerful forces--but because he's so seemingly invulnerable he has no reason (and the reader has no reason) to worry about how it will turn out.


Going back to that "Subjective Badass" test, someone like Superman going into a mall to confront a bunch of gunmen is not badass, because an average person with Superman like abilities would not reasonably back down from some gunmen on a shooting spree.

But that sixteen year old girl who ran back into the mall a few minutes before Superman showed up to save her sister? Who has never thrown a punch in her life? Never been so much as grounded? Always says "please" and "thank you"? Who is defenseless, vulnerable, and alone? That girl is 100%, hardcore, Grade-A, tough as nails badass.