Motivation for a Kidnapping

I'm working on a new story idea about a young female teacher who is abducted with one of her students. The kidnapper is a very volatile man who has done the abduction as much for revenge as for the money. My villain is not extraordinarily bright, however. His rage overpowers his intellect. He will be acting alone in this endeavor.

I am trying to come up with some sort of motivator for the crime to take place. I've considered this mostly uneducated hothead may have been fired from a job at a business that the child's father owns. It feels a bit cliche to me though. Though it is only the back story to the actual tale I still would prefer something truly convincing. The villain is capable of killing (and does kill the character of his girlfriend in the midst of the story).

 

You could always go the route of the antagonist having been wronged by people resembling your protagonists, be it physically or similar personalities.

Some people tend to perpetrate crimes against people who are similar in some way to people that have wronged them.

ETA: Though, you'd need a fresh spin on the wrong done to the antagonist because this could be a tad trite.

 

Sounds like the motivator is money? As for the revenge part, develop your characters backtory's and try to overlap them.

 

Actually I think that the user is saying the child was the primary target of the kidnapping but her teacher was unfortunately at the wrong place at the wrong time. And as for motive you could make the child be an example for a statement of a sweeping social injustice manifesto of the kidnapper or more micro-level be the corruption or cruelty of that specific company that has fired him.

Another motive may be that his firing was one of a series of negative events that has brought him to this state-- related or unrelated-- but that he lays primary blame on the child's parents as the inciting incident that has plunged his life into a worse place than he was.

Oh you could have someone in the kidnapper's life become aware of what he has done-- preferably that he does genuinely care for this person which lends complexity and humanization to your antagonist-- which could be appropriate since by the looks of it your story is grounded in reality. And when this person is aware he either becomes a victim alongside the teacher and student or is otherwise confined so he can't tell the authorities and may try to talk the antagonist out of making an irrevocable mistake and is especially intent to protecting the child in all this.

 

There are varying reasons why someone kidnaps another person. And what would work well would depend on what you are trying to say. This is why people need to cut out this stupid rule of "Think of your characters first." No! Think about your themes and that will decide your characters and their ultimate motivations.

Characters are the personification of an idea that is a reflection of the larger human experience. Sometimes they parody the human experience. Sometimes they defy it. Sometimes they embody it.

Feel free to disagree with me, but not on this thread because I don't want to derail it. Send me a PM, and we can discuss it.

1. Political. If you have a backdrop of a political conflict, then there could be a kidnapping for those reasons. It wouldn't even necessarily mean the teacher herself is political or even outspoken. She might feel, ethically, that she will teach everyone and treat them the same. However, from the viewpoint of the kidnapper, being a teacher, she is a cog in the political machine. And this can ultimately test her devotion to treat people the same regardless of their affiliation.

2. The need to feel dominate. It could be the kidnapper views the teacher as a person of authority and, having no feeling of control in his own life, kidnaps her to regain that. I'm not sure what themes you could explore with that one. But it is sadly reminiscent of many students who have been known to murder teachers over poor grades.

3. Ransom. Maybe the kidnapper thinks that the teacher comes from money. Going with this motive would require you to really work your setting to establish the perspective of the student's thoughts on what people with money would look like. For example, he and his family all have hand-me-down clothes with holes in them and worn-out shoes. But the teacher, though not rich herself, always comes to class well put together. All her clothes could have also come from thrift stores, but since it's all clean and she's well groomed, he thinks that she's rich.