The negative charactres in your story What is your idea about a negative character in your story ? Do you make it as an extreme person or you try to reduce of his negativity ? Then how you make his destiny? Do you specify a lucky fate for him ( as repenting ) or you do indicate a punishment (as death) for him ? Usually what is your idea in these instances ?
Cool, a thread I can share my observation of "Argo" without starting a new one. I loved the twist on the cliche resister/saboteur character. Spoiler One of the embassy escapees was the typical character who threatened to ruin everything. He didn't like the plan, didn't want to go along, all the usual cliche stuff. Then in a particularly dangerous encounter with the Iranians he came through, took charge, used his knowledge of Farsi to talk their way out of the pinch. I thought it was great. For me, I plan to round out one of my negative characters, but not the other two. Story just works that way. As for the fate of the three, the rounded one fades into the story, the other two, embarrassment and loss of prestige.
I try to keep my obnoxious characters, if not lovable, than understandable. If he's got reasons for being the way he is, even if he doesn't spark sympathy, he'll spark empathy. Plus, I love the idea of change, renewell - it's hopeful it's what everyone strives for. Punishment is for the unredeemable - and if that's what you're going for, than go for it - I'm not a fan of it persay, I leave it only for characters who refuse to acknowledge that they've done anything wrong.
I have some question : at first may you explain what is the " spoiler" that is shown in your comment? second, what is that story in the spoiler you have written ? Three , I could not to get your mean of one ,two,three...All in all your comment was vague for me.
Why does your baddy have to repent or die? I prefer a badass to remain a badass or maybe I have the wrong idea - how negative is your character? Is he just constantly on a downer?
Are you somewhere besides the US? Just curious. Yes, the reference was about a character in the movie, "Argo" and the reason for the spolier tags was because someone reading the thread might want to be warned before reading something that gives away the plot. [noparse] Spoiler plot spoiler for someone who hasn't seen the movie yet [/noparse] Spoiler The meaning was, a cliche character who would normally cause trouble in a plot, something you see is thousands of movies, ended up being the most helpful instead of causing the trouble you would expect.
The whole point is that you don't want a cliched, caricatured, or stereotyped character. No one is 100% bad or good. Everyone has quirks and flaws. Everyone has some redeeming quality. Everyone has some motivation for their actions beyond simply wanting to inflict harm on others or being 'evil.' If this doesn't come through in the writing, the story will come across as trite, boring, tired, or flat.
My current main villain has a really good reason to be ticked off, but she lost the way and went way overboard, so she dedicated her entire life and lives of three more people to getting her revenge. It'll all end pretty badly for her and the henchmen. But she will get her revenge.
Wow, I can see the problems now. What an odd coincidence my using that movie as an example. It's just that I watched it only a couple days ago. My parents lived in Tehran for a year before the Shaw was overthrown. I have a great appreciation for there being a lot of people just like us there. Welcome to the forum. I look forward to your insights.
Making characters believable is a huge hurtle for me. Difficult, because I want them interesting and still progressing the novel. The negative characters have reason for their actions and traits, but a lot of times I tend to add some trait, some mannerism, that I find interesting or humorous. I enjoy writing that way! When it comes to fate and punishment, I don't normally execute a "fate" or "karma" system. There have been times, though!
Same here. I mean, everyone have their reasons, right? Even a psycho killer has his/her reasons even if it's something as crazy as "I like killing because it makes me feel fuzzy and warm inside." That being said, I love exploring the reasons why people do bad stuff. I wrote a psycopath once, I don't know the clinical term for one such as her, but she was the type of psycopath who was incapable of feeling things like remorse, compassion, empathy etc. so when she first ended up killing a man in self-defense, she noticed she not only didn't feel bad about it, she kind of liked it and being an avid hunter and short on cash, chose to become an assassin. If you look at her character from the point of view of any "normal" person, they'd consider her downright evil but because I wrote the story from her PoV, I tried to give everything a neutral tone so that the reader could decide whether a specific act the character committed was good or bad.
Everyone in my current series is negative to a point. I'm attempting to marginalize heroes and show a couple things -that heroism isn't a quality one can be born with -Don't judge a book by its cover -Destiny is a mystery In my story everyone starts bottom up
