Hello, Glad to meet all of you. I'm new to the forum. I am currently struggling with a short story project on which I was hoping some of you could lend a hand. The objective of the project is to compose a 5-6 page short story centering on the term "wickedness"; its meanings, connotations, manifestations. What does it really mean? Basically, what I was hoping that some of you could provide were some interesting angles or perspectives from which I could approach this assignment. Im very much open to formal or stylistic experimentation, so feel free to suggest anything that pops into your head. Thank you one and all for your time. Your help is sincerely appreciated. Cheers!
"Oh, my beautiful wickedness!" cried The Wicked Witch of the West. I always considered wickedness to be some form of "innocent" evil, but the dictionary gives about 10 different answers.
This is a pretty significant part of your assignment you are asking for help with, and the forum policy is to provide only limited assistance on schoolwork. Perhaps you can focus on the motives behind a character's wicked actions. It's a short story, so you aren't going to be able to explore the full trange of what makes up wickedness. Instead focus on one wicked person, and what he or she does, and why. Show how it affects oithers, and how they react. I hope this will give you a decent starting point.
Thank you both for these thoughtful responses! Maybe I should have contextualized the project a bitter better. You should know that it is NOT intended for a high school, college, university course etc. It is strictly a casual, leisure-time, self-imposed assignment that has no designated guidelines, marking scheme or due date. In other words, by responding to the original post, you will not be aiding and abetting a cheating student. Once again guys, appreciate the help. Best wishes.
Here is what I think a wicked person is. A person that willfully causes suffering with no remorse. Wickedness to me then is those actions mentioned above that lead to suffering. A story about a serial killer like Ted Bundy or Joseph Kallinger could explore this. It would be especially interesting if it were written from the serial killer's POV. The narrator could be the person who interviewed the killer for many years. Maybe it could be about a group of evil people, each with different backgrounds, briefly touched on. So the reader can conclude that the way they were raised has nothing to do with them being evil. So evil might be something less tangible, something we don't understand, which is scary because then anyone can be born evil, regardless of how they're raised. This seems to be the case. There are many ways to explore wickedness. You could write a story about a person struggling with evil thoughts. Perhaps there is a gang, or some other group of people or one person trying to get them to do bad things with them. In the end the person chooses not to do the evil deeds, and silence his inner voice. Then wickedness would be seen as a choice. That we might all have that voice in us, but we can silence it. You could write a short story that touches on the idea of evil explored in Speaker For the Dead.
Wicked is also a good thing. Just like saying something is "Bad!" or "Sick!" or, in patois, "Terrible". Wicked Man could mean several things depending on your culture. It could mean someone who does horrible things. It could mean someone who is cool. It could mean someone who is a total badass. Or it could be a combination of the three all in one word, serving up those three ideas which are all personified in the same person. Example being a GI friend who has seen combat: Cool guy (he's your friend), Badass (Combat vet, those cats are usually bad mother f***ers in my experience), and has done awful things (How else do civilians get killed in a war? It's not because soldiers are busy fighting, it tends to be because they are bored and pissed). Hope that helped with your connotations.
I always think of terms like wicked and evil to be subjective, this is how I think when creating the character. Their sense of right and wrong should be unique to them. Now skew their sense of right and wrong to a point where say they think it's ok to harm others if there is significant gain. Add other ways of thinking like that to your character. I don't like to think of them as "remorseless" but rather having different morals. Example I have hero characters that may fall under the category of wicked. Example, a character of mine refrains from attacking unharmed civilians and does not allow other to do the same, but at the same time if those unharmed civilians are working for people he hates than he thinks it's ok to kill them if there is a significant advantage. Try make evil subtle, even justifiable. That's way more fun!
