The bad guys....changing...

Realistic bad guys tend to not believe they're really the bad guys and this is what makes them dangerous. They believe they're in the right, even if they know what they're doing is wrong, and there's often very little that will change their minds. Take the example of your slutty character who is doing bad things because she has to help her son. Would she befriend your MC if it meant her son would end up dead? I doubt it.

I don't think it's the bad guys you have to work on so much as your reaction to their motivations. You really need them to start sticking by what they do, even if it's inconvenient to your good guys. If your slutty character is only doing bad things to protect her son, well, make sure she has to KEEP doing bad things to protect her son. Make sure that doing bad things is the only way a bad guy can get their own ends met, and make sure that these bad things are always going to be in opposition to the good guys. Make sure, for example, that if this character tries to befriend your MC, it means trouble for her son. She will definitely choose him over your main character. That's life. It's not pretty, but it's true.

I saw a TV show about Vietnam the other day where a pregnant guerilla fighter attacked an American soldier. He had to kill her. They were both probably decent people, but they both had their own ends to meet, and those ends were in direct conflict with each other. As a result, they did not become friends. You really can't have your slutty character, for example, become friends with your good guys if she's really intent on saving her son. Everyone has priorities, and she would need to choose. You can't always have both.

Don't be afraid to make your characters selfish sometimes. Self-preservation, and preservation of what's most important to us, is only human. When it's something we really, REALLY want, many of us tend to be selfish at certain points. Your slutty mom character would probably be selfish and choose the fate of her son over the fate of your main character any day.

I've got a character that starts out as a 'bad' guy until he realizes the implications his prior actions will inflict. Deep down he's a good guy, the white knight in rusty armor, but he's been through enough that he believed he didn't care anymore; at least not until the stakes became personal. One of the 'good' guys becomes the antagonist midway through the story, much to the dismay of the MC. It all depends on how you want to drive the plot. I prefer character driven stories so I try to give mine interesting pasts and complicated personalities.

I pay attention to people that really rub me the wrong way in RL and use them as models.

Bad people can do good things, or vice versa. And unless you're writing very clean archetypes and stereotypes (good vs. evil type stories), no one is purely evil and purely good. There are a lot of grays in between.

Still, you need to understand your "bad" guys' motivations. Why do they do the things they do? What do they want? If you find that your bad guys eventually are good to the MC, then you have ask: Why? What makes them become good to the MC? What changes? Do they still want the things they want? If your bad guys just change for no reasons, then you really don't understand your bad characters and their motivations well enough -- it's a symptom of someone just trying to manipulate the characters and situations, instead of drawing on "real" characters.

BlueLucario said:

And he's like Hitler, he wants to destroy the "Muggle"(I need a name for the non-magical people.) race, when he's the muggle himself.

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That is what he wants. The important question is why does he want this? Boredom? Something to do on the weekend? Pure fun?

There has to be motivation for the bad guy, reasons for why he wants to achieve his/her particular set of goals. You seem to have his wants and desires, but are lacking on motive.

Your bad guys may be wandering because you don't have hard set motivations for them, so they are attaching wherever.

Even Hitler had motivations behind his actions.

BlueLucario said:

And I have no idea WHY Hitler would do what he did? I just accepted the fact that he's crazy.

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You seriously don't understand Hitler's agenda? Go pick up a history book and find out. Simplification: According to Hitler, he was going to single-handedly SAVE the German people from the tyranny of Jews and foreigners (among other things). In his own mind, he was a HERO. And he wasn't just crazy.

It's sort of like, there's information behind the bad guy that would eventually be nice to the good guy. The Big Bad guy, he does bad things, I'd say I would compare him to Prefessor Umbridge on Harry Potter, nice, but purely bad. I have an idea, but I'm not sure if it's good enough. I think the Big Bad just wants to get his way, he'll get what he wants. He doesn't care if it would hurt other people, or if his henchmen died, he will get what he wants. And he's like Hitler, he wants to destroy the "Muggle"(I need a name for the non-magical people.) race, when he's the muggle himself.

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Umbridge had motivations. She didn't think she was bad. She believed she was doing right by the law. She also had prejudices against magical creatures who weren't wizards and thought she was right to have those prejudices.

Voldemort is the same way. Like your last couple of lines, he wanted to destroy the muggle race even though he was half. Hating that side of himself was his motivation.

If you are speaking of Hitler (or Voldemort for that matter), neither had low self-esteem. Rather, both thought very highly of themselves.

I'll assume you are speaking of Voldemort, since that is the name you quoted. His motivations ranged far deeper than simple self-hate, though that was a contributing factor. Like any good character, there are a multitude of happenings that created the person Voldemort was and his motivations for action.

These include the inability to love due to the manner of his conception, fear of death (perhaps his biggest motivation), lust for power, racism, and his general views on humanity.

But are you making a clone of Voldemort, or your own bad guy?

Voldemort was bad, but there weren't anything to justify what he did.

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Prozyan has listed some of Voldemort's other qualities. It doesn't matter if YOU feel sorry for him or think he is justified. Voldemort believes he is justified (as did Hitler).

Blue, I think you need to stop studying fictional characters and start studying people. You cannot use real people as the basis for your fiction, but it's an attempt to understand them and their motivations that lead to believable fictional characters.

Go read a book on psychology.

Birol said:

Blue, I think you need to stop studying fictional characters and start studying people. You cannot use real people as the basis for your fiction, but it's an attempt to understand them and their motivations that lead to believable fictional characters.

Go read a book on psychology.

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Or history. Why did Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin (Russia), Mao (China), Idi Amin (Uganda), Caucescu (Romania) do what they did? There are no shortage of "bad guy motivations" to study, honestly.

I'd have to agree with Blue on this one. Hitler was just plain crazy. Sure he had reasons for incinerating 10 million people and starving them to death but those reasons were screwy and didn't add up to jack. So bottom line, he had no motivation for doing what he did other than the fact that he was inherently evil and mentally deranged. When writing mainstream novels, though, an author really does have to give bad guys motivation for what they do, as stated...even if things don't actually work like this in reality.

those reasons were screwy and didn't add up to jack.

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And what would those reasons be?

anis said:

I'd have to agree with Blue on this one. Hitler was just plain crazy. Sure he had reasons for incinerating 10 million people and starving them to death but those reasons were screwy and didn't add up to jack. So bottom line, he had no motivation for doing what he did other than the fact that he was inherently evil and mentally deranged.

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Not quite the bottom line, no. The point is that even the crazy characters need motivation. That motivation and logic can be screwy and twisted to the rest of us, but that motivation does need to be there. Take the Joker from The Dark Knight. Yeah, he was crazy. Yeah, he committed crimes for thrills and laughs. Yeah, he was pure, in-your-face evil. But even he had an agenda--he wanted to prove that even the best of the best could be corrupted, that at the end of the day there are no morals, that ultimately, chaos is the only law, because these are the kinds of things he witnessed in the world. And that kind of motivation is what made him all the more real and terrifying.

I'm no historian, believe me. My take: Hitler was primarily motivated by a long-held, pervasive Eastern European belief that Jews were not human in the way that Aryans were. Through ignorance and fear, many people thought the Jews were evil, inhuman beings who would cause the downfall of Germany if they were allowed to remain and flourish there. Hitler was by far NOT the only person who felt this way.

Sure, he was an evil lunatic, but he had an agenda that made sense not only to him, but to others around him.

I agree that crazy characters / bad guys need motivation in most fiction and movies, but not in reality.

anis said:

Hitler was just plain crazy. Sure he had reasons for incinerating 10 million people and starving them to death but those reasons were screwy and didn't add up to jack. So bottom line, he had no motivation for doing what he did other than the fact that he was inherently evil and mentally deranged.

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This is a huge and dangerous oversimplification of history. To reduce genocides to the idea that "one crazy person" was, or could be, responsible is to make it more difficult for us to understand them fully and do what we can to prevent them from happening again.

I recommend the book Understanding Hitler by Ron Rosenbaum. If you don't understand the "Final Solution" in context, you miss the opportunity to learn from history.

(Warning: graphic image, don't click unless you want it -Shweta)

CaroGirl said:

Sure, he was an evil lunatic, but he had an agenda that made sense not only to him, but to others around him.

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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a4/Holocaust123.JPG (graphic picture from the holocaust.)

I have some "bad guys" in the book (series actually) I'm writing who are bad only in that they made a mistake. The main character in the book meets one of their agents early on who tries to swing him to their side explaining that they were trying to fix something they saw as a problem. In the process they made a huge mistake and a lot of people died and more are still dying because of their mistake. The agent explains that they're trying to fix the problem, but they need time. The main character doesn't care. His family and friends are already dead. He's after revenge and thinks the bad guys will only compound the problem.

So, who's the bad guy in this situation? Those who caused the problem in the first place and got people killed? Or is it the main character who's looking for his revenge and whose goal has become simply to stop the "bad guys"?

Both parties believe they're in the right, but both have morally ambiguous points of view.

Your bad guys can be really, really evil - or they can be just people who think they're doing the right thing from their POV. If they're really good people who thought they were doing something that would benefit everyone, that makes the bad guys interesting in their own right - maybe more so than truly evil people who absolutely know what they're doing is right for them and everyone else around them.

BlueLucario said:

And I have no idea WHY Hitler would do what he did? I just accepted the fact that he's crazy.

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There are a lot of documentaries and stuff about Hitler and his background, etc.

But you're not writing about Hitler. You're not writing about Umbridge. You're writing about a character in your story! If you don't even know what YOUR character wants, how would the readers even have an idea?

Again, I'm asking you, do you know your characters, or are they just little toys you place on the board? "They just do bad things" is not good enough. You may not know why Umbridge does the things she does, but JK Rowling certainly did.

I would like to remind everyone that this is a discussion of the motivations of fictional characters. Historical figures are to be discussed in relation to the motivations of fictional characters, as fictional characters reflect those motivations, as real life motivations are reflected by fictional characters, and how writers use real life/historical motivations in their writing.

If you wish to discuss the holocaust outside of the realm of fiction, then it needs to be taken to P&CE.

sorry folks. Bit emotional on the issue. Backing away for a few...