8 Tips How to Write the Perfect Sociopath
Sociopaths are hiding everywhere in our society. They are lying through their teeth. They are scamming people daily and feel little to no remorse about it.
If you are writing a story and you want your protagonist or antagonist to be a sociopath you will need to think through some key ideas to make sure they come to life on your page and are interesting and believable to your readers.
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8 Tips How to Write the Perfect Sociopath
# 1. 8 Tips How to Write the Perfect Sociopath: They are willing to violate the rights of others.
If we want to write a sociopath well, we need to understand their motives.
They enjoy being able to dominate others. They use this desire to justify getting whatever they want from an individual or individuals.
They want their possessions, jobs, businesses, money, fame, family, friends, cars, homes, investments, reputations and more.
Anything of value someone else owns that they don’t have they are willing and will try to dominate someone else for.
They do not see the value in working or taking time to earn these things for themselves. They would much rather take it from someone else and avoid the work if at all possible.
Any rights someone has the sociopath is more than willing to violate to take these things from someone else and they may even feel as though they deserve it and the possessor does not, because they believe they are smarter than anyone else. They are extreme Narcissists.
They may have the knowledge that such behavior is wrong, but they will not empathize with anyone so they will not think about what it is like to have things taken from them. They are just thinking of getting what they can get out of the relationship.
Example: A sociopath is extremely likely to use blackmail as a mode to take from others what they want from them. Blackmail is an easy way to hold power over someone else and get them to do what your sociopath wants, “or else.”
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# 2. 8 Tips How to Write the Perfect Sociopath: They love the feeling of dominating others just to feel powerful.
While some sociopaths want something from you and are willing to violate your rights to get it, the worst sociopaths want something even more sinister.
They want you just so they can feel the power of dominating you.
This type of sinister sociopath can be hiding in a cheerleader outfit giving commands to the cheer troop and bullying girls they feel threatened by.
The sociopath that loves the feeling of dominating people can be hiding in any authoritative role.
They could be a teacher enjoying commanding students to do whatever project they throw at them or a police officer pulling unsuspecting victims over just to show them how powerless they are.
They may be your boss at work. Any time you have an idea that could threaten their dominance they will consider you a threat and make sure your idea never makes it anywhere or they will find a way to steal your idea and rub it in your face when the opportunity comes.
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# 3. 8 Tips How to Write the Perfect Sociopath: Sociopaths lack a conscience.
Sociopaths have no little to absolutely no conscience.
Don’t expect them to feel bad for anything they are doing to get ahead. If you start to feel like one may like you or is helping you think again, they are only doing completely selfish things.
In fact, if your character has a sociopath helping them they better watch out.
Any favors your sociopath does for anyone else they are tallying it all up. “You owe me.” is their life mantra.
Example: Your sociopath comes to their manager and notifies the manager that an employee is stealing. The manager fires the employee and praises and awards the sociopath with a small raise and more hours around their schedule.
The sociopath feels as though they earned the raise and helped the manager at the same time, therefore the manager “still owes” the sociopath something.
The Sociopath asks the manager to be paid to take off Friday so they can hang out with a friend. The manager thinks this is ridiculous and politely says “that won’t work.”
The sociopath is confused and says “but I helped you with the thief, you owe me.”
The manager thinks this is also a strange notion. It is way outside the social norms of the professional workplace. “I don’t owe you anything. You did your job. I didn’t even have to get you that raise and more hours.”
This will inevitably infuriate the greedy sociopath and they will be out for revenge as they have been “slighted” by the manager. The sociopath would be fuming, “how dare they treat me this way, after all I’ve done for them.”
That manager will soon be finding some problems in the workplace or even more sinister, at home because they unwittingly slighted the sociopath hiding in their office.
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# 4. 8 Tips How to Write the Perfect Sociopath: They are fast talkers.
They are schemers and along with that scheming, they will be plotting and practicing self-made scripts for the people that they have to “deal” with on a daily basis to get what they want.
This type of methodically planning and plotting can make them fast talkers.
They will be thinking about how to get away with their mission and goals.
They are quick to opt-out for fabricating rather than earning the truth and what it brings them.
Watch out for fast stories with big plans and big moves. If your sociopath is talking fast your character can look a little into their real life and see that there are no real plans, just a lot of fast talk.
They LOVE to use powerful phrases that are COMPLETELY EMPTY on their end: “I love you. I will never hurt you. If you do this for me I will pay you back tomorrow. Believe me. I’ll give you the world, just do as I say.”
They also will use negative words to control you and manipulate your characters: “I never thought you would hurt me so badly, you can make it up to me by buying me lunch. You’ve been a terrible employee, mop the floors tonight and I’ll think about letting it slide. I would never lie to you, but here you are deceiving me.”
They find a way to turn everything around on your other characters and they are never wrong in their own minds.
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# 5. 8 Tips How to Write the Perfect Sociopath: They will say and do whatever they need to for the moment.
They will do and say whatever they need to, this will make them a bit of a chameleon, changing their colors and stripes for the “needed” situation.
They know that one of your characters is easily manipulated by flattery so they will flatter that one when they are around them.
But at the drop of a hat when they encounter a cowardly character that they know they can manipulate with threats they will instantly become mean and threatening, threatening to not be that character’s friend anymore if they don’t do what they say.
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# 6. 8 Tips How to Write the Perfect Sociopath: A sociopath will make your other characters feel certain emotions.
Your character may see some red flags about the sociopath. It could be a school mate that at first seems extremely friendly, but then in a moment, the character feels oddly threatened by them.
To write an interesting sociopath they have an extreme energy and are able to charm people quickly.
They can easily sweep your character off their feet, only to find out they are in a grave situation just a little too late.
They can make an amazing impression at a job interview only get the job and later cause a giant mess.
They take advantage of people’s sympathy. Your character could be well-meaning and be duped by the sociopath into given them too much too quickly.
Sociopaths prey on sympathetic characters.
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# 7. 8 Tips How to Write the Perfect Sociopath: The perfect sociopath will blame anyone but themselves.
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Your sociopath will find a way to blame anyone and anything above their own willful choices if your character confronts them, and don’t forget they are chronic liars. And they will always look for a way to make you feel bad in the process.
Example: “I would have paid you back but my mom needed the money to pay for her groceries. I’ll pay you back next week.” “I was going to pick you up from school but the dog used the bathroom on the carpet. That dog that you just had to have, now get in there and clean it up.” “I would have come to your recital but traffic was so bad that it made me so late that I came back home instead.”
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# 8. 8 Tips How to Write the Perfect Sociopath: They like to target certain people.
Sociopaths either target people they know they can get things from or people that engage with them.
If your character fights back the sociopath will feed off this and will continue to act cruelly toward them.
Your sociopath will also go after characters that they can get an emotional reaction from. They will be disinterested in characters that don’t seem to be affected by them, but they will hone in on those that they can make angry or afraid. Both emotional reaction they are stimulated by.
Take these tips and write your perfect sociopath.
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I hope this helps! Now get out there and write something!
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This post was truly worthwhile to read. I wanted to say thank you for the key points you have pointed out as they are enlightening.
The stereotyped traits of sociopaths are their incapability to identify wrong and right and their manipulativeness. They lack empathy, particularly an inability to feel remorse for their actions, and because of this, people would tag them as dangerous. If you confront them about their actions, don’t expect them to show remorse and change their ways. They also might give someone bad advice, use misinformation, and blackmail to get what they want.
The statements, although literally true, are nevertheless misleading. Sociopaths are not all violent criminals, nor are they emotionless people. They just happen to be different in their way of thinking, feeling, and living.
You may also check my blog about What You Don't Know About Sociopaths
Hey Steve, thanks for speaking up. I’m glad you liked the post. I took a lot of time to carefully research the best ways to write an everyday sociopath because I believe that amazing writing and storytelling comes directly from amazing research executed well 🙂
Happy writing!