List: 10 Bad Conversational Habits for Fictional Characters
Why you would want to be thinking about bad habits for your fictional characters that you are writing?
Bad habits help your audience resonate with your characters.
They make our characters more believable.
Adding a few bad habits to our characters will make them more enjoyable to our readers. After all, no human is perfect and that should include not all but most of our fictional characters.
Most readers are tired of the same typical type of villain. He looks bad, smells bad, feels bad, is pure evil, and probably has horns and a pitchfork. But how do we write more lovable villains?
Readers want a villain that is hard to find. One that hides in plain sight. They want a villain that they can kind of like and not feel bad about liking.
They want the anti-hero.
They are looking for a villain that is against the “hero,” but doesn’t always do the wrong thing.
Sometimes the villain does the right thing. Sometimes they team up with the hero against a greater evil.
Sometimes they team up with other heroes against another “hero.”
The villain character arc is expanding and as writers, we need to expand with it. Stories are more complicated than they used to be.
It is no longer the shining knight coming to save the damsel in distress.
Now it is the ogre coming to save the other ogre or the two brothers, one mischevious and one arrogant teaming up to try to stop a sociopathic tyrant trying to wipe out half the universe. Now it is the alien that eats people but doesn’t want to see all of humanity destroyed, he just wants to be free to do what he wants when he wants and oh yeah, he still wants to eat people, but just the bad ones for now…
These are the types of villains that readers and audiences are falling for these days and as writers and screenwriters we have the opportunities to give this generation some really interesting complicated villain that people can fall in love with.
Not because they are perfect, but because they are not perfect.
Let’s dive in
# 1 Our lovable villain should be misunderstood.
You could go the route of writing a villain that is truly misunderstood. A misunderstood villain is someone that was hurt deeply in their past and they don’t even know for themselves why they feel and act the way they do, but for whatever reason, they do bad things out of a sense of victimization.
In other words, they were the first victim.
Think of a child being kept in a cage for the first 13 years of their life. This is a horrific situation but is a good backstory for a villain that you want your readers to feel bad for. They lose the ability to be totally upset with their behavior and they start to wonder the age-old question, “is it really their fault?” “I mean look at the tragedy that befell them. They didn’t have any control over that. They need help, not some guy with a hammer smacking them in the face.”
But even a tragic back story won’t make a villain readers love we have to take it further. A tragic backstory will make them feel bad for the villain, it may even make them feel like rooting for them or wanting to help them but it won’t make most audiences fall for them.
Readers can really start to enjoy a villain that’s bad but in a unique and exciting way. More of a rebel with a cause than just an evil person.
When spiderman went rogue for a short period of time, wearing the black venom suit they tried to write him, cool, and emo, and bad.
It came across a little humorous and easy to, make fun of but I understood where they were going with it.
They wanted him to be cool to be a rebel.
They wanted him to do what he wanted when he wanted because he wanted to.
Readers like that idea, of being independent and being able to go anywhere and do anything thing and being able to “stick it to the man!”
They don’t want to be told when to get up and how long they have to stay and that they have to do “this” and they have to do “that.” They want to be free.
So make a villain that is “free” the way they want to be free and they will inevitably like that villain.
Great example: Robin Hood.
Any vigilante will do wonders towards having a character that is part villainous and that your readers will be curious about and drawn to but robin hood rings out past the punisher and batman. Robin hood stole from the rich and gave tom the poor. He didn’t have a boss and would roam the woods will his gang of “rebels” and hide out from “the man” the rich guy in the big tower and he would occasionally take a bunch of money from him and give it to the starving, lowly, and destitute.
Robin hood could, for the most part, do what he wanted when he wanted and people are attracted to that, but even more than that, He was a rebel with a cause.
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# 3 Readers Love a villain with a cause.
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Our readers love to find a cause they feel like they can support and get behind. Some causes are little “I really need to get a good grade on this test.” And some causes are big, “Smaller Government means more freedom for the citizens of the nation.”
Whatever the cause may be if you can find a good one to give to your villain, people will want to rally behind that villain and they may just secretly want them to get away with it.
A great example is Ocean’s 11. This band of thieves gets together to pull off one of the biggest casino heists in history. They want to do it against a greedy really really REALLY RICH guy.
If you think about it the rich guy doesn’t seem all that bad, so why do we find ourselves rooting for the criminals?
“Because, in the end, the house always wins.”
“Yeah!” we say from across the table. “The house does always end up winning! It must be rigged! We should do something about that! Danny should rob him! Show him that the way he’s doing business is unfair and we the people think so and something should be done about it.”
Give us a cause and we’ll jump to it.
But there is more to it than just that right?
What are some other reasons we look up to this team of criminal masterminds?
They are mostly attractive (Having George Clooney and Brad Pitt helps)
They are funny.
They are nice.
They seem like overall normal good guys in real life (besides the constant lying and stealing)
We enjoy seeing inside the heist from the thieves’ perspective, because how else would we know (You ever knock down a casino?)
Also, there’s great music and everyone knows great music is great.
So there you have it. Here are just a few ideas tom hopefully spark some ideas for you as you try to write the more loveable villain in your craft.
Let me know if you liked this read and if you are looking for more advice on creating more loveable villains. Depending on what people say, maybe we’ll continue this post even further and deeper into the loveable villainess mastermind.
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Another List of 10 Bad Habits for Your Fictional Characters:
Obnoxious displays of public affection
Picking your nose
Blowing your nose in public
Biting your nails
Leaving chewed gum on the table
Leaving chewed gum under chairs
Snorting
Not wearing deodorant
Burping loudly
Farting loudly
Another List of 10 Bad Habits for Your Fictional Characters
You might ask yourself why you would want to be thinking about bad habits for your characters that you are writing.
Bad habits help your audience resonate with your character.
They make our characters more believable.
Adding a few bad habits to our characters will make them more enjoyable to our readers. After all, no human is perfect and that should include not all but most fictional characters.
You might ask yourself why you would want to be thinking about bad habits for your characters that you are writing.
Bad habits help your audience resonate with your character.
They make our characters more believable.
Adding a few bad habits to our characters will make them more enjoyable to our readers. After all, no human is perfect and that should include not all but most fictional characters.
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.
# 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.”
# 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.
# 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.
# 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.
# 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.
# 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.
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.”
# 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.
Are you tired of not knowing exactly how to make your villain believable and despicable?
It’s a common problem, but one that has a solution.
Write a villain that is so despicable, so loathed, that your readers will be looking for them to lose or mad at you if you don’t write their downfall before the story is ended.
# 2 Tips How to Write a Villain Readers Truly Hate: Make them love power over all else
Make them addicted to power and willing to do anything to get it.
Make their motivation power, greed, and wealth.
They can love money or weapons. They can be trying to gather armies. Whatever it may be, write them attacking the innocent, the weak, and the vulnerable to acquire their power and wealth.
They are willing to do whatever it takes to get what they want and they don’t feel bad at all.
# 3 Tips How to Write a Villain Readers Truly Hate: Make them think that they are in the right about their evil choices
A villain that is going to be hated is going to feel no remorse for their evil acts.
And not only should they be completely remorseless about what they have done they should feel completely right and justified about doing it.
Example: If they attack a helpless village with their troops, they should feel like the worthless village deserved it for betraying them for wanting to be “disloyal” and wanting to be free of their tyrannical reign.
They are going to need to be cold and any interaction they have with any other person needs to have them show that they are relentless. They need to do several acts of violent behavior that makes them hateable. One act of violence is probably not enough to be believable.
To be believable our reader needs to see them carry out cruel acts a couple of times over.
# 4 Tips How to Write a Villain Readers Truly Hate: They should be completely irrational.
Your villain should be irrational. People around them should try to tell them how wrong they are.
It could be a spouse or a parent or sibling of the villain that tries to tell them how wrong they are and how irrational they are being.
After an encounter like this, the villain should throw them into prison or have them killed or beaten because of disloyalty and give them a line like “I loved you. I never thought you would betray me too.”
Look for inspiration to create your most hated villain.
Not all stories need a BIG BAD Villain. Some Antagonists can be non-human or a time ticking time bomb, but if you are creating a villain for your story then you are going to choose between a few different arc types.
Your villain can be the type that believes with all their heart that what they are doing is for the “greater good.”
They could also be the type of villain that is a “victim” of their own circumstances. They may have had a tragic upbringing that made them feel as though their evil choices are completely justified or they are acts of revenge or acting out in reaction to their terrible situation.
Another alternative would be making a villain that people love to hate, the PURE EVIL Villain.
# 1 Tips How to Write Villains You Love to Hate: The pure evil villain has terrible motives.
The villain that people love to hate is pure evil and their motives are strictly to do harm to others for mostly selfish motives.
Readers can’t stand a villain that wants evil to happen on the grounds of selfish personal greed.
Write them as a villain that has selfish motives and is willing to do anything to get what they want and that they don’t care about anyone but themselves. They don’t even care about those that are “close” to them or people that truly care about them.
How to write the ultimate climactic moment of your story
As storytellers, we know that every great story has a great climax.
Stories have many problems that help keep our readers interested throughout our story, but there is a moment that our readers are being lead to and if that moment, that one big moment is a big let down then that is what they will remember and think about and talk about as they walk away from your story.
So how do we capture this moment for them?
How do we make sure that this moment captures their attention and meets their expectations?
Let’s think about some ideas that will help make the climactic moment of your story all it can be for your readers.
It is the tipping point of our stories so let’s try to make it everything it can be.
# 5 How to Write the Ultimate Climax of Your Story:Use lies your character believes.
A great way to have your character end up in a really bad problem is by having them believe lies.
These can be lies they tell themselves.
These can be lies they believe from others.
Have your character believe these lies and live by them for enough time that when they find out that they are lies that it is utterly devastating to them.
The deeper the lies go, the better.
The more consequences that come about because they believed the lies the better.
Make sure that the lies affect a long term part of their life.
Play off of the character’s emotions by allowing other characters to know the truth while your main character does not.
And make sure the lies and the consequences are believable.
Hope this helps! Now get out there and write something!
We need our characters to be in such a dark place that our reader believes it.
Our reader needs to be concerned enough about their bleak predicament that they are curious enough to keep reading to find out how their situation revolves.
Whether our character has tried everything and failed miserably, or they have been pushed so far into a corner that impending doom lurks imminent.
If we as writers are going to pull this off and do it well we are going to need to have a strategic game plan in mind.
# 1 How to Write your Character Hitting Rock Bottom: the stakes gotta be high
Don’t try to paint your character into a dark corner nobody cares about.
“If I don’t pick up my dry cleaning by 5 they are going to fine me an extra 25 cents.”
Nobody cares.
“If I don’t find a way to give them the ransom of 10 million they are going to kill my wife and child.”
Okay, that sounds concerning.
# 2 How to Write your Character Hitting Rock Bottom: Consider making the character self-destructive
Nothing smacks you in the face more than the moment you realize, “it’s completely and only my fault that I’m in this mess.”
Make your character choose several to a dozen terrible choices and spiral into the metaphorical toilet, all while your audiences watch and wince with every poor decision.
And then, when everything smashes your character in the face and there is absolutely no going back, give your character a flashback moment where they realize that everything they are going through is completely and utterly their own fault.
Nothing says rock-bottom more than “I did this to myself.”
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For your character to hit absolute rock bottom, all hope must be lost.
But it MUST be believable.
Imagine you’re sitting with your reader and telling them the story of your character and you tell them, “all hope was lost.”
Can your reader say, “wait a minute! What about this?”
You can’t have any question in your reader’s mind whether the character has a possible viable way out.
Your reader needs to be thinking, “oh crap. How are they going to get out of this?”
Then you know you’ve written it right.
Don’t leave them any reasonable doubt.
# 4 How to Write your Character Hitting Rock Bottom: Consider Making Your Protagonist Give Up.
A part of hitting rock bottom is the ultimate temptation to call it quits and say “that’s it! I’m done!”
How many stories have you seen where the main character hits a brick wall and then decides enough is enough, I’m not trying anymore, I can’t win and I’m tired of trying, I can’t go on?
How many times have you personally hit that place where you just can’t take it anymore at a sport or at work or at home and you just quit?
This is a beautiful moment you can create for your reader to jump into the life of your character, where they can watch that character say “no more! That’s it! I’m done!” and the reader can say “I feel you.” or they can be saying “no! You can’t quit now! You are soooo close!”
Either of these feelings and you can know that you are giving your reader the emotions you want them to have to enjoy your writing and want to read further.
And you can use simple dialogue to give your reader these feelings.
Have you ever been reading a story and the character says, “That’s it! I can’t take it anymore! I’m done with this whole thing! I’m done with you and you and you and you. I am out…”
Okay…so maybe they didn’t say exactly that. That was a bit over the top. But think of a story where your character gave up and left the scene with the other characters saying things like, “No! Wait! You can’t quit now! After all we’ve gone through, you can’t just give up now!”
Maybe you used a secondary character that was skeptical of the main character’s ability to finish the task and accomplish the goal. And only after the main character voices their immediate resignation to the quest that the secondary character finally believes in them and brings them back from hitting rock bottom.
Some writers think that in order for their villain to be dynamic, interesting and leave a big mark, they have to experience a big change in their story.
This is not completely true.
Your villain does not have to have a giant story arc to make waves.
And we no longer have to fall under the assumption that our main protagonist is the main reason our readers like our story. That idea bubble has been popped.
Think the Joker, Loki, The Shining, venom, these are just a few villainess characters that have drawn large audiences over and over again over their favorable hero counterparts.
Another story idea we have put to pasture is the idea that in order for villains to be interesting they have to have big story arcs.
Take the Joker for example. When the Joker shows up in the Dark Knight Movie we see him only in particular moments.
He does very specific tasks and then vanishes: robs a bank, kills people, escapes in a clever way, meets with mobsters, hands them their lunch and burns their money.
The story doesn’t have a long story arc in these films, just very strategic, specific moments and audiences everywhere loved it.
So keep this fact in mind: Your character doesn’t have to have a large story arc to be loved by readers. They just have to have very planned out moments; moments done well.
