How do you relate to a character enough to write about them?

[Talo Segura]

I don't believe in pure evil unless it's a supernatural mystery thriller, but in real life to have a character who commits evil actions can be justified by how that person thinks, feels, and arrived at doing what they do. Any one of us could kill someone, by accident or intentionally, it all depends on circumstances. What I do when writing evil characters is to step into their shoes, in reality I have that barrier of social Christian education that I was brought up with to look at the world as good and evil, that barrier usually prevents us crossing over to doing bad things, but not always, and not everyone has that barrier, or it is less strong. There are also psychological aspects of personality that allow for evil by regarding other people as not being human. There are many routes to breaking down the barrier, not the least of which is group action. All this is very well described in Lord of the Flies, an interesting book, as is this thread on writing evil characters.

[Thirdly]

On 3/7/2019 at 2:30 AM, Talo Segura said:

There are many routes to breaking down the barrier, not the least of which is group action. 

 

Good point. I found my route. It's more complicated than it should be in terms of writing it out, but it shouldn't read that way.