How to Write Better Villains: 5 Ways to Get Into the Mind of a Psychopath
By Peter James
1. Where to find a psychopath who will talk to you – the importance of meeting your monster.
Over my years of research for my Roy Grace mystery novels I’ve given many talks in prisons for the charity, The Reading Agency, which encourages literacy in UK prisons, as it gives me the opportunity to meet many different kinds of criminal face to face.
I had been wanting to write about a female “black widow” character for some time, and had been studying past cases, and thinking hard about creating a convincing character. Three years ago I was talking in a women’s prison and there was a well-spoken middle-aged woman in the audience who was asking particularly smart questions about literature. She fascinated me, being clearly well educated and I wondered what crime she had committed. Perhaps she killed someone drunk driving, or something like that, I wondered?
One big perk of my talks is that I get to mingle with the prisoners after and chat to them one-on-one. I made a beeline for her. I never ask a prisoner outright what they have done – it’s not proper etiquette! So as an icebreaker I said, ‘How much longer do you have to serve?’
She replied, in a booming voice, ‘Nine and a half more bloody years – and it’s just not fair! A woman did exactly what I did, in London, and she’s only got six more years to go.’
‘So, what brought you in here?’ I asked, somewhat startled.
‘I poisoned my mother-in-law, the old bag!’
‘OK,’ I replied, somewhat astonished. Then she went on.
‘The thing was, she went into hospital to die, so I embezzled her bank account. Then the bloody woman didn’t die – she came home. I realized she would find out so I had to poison her. Then I realized my husband would find out so I had to poison him, too. And it’s just not fair – this woman in London did exactly what I did and she’s only got six more years!’
As I was being taken back out by a prison officer I said to him, ‘Is this woman for real?’
‘Oh yes sir, he replied. ‘Her husband was three months on life support and he has permanent brain damage – and she’s just angry about the length of her sentence…’
I knew at once I had found my character for Love You Dead!
2. Make your monsters lovable.
If you think about the most endearing – and enduring – characters in the history of literature they are the ones that are not simply portrayed as black and white evil, but with shades of coloring. Think about Dracula – he is a monster but he has huge charisma and charm. Frankenstein’s monster turns to his creator, Dr Frankenstein and tells him he never wanted to be born. Hannibal Lecter, perhaps the most success monster in all of modern literature, is enormously charming, charismatic, he has style and people find themselves rooting for him, despite knowing just how utterly evil he really is.
3. Avoid stereotypes. A psychopath isn’t always a man in black in a dark alley with a sharp knife.
It may be a surprise to some people, but yes, there really are good psychopaths as well as bad ones. Or perhaps, paraphrasing from George Orwell’s Animal Farm, puts it into better perspective: Some psychopaths are less evil than others. He could be a past or a President of the United States? The CEO of a Fortune 100 company? Being a psychopath is the best qualification to get you to the top of a chosen path in life, but the worst to have once you are there: The reason most serial killers get away with it so long is that they are bright and cunning – and often total chameleons, able to blend into society. Ted Bundy, America’s worst to date is a classic example. A good-looking, charismatic former law student, estimated to have killed and raped over 100 young women. But it’s not just a good qualification if you want to be a serial killer, it’s a great one if you want to become a captain of industry or a top politician. The combination of charm, intelligence and utter ruthlessness is potent. The psychopath is capable of saying anything just to get to the top – how many politicians do we all know who’ve said totally opposing things many times during their climb up the greasy pole. But ultimately it is hubris that can be their downfall because their lack of empathy means they fail to read the warning signs. President Richard Nixon is a classic; Idi Amin; Saddam Hussein; Gadhafi. And how many CEOs of major companies, like Bernie Madoff and the late Robert Maxwell?
4. How to come up with a well-developed backstory for your psychopathic character.
Some years ago I spent a day at Broadmoor, the UK’s premier high-security psychiatric hospital. It took me a year before my request was accepted, but it was worthwhile because what I saw and learned there has helped me with so many subsequent characters. The qualification for admission to Broadmoor is, essentially, to be violently criminally insane. I asked the resident chaplain if he felt that there were some people who were born evil, or did something happen in their lives to turn them that way?
He replied that the inmates were divided roughly 50/50 into schizophrenics and psychopaths. Schizophrenia was a chemically treatable mental illness, and provided they took their medication, around 70% of the inmates in this category could eventually go back into the world and live ordinary lives. But for the psychopaths, it was very different.
He explained a psychopath is likely to first present symptoms at around the age of four. The majority is male but there are female ones also – as we will see. The earliest signs are likely to be a lack of empathy and no real sense of a moral code of right or wrong. A boy steals his best friend’s favourite toy – with absolutely zero guilt. He will also from an early age be an accomplished liar – and rarely found out.
The psychopath brought up in a loving, stable family may well go on to become a hugely successful businessman or politician. But the one brought up in a broken home, or a violent, abusive situation, is likely to become dangerously warped. Many serial killers come from such latter backgrounds, as did Adolf Hitler who had a bullying father who would not let him pursue the career as a painter he wanted in life.
5. Talk through any major villain you are creating with a forensic psychiatrist or psychologist.
I was chatting at lunch with former armed serial bank robber, and self-confessed psychopath, Steve Tulley. As a teenager in prison, for his first robbery, he met criminal legend Reggie Kray, and persuaded him to let him be his pupil and teach him everything he knew. At 58, broke, Tulley is living in a bedsit in Brighton and has spent more of his life in jail than free. I asked him what was the largest sum he had ever got away with. He told me it was £50k in a bank job. So what did he do with the money? He replied, excitedly that he’d rented a suite in Brighton’s Metropole Hotel and, in his words, ‘Larged it for six months until it was all gone.”
I asked Steve if he had the chance to live his life over again would he have done it differently? ‘No,’ he replied with a gleam in his eyes. ‘I’d do it all again. It’s the adrenaline, you see!’
From subsequently talking to forensic psychiatrists and psychologists, I’ve learned that this “adrenaline” buzz that Steve talks of goes hand-in-hand, with some criminals, with the ruthless, chaotic, hand-to-mouth existence they lead. One of the most chilling things I ever saw was the police video of Dennis Rader – the BTK Strangler– confessing. When asked why he had bound, tortured and killed – horrifically – his victims he replied, simply and matter-of-factly, ‘It was erotic, I got a buzz from it.”
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J.K. Rowling’s Twitter feud with Trump supporters is so bad she’s now fighting some of her fans – The Washington Post
Rowling’s brushes with political controversy are nothing new. She’s just more open about her views now.
Source: J.K. Rowling’s Twitter feud with Trump supporters is so bad she’s now fighting some of her fans – The Washington Post
If there’s any doubt left that we live in divisive political times, know this: Some fans of Harry Potter are burning their copies of the books to protest author J.K. Rowling’s views of the U.S. president. And she’s fighting back on Twitter, insulting those very fans.
That’s right, one of the most beloved series of books in modern history has now become a political prop. Is nothing safe?
Rowling has been vocal about her feelings concerning President Trump for some time. She has mostly used Trump’s favorite platform, Twitter, to share her criticisms.
These tweets have generated a Facebook page’s worth of headlines. But Rowling’s brushes with political controversy are nothing new.
Rowling is a dedicated progressive. She’s a strong believer in welfare, which she relied on during a particularly rough period in her life. As she said during a 2008 Harvard commencement speech, “An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless … By every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.”
More recently, Rowling found herself in the midst of a Twitter battle surrounding Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, referred to as Brexit, which she staunchly opposed.
Much of this now seemingly endless debate was absent during the height of the Harry Potter craze because the author didn’t publicly discuss her views until the publication of the final book in the series. In 2008, a year after “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” hit bookshelves, Rowling gave 1 million pounds to Britain’s Labour Party.
That same year, speaking to El Pais, she said of the U.S. presidential campaign in which Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were battling for the Democratic nomination: “I want a Democrat in the White House. It seems a pity that Clinton and Obama have to be rivals, because both are extraordinary.”
Anyone who gave the Harry Potter books a close reading likely wouldn’t have been surprised by Rowling’s politics.
Most of the subplots involve the triumph of marginalized peoples, be it the mixed-heritage Hermione, a “mudbl–d,” the poverty-stricken Weasleys, the stigmatized Hagrid (essentially an ex-offender reintroduced to society who can no longer practice magic as a result) or the “lower class” house elf named Dobby (the most obvious analogue to American slavery).
Harry himself, after all, was an orphan and survivor of attempted infanticide.
In his book “Harry Potter and the Millennials,” Anthony Gierzynski wrote that, “the evidence indicates that Harry Potter fans are more open to diversity and are more politically tolerant than nonfans; fans are also less authoritarian, less likely to support the use of deadly force or torture, more politically active, and more likely to have had a negative view of the Bush administration.”
Rowling invites anyone to challenge her.
Once Rowling opened up about her beliefs, it has been a steady stream ever since. And while attacking her own fans might seem like a poor marketing choice, it’s important to note one of the values that Rowling holds most dear: freedom of speech.
“Intolerance of alternative viewpoints is spreading to places that make me, a moderate and a liberal, most uncomfortable. Only last year, we saw an online petition to ban Donald Trump from entry to the U.K. It garnered half a million signatures,” she said during the 2016 PEN America Literary Gala at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. “I find almost everything that Mr. Trump says objectionable. I consider him offensive and bigoted. But he has my full support to come to my country and be offensive and bigoted there. His freedom to speak protects my freedom to call him a bigot. His freedom guarantees mine.”
Rowling had already faced some conflict before she publicly expressed her political views. Her Harry Potter books were maligned by some Christian groups, making it one of the most challenged books in 2000, as tracked by the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, according to the New York Times.
“The challenges seem to be objecting to occult or supernatural content in the books and are being made largely by traditional Christians who believe the Bible is a literal document,” Virginia Walter, president of the ALA’s Association for Library Service to Children, told the newspaper. “Any exposure to witches or wizards shown in a positive light is anathema to them. Many of these people feel that the books are door-openers to topics that desensitize children to very real evils in the world.”
The outcry didn’t come only from fringe, radical sects of Christianity, either. As noted in the Christian Post, when Pope Benedict XVI was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger he condemned the books for their “subtle seductions, which act unnoticed … deeply distort Christianity in the soul before it can grow properly.”
There’s a certain irony to this, considering Rowling has said that Christianity was a great inspiration for the books.
“To me [the religious parallels have] always been obvious,” she said at a 2007 news conference. “But I never wanted to talk too openly about it because I thought it might show people who just wanted the story where we were going.”
There were Christian references throughout the series. When Harry visits his parents’ graves in one book, the headstone reads, “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” — an abridged version of 1 Corinthians 15:26.
The graveyard is also the final resting place of headmaster Albus Dumbledore’s mother and sister, whose tombstone bears the inscription, “Where your treasure is, there your heart be also” — a direct quote from Matthew 6:19.
“I think those two particular quotations he finds on the tombstones at Godric’s Hollow, they sum up — they almost epitomize the whole series,” Rowling said at the news conference.
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Tagged as fan feud, J.K. Rowling, Sunday, The Washington Post, Trump