Bryan: category, formatting

2008-03-07T08:56:15Z

category, formatting

JonBuck: Title stolen moved to Title Stolen by Evil, Inc.: Matching title listed on WS page.

2008-01-09T23:32:38Z

Title stolen moved to Title Stolen by Evil, Inc.: Matching title listed on WS page.

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ShadowWolf: TSAT13

2008-01-09T04:44:54Z

TSAT13

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[[Category:Phil Geusz]][[Category:Essays]][[Category:Writers School]]
I think that creating an evil character is very much like just
like creating a good one, in that you must find him within yourself
and either your own direct personal experiences or else your experiences
in fiction. Unless you've encountered real evil yourself, you
can never write it.
In my case, the evil I use comes from two major sources. One is
history. Historical evil characters have far more depth than the
cartoon cutouts you so often encounter in fiction, and it is remarkable
how little the public seems to know about these people's real
lives and loves and passions. Heinrich Himmler, for example, was
the head of the Nazi SS. His oldest and most serious hobby was
herb gardening; in fact the least-abusive of all concentration
camps was dedicated to growing herbs in quantity for this reason.
Hitler and others considered him incorruptible; there is no doubt
that he chose not to financially profit from his position, as
did so many other Nazis.
Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, often portrayed as a villain after Pearl
Harbor, was in fact nothing of the sort. He resolutely opposed
war with the US and Britain to the point that he actively risked
assassination. The Admiral of Combined Fleet and architect of
one of the most impressive series of naval victories in history
was in fact a very warm and personable human being. He loved geisha
girls, gambling, and standing on his head at parties. Much of
his time was spent answering personally each and every letter
sent to him by anyone, a veritable deluge of mail. His calligraphy
was highly renowned, and many wrote him just to receive a sample.
Today a careful study will show that Yamamoto personally never
violated the laws of war, nor ever issued orders to violate the
laws of war. Yet, there is little doubt that had he not been killed
in combat Yamamoto would have been hanged with Tojo and the rest.
Oftentimes the question of who is the villain isn't settled until
a war is won or lost.
In the same war, US Admiral Halsey could easily have become a
villain. He was aboard the USS Enterprise when she sailed into
the devastated and still burning remains of Pearl Harbor within,
if I recall correctly, about 24 hours of the surprise attack.
An eyewitness who shared the bridge of "The Big E" with him said
that Halsey was clearly deeply moved by what he saw that day.
And the famous words he spoke were perhaps understandable then
and there. "Japanese," he said in a firm, angry voice, "is going
to be a language spoken only in Hell." Later in the war, his slogan
became "Kill Japs, Kill Japs, Kill more Japs." He was a brilliant
Admiral and great leader and, as events turned out, no villain
by any means. I'm not suggesting in any way that he was one. But,
given what we know of his basically violent nature, and the ruthlessness
with which he waged war even on behalf of a democracy, would he
have become a villain had he served Germany instead of America?
Here's another neat case study in villainism. Though the incident
was covered up for years, in recent times paperwork was unearthed
proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that a group of US Army troops
massacred dozens of surrendered German soldiers in cold blood
in 1945. In fact, they lined up these particular Germans and machine-gunned
them mercilessly into a pulp. Normally this would qualify them
as villains. But under the circumstances, were they really bad
guys? You decide.

These combat veterans had just liberated Auschwitz, one of the
oldest if not the oldest of the concentration camps. Though another
camp had very recently been liberated, word wasn't really out
yet about what the things really were, just that they were nasty
places where a lot of medical attention was going to be needed.
In order to avoid a confrontation with the guards, who he thought
might be manning the main gate for a last stand defense, the officer
in charge -- a colonel -- decided to go around and advance into
the camp along a rail line clearly marked on his map.
Auschwitz was not a "death camp" per se -- lots of folks starved or were worked to death there, but there
were no ovens and the inmates were expected to last for some time
there. However, this was 1945 and things in Germany did not run
as well as they once had. A trainload of Jewish victims, mainly
women and children, had arrived a day or two before with everyone
aboard already dead due to gross neglect along the way. The Americans,
all heavily armed, had by the purest chance decided to enter the
camp along the same rail siding where the train still sat waiting
to be unloaded. They walked past carload after carload after carload
of bodies, vainly searching each for a single live human among
the dead. By the time the soldiers made it to the main camp, they
were literally screaming, and weeping and foaming at the mouth
in murderous rage. The SS guards surrendered formally and peacefully.
Their officer even saluted and handed over his pistol and the
camp's paper to the American Colonel. Then the American officer,
still in deep shock, marched the Commandant outside and put a
bullet through his brains with his own gun. The prisoners were
then lined up and shot as described earlier, dozens or perhaps
even hundreds of them mowed down by distraught men who were still
screaming and weeping in rage as the guns hammered away. At one
point a General from another unit happened along and tried to
stop the massacre, but the Colonel led him away at pistol point,
declaring loudly that the General could court martial him later
to his heart's content and even hang him if he wished, but that
by God he was going to finish cleaning up the camp first.
Meanwhile, as the massacre of the guards went on, other American
soldiers gave the inmates permission to discipline the informers
and trustees among them however they pleased. The inmates, who
had suffered long and terribly at the hands of these people, tore
them into unrecognizable shreds of flesh with their bare hands
as the Americans stood by and cheered them on.
Now, I've got a question for every last writer still reading this.
Tell me, who were the villains here? And why?
Answer these questions, and you've got the makings of one heck
of a story. It does not have to about the liberation of a concentration
camp, but it can be about when lynching really is justifiable,
for example, or about how to deal justly with a man like the American
Colonel in cases like this one. (In point of fact, the whole thing
was buried, as mentioned above, for a variety of reasons. No one
could see prosecuting anyone for these particular crimes, not
after what these particular men had seen and been through. No
one wanted to admit publicly that Americans had committed a genuine
massacre right before Nuremburg. And most of all, no one wanted
to put the Colonel on trial for mutiny under circumstances where
there was a very real likelihood that he might be found not guilty,
again right before Nuremburg.) Your story, if you use the emotions
that this little tale brings out in you, will be gritty and real,
because the feelings and emotions are real. In writing, that's as good as it gets.

My second great source of villain material is one I'm rather ashamed
to admit to. It is the sensational, true-crime books you often
find for sale at bookstores and even corner markets. I've stolen
more characters and vicious actions from them than you can shake
a stick at, and all of it sounds gritty and realistic because
it is real. People hurt kill each other for the most bizarre of reasons
and in the strangest of ways! Read this stuff for a little while
and not only will your world-view be widened and your fictional
villains fleshed out, but you'll be sadder and wiser to boot.
I guess I have two root points here. One is that villains and
their actions are far more complex and three-dimensional than
the Simon LeGree types I keep finding in fiction. The second is
that I believe that the best way to fix this is to go make an
effort to read in detail about the lives and crimes of the genuine
article. I think the basic problem is that too few of us actually
have been forced to face the evil in others, or far more threatening
and powerful, the evil in ourselves. But you cannot credibly write
about something if you do not know it intimately. Face the darkness,
ye who would write of a lack of light, lest your scribblings become
tinny and implausible. It's not easy, but the results are worth
the effort.

Title Stolen by Evil, Inc. - Revision history

Bryan: category, formatting

JonBuck: Title stolen moved to Title Stolen by Evil, Inc.: Matching title listed on WS page.

ShadowWolf: TSAT13