This week on my Novel In A Year course WhatsApp (DO message me for details of next years course, it really is going so well) one of the students asked whether we felt that we should humanise our antagonists. What she meant by “baddies” in this context was the REAL baddies - your nazis, your mad kings, people who park in the parent and child spaces when they don’t have kids, that kind of thing. She set up a poll asking whether we should humanise baddies, with three answers - yes, no and maybe.
What do you think?
Within the group the answer was absolutely unanimous that we should. I was one of those unanimous votes, and let me take this opportunity to expand on why.
For me, a cartoon baddie says nothing. They are merely a plot device - a Big Bad for your protagonist to vanquish, a boring monster. It’s going to come off as one note, and worse, it’s a missed opportunity. Say you have an antagonist who is a fascist. They do bad things because they are a bad person. As a reader we get the message that fascism is bad.
Yeah, and… so? I already knew that! Bad things are bad and they shouldn’t happen. SURE.
But what if we humanise this fascist?
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