Bad To The Bone

Posted on June 11, 2013 Updated on June 11, 2013

You’re unlikely to go through life without meeting a really horrible person or two. I’ve come across a couple with no redeeming qualities at all. It’s true that some people really are not nice in any way. I find them just as fascinating as anyone else though – you never know when you can use them in a future storyline. I think writers are many things. We gather all sorts of knowledge in our quests to fill our worlds, and make them real. We research and learn about things that most people wouldn’t give a moment’s thought to. We’re also just as likely as psychologists to say, “And how does that make you feel?”, to a stranger, or listen raptly to the big-mouthed fellow that everyone avoids at a party.

This is the way of the scribbler though. We have to know what makes people tick if we want to write books about them. I’ve always been fascinated with the darker side of the human psyche. I wonder how people get to be the way they sometimes end up. Life hurts some people so badly that they break and stay broken. Some fight their way out of horrendous situations, and emerge as beacons of love and kindness. Then there are others that go the evil route, and become sadists and killers. It’s the ones in between all these things that I find most interesting.

I have two characters in African Me that are just downright bad. I’ve been trying to find ways to give them positive traits to balance out the awful, because I read somewhere that all bad people must have some good in them. So that got me thinking that they might be too bad to be believable. Then it occurred to me that this isn’t actually true. There really are some people rotten to the core. I’ve come across many as I’ve trawled the web looking for insights into human nature. So that’s one editing chore out the way. My baddies will stay just as bad as they are. If what you write feels right to you, then that’s the way you should write it.

Till next time friends. xxx