Hello everyone
Last month I talked about when good people do bad things, so obviously, this month I’m going to talk about bad people doing good things.
What Is a Bad Person?
There’s a question that needs to be asked first: what is a bad person? And here we’ve got many ways to define “bad”.
For instance, a bad person, could be someone who does one bad thing.
Equally, a bad person could be someone who does several bad things—perhaps going as far as consistently showing a pattern or a habit of doing bad things.
But simply performing one bad act or a series of bad acts doesn’t necessarily define someone as bad, there’s a quality to the “badness” of the act that makes us consider someone as a bad person.
In practice the bad acts must have significant negative consequences for another person. But more than that, the action cannot be reasonable or have any substantive justification.
So, on balance, when we’re talking about a bad person we’re talking about someone who:
- habitually acts
- to the detriment of other people
- without justification, and
- without remorse.
In other words, we’re not talking about a good person who has “gone off the rails”—we’re talking about someone who is “bad to the bone”. And I hope you will accept my apologies for these two dreadful clichéd characterizations.
This is the kind of person who we want to avoid in real life, but in fiction, we want to see these people change and do good things.
How Might a Bad Person Change?
To make a bad person doing good things plausible to the reader, there has to be a progressive change. If someone simply wakes up one day and totally changes, a reader won’t believe the change.
But, it’s not just about the character and the change being plausible—the reader needs to make a connection with the bad person at an emotional level. And to make this emotional connection, the character needs (and I cringe at the cliché) to go on something of a journey.
There are notable steps on that road to change. This is quite a long explanation—just follow the big text if you want to skip forward 😄.
Recognition
The first step for a bad person making a change is recognition.
first, recognize the suffering
A bad person has to recognize that another character is suffering. They don’t have to understand every element of the suffering or the depth of the discomfort. They don’t even need to show any empathy.
Link Action to Consequence
Once there is recognition of the suffering, then the bad person needs to understand the cause of that suffering and their role in that suffering.
This link is often not difficult for a bad person to understand—many times the suffering of the other person is the point of the bad person’s action. That’s what makes them a bad person.
second, understand the link between action and consequence
Someone seeing the consequences of their bad actions—and making the link between their choices and the consequences—gives us the potential for something more interesting.
Other Person’s Shoes
Maybe the hardest step is for the bad person causing suffering is to recognize the injustice—to recognize that causing suffering for another person is wrong.
third, recognize the injustice
And the change is hard for a bad person, because this change is a mindset change, coupled with a value-based assessment. The bad person doing bad things needs the realization that it is wrong for the other person to suffer, but more, that it is wrong for them to make that other person suffer.
This recognition is important, because it sows the seed of change.
Choose to Change
This realization that it is wrong to make another suffer becomes more interesting when the character then takes the next step and chooses to change their behavior.
fourth, act to avoid the problem in the future
And in choosing to change their behavior—by ceasing to cause pain—the bad person is easing the suffering of their victim.
Atonement and Redemption
For the victim, there is no practical difference between the bad person who has been inflicting pain failing to do something and that person choosing not to do something. In other words, for the victim, while the change is welcome, the motivations behind the change are irrelevant.
And for the bad person, not inflicting suffering could just be a matter of laziness.
But to have real resonance for the reader, the bad person needs to actively seek to right their past wrongs.
fifth, make amends for previous actions
While it may not be possible to undo all past deeds—for instance, people can’t be un-killed—the desire and ambition to make some effort to mitigate or make amends for these previous actions is what draws us.
Why does this resonate?
There’s something about the bad person doing a good thing that resonates.
There are resonances from the bible and there’s something ingrained in every civilization—something elemental with which all humans can connect.
Maybe it’s because we all see our own failings and hope we can do better. Maybe we see our own failings and can forgive the failings of others, but only forgive if they show us that they are worthy of forgiveness. Maybe we need to “see” the atonement to be reassured that the change is real. Or maybe we just want a better, fairer world and feel a relief when we see it.
But we don’t want to just see a bad person doing a good thing—we have to believe it. Central to that belief is seeing the step-by-step change.
Until September
It’s always good to have a baddie…but it’s better to have a baddie who can do good. Take some time with what you’re reading and watching and notice the subtle shifts as the bad guys try to do better.
I’ll be back in September. Until then.
All the best
Simon