During tea with a friend the other day, I was asked if I’ve ever considered writing something from the villain’s point of view. It’s a fair question. The villain is always more fun to play, to watch, to fantasize about (okay, that might be too much information), and can be more fun to write. After all, he always thinks he’s the hero. Even if he knows he’s doing wrong, he thinks he does it for the right reasons. It’s in the eye of the beholder, right?
I love my bad guys. They’ve been pretty tame compared to the psychopathic serial killers and die hard terrorists currently fashionable in Hollywood, but they were definitely fun to write. Mind you, my heroes tend toward a little darkness as well. Gosh darn it, even the white knight starring in my current project has a few dents in his armour and I thought he was absolutely pure. I’m hardly disappointed in him, since I know what made the dents, but boy, he’s being more difficult than I thought he’d be and that’s been frustrating.
Anyway, I was reminded of the brouhaha that blew up when Bret Easton Ellis wrote American Psycho back in the 1980s. I didn’t read the book, since I wasn’t at all interested in the workings of a serial killer’s mind, but the controversy made me think about censorship and the right to write. It also shot the book into the media spotlight and made Ellis more famous than he might have been without the fuss, but that’s an ironic aside. More power to him, in fact.
After some deliberation, I concluded that he had done what most writers are driven do: he told the character’s story as the character wanted it told. I suppose he could have refused to tell it, but if he had refused, chances are that someone else would have taken it on and the same uproar would have happened at a later date. Worse, Ellis might have regretted saying ‘No’. Censoring yourself is part of the drill, but when a character is adamant, there’s really no choice but to spin the tale to its finale.
Sting tells the story of a song called “Tomorrow We’ll See”. He had the music all figured out and was waiting for the lyric to come. When it came, it came with a character who happened to be a male transsexual prostitute. Sting fought it, the character fought back, and in the end, won her case by accusing him of judging her harshly based on her circumstance. So he wrote the song. I’m glad he told the story of its genesis—not only is it a favourite of mine for the musical style, but the writer in me completely related to the conflict he faced in finding the words.
My poet friend Nicole has lately begun experimenting with short fiction and was hailed by a character who turned out to be a gigolo. She, like Sting, initially fought it but the man wouldn’t leave her alone. In the end, she produced a piece that revealed the potential for more layers than a mille fois in a guy whom she wasn’t even sure she liked. She’s now considering working more with him down the road … assuming she ever gets through the waitlist of characters lined up behind him.
I guess my point isn’t about censorship so much as it is about the writer’s responsibility to honour the characters who present themselves as they are, not as what may be socially acceptable or politically correct. Truly, I don’t know where they come from. Few of mine reveal themselves in their entirety; I have to work with them before the colour of their hat comes clear. I have, on occasion, declared aloud, “I need a bad guy,” and one graciously appears. They’re imperative in plot development, after all. But sometimes a name will drift past my ear or a face will catch my inner eye and I’ll be curious enough to follow the thread …
