4 Your villain
So far this week you have explored your relationships to some fictional villains that you have previously read about and have listened to crime writing authors talking about how they create the villains they have successfully written about. You have also started to think about some simple concepts in psychology that relate to character and personality and begun thinking about how people’s behaviour might reflect a combination of more enduring characteristics, and more situational or ‘in the moment’ circumstances. You have also learned about the ways in which we think about the behaviour of other people (as opposed to ourselves) might be subject to bias.
Activity 6 Villainy of my own making
There is a well-known phrase that we ‘all have a novel in us’, and it is very common for people to have imagined writing a story. Having thought about your own favourite villains that you like to read about, and having heard about the creation of fictional villains from different crime writers you can now start to think about the type of villain you might be interested in creating yourself should you decide to write a story.
Begin to jot down notes about a fictional character that you might like to create. You can write in sentences or just in short ideas or phrases. You may not need any prompts, but you might find it helpful to answer the following questions as a way of structuring this activity.
- Is your character human or some other kind of entity?
- What would people first notice about your character in terms of how they appear physically? Are they attractive or unattractive, tall or short, what is their stature? Do they have any interesting facial characteristics?
- How would you describe the way your character moves? Is there anything noticeable about their gait?
- What does your villain particularly like and dislike?
- What sorts of other characters is your own villain drawn to and why?
- Is there anything distinctive about how the character sounds or speaks? Do they have anything distinctive about their accent, any phrases they like to use, or any other sounds that they make?
- Do you have an idea yet about what sort of behaviour your villain might engage in? What does your character regret in their life?
- Do you have any ideas as to what might be driving those behaviours? What does your character want in life?
- What sort of situation do you imagine your character might find itself in? Does it fit into mainstream society? Does it hold power? Is it rich or poor? What has it been successful at? When did it last fail?
- Finally give your character a fictional name and an address or location where they might be found.
Make any notes you want to in the box below
You have now started to think about a villainous character that you might find interesting. Keep your notes on this character as you will return to these later on in the course.