2.3 Val McDermid

I want my baddies to be comprehensible to my readers. Because in my experience, generally, people who do terrible things have a very good reason for it inside their own heads. They don’t just do it at random. They don’t just think I'm going to wake up tomorrow and do something totally hideous.

Within their own heads, it makes sense. So when I’m writing a character, I want it to make sense to the reader so it feels authentic to them when they’re reading it. It feels believable to them. So, in that sense, I have to-- if not quite, have my readers identify with the character to find what they do comprehensible and believable.

I don’t particularly worry about their likability because I think, by and large, my readership is pretty sophisticated. They can identify the difference between a person doing bad things and a person doing good things.

I don’t want to make my bad characters the heroes of the book, though. Even when I’ve created characters, the readers want to see come back like Jacko Vance in the Tony Hill and Carol Jordan books. In my head, it’s always very clear that they are not the heroes of the story. It’s not their story. It still remains the story of my protagonists.