Gordon Brown

In many cases, I don’t set out to create a baddy. I’m not one for planning a book. When working, I tend to be writing about 2,000 words a day, so I’m not advanced plotting. My characters tend to form as they write, so the unfolding story will dictate which are goodies and which are baddies. Some start out as goodies, become bad. Some start out as baddies, become good. My stories often have a vein of character redemption through them at some point so, therefore, there may be a baddy that becomes better, if that makes sense. And that can be slowly or that can be a road to Damascus moment. Some characters within a book are just there to complicate, frustrate, or even destroy the main protagonist’s life. And their badness can either be organic, i.e. just bad because they’re bad for the sake of it. But some are better than that in terms of characterisation, because they’re more Machiavellian. They have their own end game in sight, they’re willing to lie, to cheat, use violence, et cetera, to get their way. The latter are better because they add more to the plot and they also leave the reader asking the question, Why are they doing that?

I tend to approach characters by seeing them as manipulators, first and foremost. In this way, I can give them a reason to act badly, which in their head, if you can talk about the inside a fictional character’s head, gives them justification and motivation to do what they’re doing. I remember watching a podcast of a CIA official in America, a good number of years ago, talking about what goes on inside a terrorist's head. They were trying to find out. And one of the things they realised, that no terrorist sees themself as the bad guy. They may be doing bad things, but their internal justification is important, because that’s what they’re working on. And, therefore, I’ll often say to my baddies right, OK, what do they really want? And if I manage to do that, I can then just let my imagination run riot and then try and describe what it is they’re going to do to get it.

I believe that a reader has to connect to a baddy in some positive level, but badness is a relative thing. A less bad character in a book could almost be a goody sometimes, and that happens a lot. One way I help readers identify with baddies is that, when I’m creating the character, I need them, and for them read me, not to sympathise with them, not necessarily, but do need them to empathise with them. I need them to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. Yes, they may still want their comeuppance. People love baddies when they fall over. In some cases, they actively crave that, but they need to have some connection to the character through empathy for their actions and for what they’re doing. And that’s important to me.

I would say a completely unlikeable character doesn’t really work in a book, unless there’s some sort of rogue element that just in there because you need them for a moment. Readers often say that, if they don’t like a character, they can buy a book or they won’t like a book. I’m not always sure it’s likeability, I would say in some cases it’s whether they can relate to the characters more important. But I may be wrong.

If you mean do I rationalise the behaviour in my books, and as much as it gives justifications for the baddy’s actions, then the answer’s yes. That’s not to say that irrational, random violence or bullying or cheating, or any of that, might not play a part once in a while. But as I said earlier, if the reader doesn’t approve or understand of what’s being done by the baddy, then they will just buy out of it. Even if the reasons are warped, as long as they understand. I often talk about the handbrake moment when I’m writing a book. That’s the bit when you’re reading a book, you get to a certain passage, the character does or say something in the book that just makes you go, really? And you buy out of the book. And you want to avoid that like plague. And one of the ways that that can happen is if you insert irrational behaviour that the reader just doesn’t buy into.

In some cases, readers can have a very deep relationship with the characters. You can tell this by the way that some readers talk about the plot. They talk about the characters. They talk about if they’re almost real people. Whether they’re willing on their hero, cussing the baddy, hoping love blossoms, waiting in redemption, crying with sadness, laughing with joy, all and much more of that comes from their relationship with the characters.

In terms of the impact the character has on a reader. One of the favourite questions or a couple of the favourite questions that get asked at writing panels when you’re doing crime writing panels is, Why do you write bad? Aren’t you scared somebody is going to copy it, or why do you write about that stuff? Why do you write about the bad stuff? I often point out, actually, real life’s far worse. There’s things out there in real life that I would never put in a book. There’s stuff I will not write about and the stuff that my editor would turn round and say to me, do you know what, that just doesn’t work. What I hope can be taken from my writing is that the reader gets to connect, in some way, to a world that they don’t inhabit and maybe makes them think on that and think on what’s happening inside that world, even outside of the book.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a situation that I’ve offended or outraged somebody or not that they’ve told me. Although I have to say, secretly, I don’t want to offend someone, but a bit of outrage wouldn’t actually be that bad, because it would kind of mean emotionally they’re engaged with what I’m writing.

One of the main techniques I use to transport the reader into the world is I write in present tense, first person. And the reason I do that is it gives a real immediacy to what’s going on around you and an insight, because you’re actually inside the character’s head all of the time. It does have its limitations, though, and therefore I have to find ways around it. So, for instance, the reader can’t-- or sorry, the character can’t be in places they’re not in so I have to rely on other characters to tell them what happened, or I have to come out of first person point of view. Or, in other cases, I’ve also got to be careful because I have to take my foot off the gas now and again. First person can be quite relentless if you’re reading it, so I have to find ways out of that. And one of the ways I like to get out of that-- I use it a lot-- is I’ll put material into my book, like a clipping from a newspaper or an email, or something written. And I’ll give you a good example. At the moment in my new book, Thirty-one Bones, all the way through the book, I’ve actually used transcripts from the Spanish police interviews to introduce the characters. By doing that, you can give a real level of insight to people that just comes from a slightly different angle. A couple of other things I like to do-- the show, don’t tell adage is still worth its weight in gold. Just avoid the telling bit and do the showing bit. And the other thing to do, or the other thing I like to do, is to shorthand my way into how someone is thinking or what somebody’s seeing or what somebody’s feeling is to use analogies but just twist them slightly. Just change the ones that are there, just to give them a little bit of surprise when people are reading it.

I probably have created an amoral world. The closest I got was I wrote a book called Fifty-nine Minutes. And Fifty-nine Minutes is about a kid, 16-year-old kid, who, through a whole set of immoral actions and over the next few years, rises to be the most powerful crime lord in the UK, only to have it all taken away one day, literally taken away, and he’s sent to jail for 20 years. When he gets back out 20 years later, he sets out in revenge. But the problem is he’s no longer got the contacts or the power. He’s actually a down and out on the streets. And in order to make that amoral world live, I actually set it in real places, in Glasgow and in Spain. And what I do is everything around about them is normal. What is not normal is the way that they act.