Craig Robertson

When I go about creating a new character, whether it’s a villain or a good guy, the process is the same. And I think the process has to be the same. I have to treat the villain with the same respect in terms of the writing process as I have a protagonist. So I need them to be fully fleshed. I need them to be three dimensional. I need to know about their motivation. And I think that’s probably, in terms of the process, the most important part. I need to know what they want. And I need to know why they want it. So it helps me to know the background. Even if sometimes that background doesn’t appear on the page, I need to know. I need to know their makeup. I need to know what drives them. And I think that’s equally as important, regardless of whether the character is, in inverted commas, ‘good or bad’. If I don’t know where they come from and what they want, then it’s unlikely I can let the reader believe fully in that. In terms of whether they spring forward fully fleshed, no, sadly, most often, they don’t. And that is a process-- an organic process-- that they become more alive to me during the writing of the book, and quite often, I might be 1/3, 2/3 of the way in before something else. I learn more about them, and then it’s a question of going back and seating that in so that by the end of the process, I need to know as much about them as if they were sitting in the room beside me, as if they were a member of my own family, although, in many cases, they were better or worse than members of my own family. So I need to know them as well as I can.

By the very nature of writing a crime novel, we are raising moral questions. As crime writers we have various tasks, the first one being simply to entertain the reader. We have to have them coming away having enjoyed the book, to have been thrilled or scared or amused. Well, we’d like also to pose questions about society. That is a large part of what drives us to do what we do. By the very nature of that, we’re at the edges of it. And we need morally questionable acts in the book, and so people have to commit these. So it’s an imperative that we have people behaving in morally dubious ways, and the book would not work without that. So it’s down to us to explore why they do them. And that’s maybe the key part of our books, as much as our reveal, as much as a twist or some big action scene, is we know why these things are being carried out. And our job is to explore them, let the reader ask questions. So we need people who are on the edge. It may be the ultimate sin of committing murder. It may be behaving badly, deception. Whatever it is, we need a reason for it.

I think it’s important to us, the readers identify with our characters. Again, whether they’re the good guys or the bad guys, they have to identify with them. They don’t always have to like them or love them or support them, but they have to have a connection with them. To do that, again, the important thing is to make them as real as possible. Most people come in shades of grey, and so characters in a novel should as well. I never had much fun reading characters who are all good or all bad, because I don’t think that’s particularly realistic. So I want mine to have faults and I want them to have positive elements to their character. And if readers can buy into that, then it will work. And if they don’t buy into it, then I’m not doing my job and they’re not going to enjoy the book. So it’s about making them relatable, impactful, as much as being likeable. Likeable is a secondary thing. In many cases we don’t want them to be liked, because they are doing terrible things, but as long as there’s an understanding of why they’re doing it.

When it comes to the likability of villains, I guess there’s two questions. One is, do you worry that people don’t like them? And do you worry that they do? And I think the answer to both is the same, is you have to write your character for who they are and not get yourself bogged down whether people are going to be on their side or not, because people will take different sides. And that’s OK. The main character from my first novel, it was written first person from the point of view of a killer. Now, he’s not meant to be likable, but there is questions of empathy. And I know that readers took either side of that, and that’s OK. There's no right or wrong answer here. So the character has to be who they are. And that’s key, and you cannot veer away from that. And worrying about the likability would be a mistake. It’s not like going to school and want everybody to be on your side. It’s treat them as they are.

I think if readers don’t form a relationship with my characters, our characters, then we’re really not doing our job and the book will not work. There has to be a symbiotic relationship from writer to character to reader. Again, they may not like them. That’s OK. Many characters are meant not to be liked. They’re meant to be hated or feared. But there has to be a relationship there. The reader has to be immersed with the character, involved with the character. They can root for them, or they can boo them. But if they ignore them, then we’re lost. So whatever message we’re trying to get across, whatever story we’re trying to tell, it’s vital that readers are invested in the characters. Likability, very much a second option, but they have to have a relationship with them. If they ignore them or don’t care about them, the book’s not going to work.

The question of empathy with villains is a tricky one. And I think it varies author to author, and it certainly varies book to book. I’ve had villains who are mostly off page, whose identity of being the villain or the killer is not revealed till later in the book. So in those instances it’s not as important. But I’ve written three, four books where the villain, the killer is upfront and obvious, in plain sight. And then in at least two of those cases I have sought empathy, sympathy. The terms are not necessarily that useful. If I can make my reader understand-- and I know I’ve sometimes toyed with their emotions of putting them on the side of the villain. And they don’t always like that. I’ve had people say, mainly jokingly, you made me root for someone who’s been killing people. And I haven’t felt uncomfortable with that. And I took that as a bit of a badge of honour. I’m fine with that. Again, people don’t come in black and white. They come in shades of grey. And if we’re going to have any understanding of the human psyche, then at times, we’re going to be on one side or the other. So I have invested characters with empathy, and that’s, again, about making them real, about motivations. You might not agree with what someone does, but if you have a sense of why they’ve done it and think, well, maybe if I was pushed to the edge and in that circumstance, I might have done the same thing. Then I think readers will go along with that. They’ll buy into that if you do it properly.

I think it’s inevitable that our characters should impact on our readers. Now, they ought to be invested enough in them that they care about the results of their actions, the consequences, about what happens to them. Are our characters going to change readers? That seems less likely. I do not have the fear, I’ve never had the fear that writing about a killer is going to encourage a reader to go out and act in some kind of nefarious way. I don’t think that’s likely. Anyone who was minded to do that was minded to do that anyway. I’m not writing a how-to manual. I don’t have worries on that front. We do encourage readers to think about situations, for good or for bad. If they find themselves empathising with a villain, I would think they can see the consequences of this villainous action, and they’re much less willing to act that out. I don’t think that we are in any danger of turning people to a life of crime or to commit murderous acts. I’m hoping that that’s the case.

I think I’m lucky enough not to have had too many angry letters of complaint, people being offended by what my characters do. I think most crime fiction readers understand, A, that it’s fiction. And, B, that by the nature of it, we are going to have characters who do terrible things. So they expect that. So it’s happened that people have been outraged, maybe sometimes in a couple of my earlier books, at the level of violence that’s there. People can be outraged at that, and they are because not everyone wants the same level of that. Some are just not ready for it at all. And yet I have taken feedback on board, particularly early on. And I think you’d be foolish not to listen to your readers. If enough people tell you something, then you-- maybe you should be buying into that. So yeah, there is a relationship there. It’s an education process both ways. But at the end of the day, you have to make your own decisions. Learn from feedback, but you have to write your own books.

I think to bring readers into the world that we create is by making things believable, relatable, that they can think, well, yeah, I know someone like that. I’ve been to a place like that. I like to use place as much as possible. Most of my books are set in and around Glasgow. And I like to use the landmarks, the people, the characteristics of the place. So if I can bring that alive and inject my books with that, then I believe people are going to buy into it. So it’s about taking them on a journey, and you want to play with their minds along the way. But we create a world that they can walk the streets with us. That’s the whole idea. As a writer, sometimes I think when I’m in the shoes of a character, it’s a bit like being an actor in that you take on that persona for the short time that you’re writing their personality. And you try to do the same with the reader. You try to put them in the cast. You try to put them on the street so that they feel that they’re there. And if we get that right, then they’re deep in that book and they’re going to stay in that book until they’re done with it.

I’ve never created a world or a book where everyone is amoral or deviant, mainly because I don’t believe such a world exists. I don’t want to be in such a world. I don’t want to write about such a world. I think we have enough problems in society today that we not have to create a dystopian world where everything is bad. So it’s about showing the dark and the light, and I think the contrast of that is quite often what makes a crime novel work. So if everything is bad, there’s no solution, there’s no salvation for anyone. So that’s not a world I want to get too deep into. So I want there to be shades, and I think that’s the way society works. And we want more light by the end of the book than dark. And if we’re going dark from start to finish, from a personal point of view, that’s no fun at all.