3.3 Making a murderer

In the previous sections you explored the importance of both situational and dispositional factors in how we explain human behaviour, but do these feature in the creation of fictional characters, particularly those that undertake extraordinary behaviour, such as villains? In the video below Ian Rankin talks about his creative process, which is fascinating in itself, but also demonstrates that a fictional villain’s behaviour is not always simply a product of their personality. Instead, Ian discusses the necessary creative complexity involved in creating a believable and complex character, and how the author must not locate the cause of that behaviour simply through reference to either situational or dispositional factors.

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IAN RANKIN

I mean, I’m possibly not the best person to talk to about this. I was never-- I didn’t read crime fiction until I started writing it. I’m the only crime writer I know who was not a fan of crime fiction before they began writing crime fiction. I grew up with the American novel, with cinema, with TV cop shows, and with Scottish literature. I grew up with Jekyll and Hyde. I grew up with dark Gothic tales set in Scotland or written by Scottish authors.

And the first Rebus novel I wrote was meant to be an updating of the theme of Jekyll and Hyde. You were meant to think the detective Rebus, who was only going to be around for one book. You were meant to think he’s potentially the killer. He has blackouts during that book. He wakes up not remembering what he did the night before. He has a locked room in his flat. And I was trying to make the reader think this person is potentially Jekyll and Hyde. But then he stuck around. So then he suddenly wasn’t that anymore. But I don’t think too much about it. I start with a theme that I want to explore, a question I want to explore about the way the world is.

I find a plot that allows me to explore that theme. And then I think, OK, what characters do I need? So, oftentimes, when I start a book, I have no idea who the killer is. And it’s only through writing the first draft of the book, i.e. playing detective, getting to know the characters, and how they connect to each other, and people’s possible motives. It’s only then that I start to discover who the culprit is and why they did what they did. And that’s always worked for me.

I don’t know if it would work for too many other writers. But one book, The Hanging Garden, I think I was on the second draft before I worked out who the killer was. I just had these big blank bits that had to be filled in later on.

And it was only in reading through the first draft that I started to go, well, wait a minute. If he did that, then possibly this person who we met earlier in the book might have been connected to that and might have ended up killing him because of that.

That all came about quite late on in the process. And some people would panic at that. I think a lot of writers would panic at not knowing where a story is meant to go. James Ellroy, famous American crime writer, writes 300-page synopses of his books before he starts.

I start with a handful of pages. Usually, which run out by the time I’ve got to page 50. Because by then, I’ve used up all the ideas I had. And by then, hopefully, the story has gone off on a tangent that’s quite interesting.

And I just follow it. I just grab onto the story and hope it will lead me in a direction that wants me to go in and reveal to me who the killer is and why.

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It is likely that you may have written more about your villain’s character than you wrote about the situations they found themselves in. This is because of our tendency to see the actions of others as resulting from dispositional factors. In other words, we think the villain acts the way they do because of who they are (their personality) and not because of the situation they find themselves in. After all, we would never act like a villain even if we found ourselves in the same situation as them! This is the fundamental attribution error at work again. Take a look at your list and see if this was the case for your particular favourite villain.