When Good Guys Go Bad.

I have been playing with this idea that the world is experienced through characterization. In our favorite books, the world is colored by the narrator. The narrator hands the observer "your opinion", "your feelings" and "your hopes" for the characters. A good author will do this slowly and frequently with an unreliable storyteller narrating the story. I would love to do this, and think that I may give it a whirl at the end of this year. A story told from the perspective of the bad guy.

The reason is not so that I can tout the virtues of someone that everyone would agree is evil, but to show motive to their thought process. Bad guys, after all, are not bad for the sake of "badness", as they are much too self-involved to be interested in just being evil. A truly evil character is often highly moral, and convicted as to his righteousness... At any cost. Hitler was gripped by convictions and he was morally driven. And millions were massacred.

At the same time, I would love to outline my theory on altruism... Though I think that a subject for another blog. 

Selfishness is a pretty brilliant motivator. It leads to disappointment, bitterness, hate and fear. By degrees, a protagonist will move from being "good" to being "bad". A good author will cause the reader to root for the protagonist no matter what. I do not think that I will every be a good enough artist to paint Hitler in a good light, but I hope to be good enough to take a "good" guy and paint a picture that shows him to be as common as the rest of us. Able to make all the same mistakes that any one of us can, and never clean up their messes. 

I would love to create a character that makes a world of horrible messes and have the reader (secretly, maybe) root for them. At the same time, creating a character, who is the essence of altruism, that the reader finds to be a compelling antagonist. I am currently designing such a set of characters. We shall see how that works out.

For those of you who would inquire about the book that I wrote during Nanowrimo in November, I am shoring up loose ends and having cover art created. It should be titled The Plum Line. (Yeah, I know that it's spelled 'plumb'.)