Batman Killed My Mary Sue - When a Character is Just Too Dark
All the world loves a villain. We love to see him revel in his, (or her) own evil-ness. We love to watch, sometimes through parted fingers, the debauchery and vile doings of the world’s most wicked of foes. For, he must be a foe to the hero, someone who is just slightly less powerful, someone who can achieve victory beyond all hope. Someone to save us from this delicious maniac.
The delight in creating a villain is intoxicating. The chance to let go of all of those social rules and moral wrongs is a liberating thing. It allows us as writers to plunge ourselves into the darkest of pits without fear, because we know the stalwart hero will win in the end.
But sometimes, there is a danger in creating the villain that may slip past the unsuspecting writer. That danger is in the making of him. Because a villain must appeal to some part of us. The bad guy must have something about him that makes him relatable, something to anchor him to the reader, even if it’s merely a sense of style. To make the villain so wholly evil as to have no redeeming qualities is just as dangerous as creating the Mary Sue - that character with no flaws, no mistakes in her past and no choice but to do the right thing.
Both become tedious for the reader because there is no surprise. If we know Mary Sue will uncover the bad guy’s plot, we can live with it, as long as there is some question about what she’ll do about it. If we know she will certainly do the right thing… well… why am I reading this again? The same is true for the villain.
Consider this: A henchman brings forth the child, kidnapped as a central plot point. The villain kills the child. There’s no where to go now. The hero must avenge.
But, if the henchman brings forth the child, and offers him up for the slaughter and the villain stabs the henchman, woah! Why? The child has blue eyes, and the villain’s mother had blue eyes. The villain reflects on his mother’s cruelty toward him as a youngster.
Oh, now I want to know more. I’m turning page after page, hoping for more glimpses into his back story as he carves a bloody path through the adults that stand in his way. Why does he do this? If the villain and I share traits, what keeps me from becoming just like him? How close to the edge am I really?
With some aspect of the villain’s character creating doubt about where he sits between good and evil, there is a chance of redemption. Will he take that final step, or will he see the error of his ways? Whatever makes him human, whatever creates that balance between good and evil, no matter how heavily weighted to one side, is what keeps us glued to them and their actions.
That connection is the same for the hero. Comic fans know Batman won’t kill, but it’s his propensity to go right up to that line he won’t cross and lean waaaay out over it that keeps such a character in the pantheon of heroes. It’s the tragic back story that drives him. It’s that drive that creates the tragedies he has endured since becoming who he is. He can’t quit, but he knows he should because of all of the death and cruelty his being a hero has created. And I’m turning pages like they are on fire.
The propensity to write a character as being so evil as to be beyond redemption is strong. For many writers, myself included, I want to create a situation that has the audience cheering for my protagonist. The logical course to take is to make the antagonist so dark, so wholly beyond saving, as to let the reader share my revulsion with him, and cheer his comeuppance. But without that spark, without that pathos or humor or endearing quality, the reader will know the end of your story long before the last page. If that happens, there’s no reason to expect that they will be reading the first page of your next effort.
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This is not your grandmother's fairy tale. A fantasy novel that turns the genre on its head, "The Seeds" follows Trooper Angus Mayweather as he is thrust into the conflict faced by twin sisters Dartura & Varia, Generals of the Tarol Nation. As the sisters uncover a new threat from an old enemy, Angus must do what he can to help as the Tarol Nation faces all-out war.
