Monday, April 30, 2012

Five Categories of Murder, Plus Two More

The FBI has come up with five categories of murder. I'm stealing this information out of Sean Mactire's book,  Malicious Intent: A Writer's Guide to How Murderers, Robbers, Rapists, and Other Criminal Think. It's the perfect resource for creating believable antagonists. Anyway, here's the list (nearly word-for-word):

1. Felony Murder. A homicide committed during the commission of a serious crime, such as armed robbery, hijacking, or arson.

2. Suspected Felony Murder. Pretty self-explanatory.

3. Argument-Motivated Murder. A homicide that occurs during a domestic dispute and is distinct from criminal-motivated murder, the proverbial "crime of passion."

4. Other Motives. Homicides with identifiable motives that are separate from the first three types of murders. 

5. "Unknown" Motives. Homicides with no clear motive present.

These seem pretty straight-forward, so I won't dwell too much on them, but it might be nice to know what kind of murderer you have in your book. Moving on, there are two categories of mass murder:

1. Family Mass Murder. This is the killing of four or more members of the same family by another family member. 

2. Classic Mass Murder. This is the killing of four or more non-family victims in a single location at one time. This is the type of seemingly motiveless crime that is becoming more and more prevalent worldwide. The motive, if there is one, is usually discovered long after the killings took place, but the pattern indicates that classic mass murderers are mentally ill people who vent their hostility against society in an orgy of stabbings and/or shootings of victims chosen at random. 

A Spree Killer is someone who commits murder in two more locations, but the killings are linked by motives as a single event.

A Serial Killer is someone who has killed three or more people over a period of time, usually with a cooling off period between the murders, whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification. 

The terminology isn't all that important (unless you mis-label your serial killer as a spree killer, then your readers will wonder why you didn't do your research well enough). What's really important in these categories is the motive. Every bad guy has a reason for doing what he does, even if the police don't know it. As the author, you have to know why your antagonist is killing people. Is he receiving instructions from the Gammazed's mother ship orbiting Earth? Is he killing redheaded women in an attempt to silence his abusive mother's memory? Is he trying to expand his scientific knowledge of the human brain? Is he desperate for a woman to love him unconditionally? Is he trying to feel something, anything, other than apathy/ennui? Know your antagonists motive and you'll be one step closer to creating a believable character that readers will root against. And that's all you can ask for.

Next time, I'll discuss the profile matrix. It's a complex process, so it may take more than one post.

-Sonja

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Psychotic Psychopaths

I've begun a series based on the book Malicious Intent: A Writer's Guide to How Murderers, Robbers, Rapists, and Other Criminal Think by Sean Mactire to help novelists create better, more believable antagonists. Today's discussion centers around the definition of the two major categories of violent criminals: psychotic and psychopath. Both categories refer to someone who is mentally ill. There are differences, though.

Psychotics are legally insane and make up only a small portion of violent criminals. Psychotics are out of touch with reality, and often hear voices or see visions or both. Their madness has led them to commit murder. Think of Norman Bates from Psycho. These are the criminals who, if they're caught and diagnosed properly, end up in psychiatric hospitals.

Psychopaths, or sociopaths, are in touch with reality and are not legally insane. They know right from wrong, and they are aware that their criminal behavior is wrong, yet they consciously choose to follow an evil path. They lack a conscience and couldn't care less about the harm they do. Their crimes are, at times, regarded as sport. They commit their crimes without guilt or remorse. These criminals, if they're caught and convicted, end up in prisons.

They both feel a "hunger" -- they feed on the fear of their victims, the power they derive from their acts, and the pleasure (often sexual) that their acts provide. I'm not talking about the teen-ager who engages in petty theft to fuel a drug problem, although in that case, the youth in question could easily escalate into something more serious. This "hunger" is applied to the population of criminals who engage in violent acts. 

I like how Mactire sums it up: they have a "constant desire to be childishly self-indulgent. A criminal wishes to do whatever he/she pleases with nothing but contempt and total disregard for the rights and feelings of others. The criminal always, like a child, wants something for nothing...he is totally subjective. In short, a criminal is nothing more than a ruthless adult who never stops behaving like a child."

Applying this to antagonists is simple. If your bad guy is psychotic, he's hearing voices that urge him to murder. I've never tried to put one of these guys in a novel, but you have to be careful so it comes across as realistic, not melodramatic or comedic. 

If your bad guy is a psychopath, he's a guy who doesn't care about anybody but himself. He feels no guilt for killing someone, or the hurt he causes family members, or the impact such losses have on society. These baddies are easier to write than the first because they know the difference between right and wrong, they just don't care. The more "normal" you make this guy look in his day-to-day life, the scarier he is because he's indistinguishable from the rest of society. Sometimes these guys began life with a conscience, but sear it through repeated acts of violence, thereby making themselves into a sociopath, and that's something you can work with in a novel: showing his degeneration.

Then again, your bad guy doesn't have to be psychotic or psychopathic. He could be a sane, functional member of society who snaps in a moment of anger or frustration and kills someone. But he isn't the type of guy to kill again--once was a fluke, and he'd probably feel guilty about his actions after the passion of the moment settles. These are the guys who have been pushed just a little too far by the nagging wife or disrespectful teen and they lash out with a fist or a handy machete. So he might not be the best antagonist for a story. He's easily caught and unlikely to reoffend.

No matter what type of antagonist you create, give him some redeeming quality to make him "human." Darth Vader had a soft spot for his son. Gollum responded to kindness. Skar (from The Lion King) enjoyed music. If your antagonist is totally evil, then he doesn't seem real to the reader. So have fun creating a deliciously evil bad guy, but find some good trait to temper the badness. 

In my next post, I'll discuss the five categories of murder as listed by the FBI. 

-Sonja

Monday, April 23, 2012

Human Behavior

In an effort to multi-task, my next series of posts will contain information from the Howdunit series, a book called Malicious Intent: A Writer's Guide to How Murderers, Robbers, Rapists, and Other Criminal Think by Sean Mactire. Sounds uplifting, doesn't it? Getting inside the mind of your antagonist can be oodles of fun, especially when you have such a great resource. I also have my husband, a crime analyst extraordinaire who happens to study serial killers and criminal profiling in his free time. But ya'll don't have my husband, so you'll have to buy the book. Or read my upcoming posts, because I'll cover a lot of the great stuff that you need.

The first step in understanding a criminal mind is to know what governs basic human behavior. Abraham Maslow figured out five categories:

1. Physical - needs of the physical body, like food and clothing

2. Security - the need for shelter (sounds like a physical need to me, but Maslow singled it out as separate)

3. Belongingness and love - while grammatically screwy, these needs concern the desire for roots and the desire to be wanted and loved (including sex, of course)

4. Esteem - the desire to be liked and respected

5. Self-actualization - the need to know and understand the world around us, to invent and create, and to discover the joy of solving problems

Mactire goes on to say that the average citizen is governed by these needs. When hungry, you think of nothing but finding food. To a homeless person, life is a constant pursuit of food, clothing, shelter, and maybe enough liquor to ease the pain of suffering. After meeting the physical and security needs, you seek to satisfy sexual needs, the need for affection and emotional security. Next, you direct your attention to the need to be liked, the need for self-esteem, and seeking admiration from those around you. Self-actualizataion is the last need to be met, and many people never get to this stage, especially if meeting those first four needs take all their time and energy. 

Criminals have these needs, too, just like ordinary non-criminals. So what makes the criminals different from the law-abiding citizens? They give in to their darker sides, their sins. We all sin. We all lie to our spouses and yell at our kids and take pencils home from work. But there's something else going on inside the criminal mind. Mactire identifies three basic traits that signify the "criminal personality."

1. Weakness - emotional and/or physical, lacking in discipline
2. Immaturity - childish egocentrism
3. Self-deception - distorted sense of personal reality, severely narcissistic

When creating a villain for your novel, keep these things in mind. He's got the same basic needs that your hero has, but the villain is lacking emotional maturity and impulse controls. Sounds simple enough, but that's just the start--it goes much deeper than that. Stay tuned for more on this fascinating topic. 

-Sonja

Thursday, April 19, 2012

What's on my reading list this week

In my last post, I finished a rather long series on creating believable characters. While I contemplate what topic to cover next, I thought it'd be fun to share what's on my To-Read list this month:

Celebrity in Death by JD Robb
Cooking the Books by Kerry Greenwood
The Plot Whisperer by Martha Alderson
Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher 
Scent by Clint Kelly
All the Tess Gerritsen Rizzoli and Isles books
Seizure by Kathy Reichs
Love in a Nutshell by Janet Evanovich and Dorien Kelly
Taken by Robert Crais
The First 50 Pages by Jeff Gerke

It's a rather large stack (18 books total) but I think I can get through them before the library wants them back. The one I'm most looking forward to is Celebrity in Death, followed by Cooking the Books and Taken. I'm fairly certainI won't enjoy Love in a Nutshell (I don't appreciate romances) but I like Janet's writing style, so I'm going to give it a shot. I'm also not sure I'll enjoy Thirteen Reasons Why, mostly because of the subject matter (teen suicide), but I read some awesome reviews, so I thought I'd give it a try. I'll let you know on that one.

Clint Kelly will attend a writer's conference in May that I also attend each year, so I want to read his book before I get there. Jim Rubart will also be there, so I've got his books on hold at the library. They're also holding a Brandilyn Collins book for me, but she won't be at the conference this year.

Along with all this reading, I've started a new writing project. I'm deep in the research/outlining phase, so I'm not actually writing yet, but I'm in the Excitement Phase of the writing cycle (the five-stage cycle being Excitement, Delusions of Grandeur, Panic, Compulsive Eating, and Delivery) and that will eat into my reading time. As will my children, house maintenance, errands... life is terribly inconvenient. There's just not enough time for all the reading and writing I want to do.

-Sonja

Monday, April 16, 2012

Building Characters -Psychological and Moral Need

I finished the examination of Jeff Gerke's book on building believable characters, but I found a great source that adds another interesting layer. It's from John Truby's book The Anatomy of Story. Truby agreed that all great heroes have an inner flaw, a weakness and a need that holds him back. Actually, there's TWO: a psychological need and a moral need.

The psychological need is a flaw that hurts no-one but the hero. An example is someone who has low self-esteem. 

The moral need involves a flaw in how he treats others. He hurts those around him, whether he means to or not. He needs to learn how to act properly toward others.  An example is a man with an alcohol addiction problem. He thinks his drinking affects only himself, but he's mooching money from his friends, he's neglecting his loved ones, and he's dishonoring his family name. 

Truby says that by connecting the moral and psychological needs of your hero, you create a character who is much more sympathetic and will have a more powerful revelation (called the Moment of Truth in Jeff's system). An easy way to find that connection is to push a strength so far that it becomes a weakness:

1. Identify a virtue in your character, then make him so passionate about it that it becomes oppressive. Or

2. Come up with a value the character believes in, then find the negative version of that value and have him deal with it.

Example #1: Your character loves justice. Everything should be fair, the law should apply to everyone equally, and no one should be allowed to abuse the law. This is a healthy virtue that makes for a polite society. Now take it one step further. Your hero is so passionate about justice that he becomes a vigilante. He kills serial killers (Dexter). He chases criminals (Batman). He seeks revenge for a gross injustice done to him (Patrick Jane from The Mentalist). In each of these examples, the psychological need for the hero is to uphold justice. His moral need is that he's gone rogue and now justice no longer operates properly. Dexter's moral need lead to the death of his wife. Patrick Jane's moral need lead to the murder of a man who wasn't the Main Bad Guy. 

Example #2: Your character values family and honor. There is nothing more important than protecting the family. Then his brother defies the family and does something criminal and criminally stupid, so now your character needs to deal with the mess. That's Michael Corleone from The Godfather.

By layering these needs in your character, you create a more powerful and emotional experience for the reader. 

-Sonja

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Building Characters - The Final State

I apologize for being late with this post. You know the "good intentions" excuse, so I'll let you fill it in. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. Jeff Gerke wrote an awesome book about building believable characters called Plot vs. Character. I'm giving you the good stuff.

This is the end of the hero's inner journey. She was happy in her dysfunction, but the pesky author came along and messed it all up by forcing her to see how the old way was slowly killing her.  The alternative required a major change and a great risk, but it'd be healthier for her in the long run. She was forced to choose. Now she's at the Final State: what life is like after she's made her choice.

For starters, she won't be the same person she was at the beginning of the story. "The journey itself defines character," Jeff says. Whatever she chose in her moment of truth, her final state has a direct correlation to who she was at the beginning. Maybe she's now the opposite of her beginning state. Maybe she's gone the other direction and is now much worse. "The Final State is both a reflection and an amplification of the initial condition." 

Think of Anakin Skywalker. He had good and evil in him at the beginning of his story. His mentor thought the evil had been driven out, but it wasn't, and it took over. Later, Vader's son appealed to the good side, and in his moment of truth, Vader chose the good. It cost him his life, but he found redemption. His Final State was a moment of peace and reconciliation with his son before death. His condition was the complete opposite of his beginning.

Think of Gollum. He had good and evil within him at the beginning. The ring drove most of the good from him. Frodo tried to find the goodness within Gollum, and almost succeeded. In the end, though, Gollum chose the ring. Gollum's Final State lasted about 40 seconds of screen time as his body fell toward the steaming lava pit of Mt. Doom. The look of joy on his face as he beheld his precious ring, slowly falling with him toward destruction, was his reward for his final choice. It didn't last long, but he had it. 

Once your character has made her choice, don't leave the reader hanging as to what happens next. Let them see your character dealing with the aftermath of this life-changing choice. Is she happy with the decision she made? Is her life now more fulfilling, more joyful? Or does she regret her choice? Does she now pay the consequences, but they're too high, and it leads to madness or despair?

Look for extreme ways to reveal this emotional state. Don't settle for narrative summary ("he rode off into the sunset on a white horse"). You've lead the reader on an intense emotional experience, so don't skimp on the ending. Show your hero externalizing what he's feeling on the inside. If you tie this final scene to the initial condition, you create a satisfying and resonating ending for your reader.

Ebenezer Scrooge reacted to Tiny Tim in normal humbug fashion at the beginning of the story, but at the end, Scrooge treats the boy with kindness.  In A New Hope, Vader tried to kill Luke Skywalker and defend the Emperor. At the end of the story arch, Vader embraced Luke and killed the Emperor. The symmetry of "bookending" the initial condition and the final state resonates well and makes the book feel complete and intentional.

That completes the hero's journey and the first half of Jeff's book. The second half deals with plot, if you want to check it out on your own. 

-Sonja

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Building CHaracters - Escalation Part Two

Thank you, Jeff Gerke, for the excellent book Plot vs. Character. For the past umpteen posts I've been highlighting portions of the book in an effort to understand how to build an awesome character. I'm in the middle of chapter 10, which covers the Escalation portion of the character's inner journey.

I'll admit I'm hard-pressed to paraphrase Jeff in this last half of the chapter because he says it so well. Check it out:

"Nobody likes change. We get set in our ways. We like the comfortable and the familiar. Yet we're barraged by pleas to change. Don't be happy with your old car; buy this new one. Don't eat at home; eat out. Don't eat at that restaurant, eat at this one... Call now! Don't wait! Offer ends soon...Your character is just like you and me. They don't like to change. They may be aware that things are not ideal in their lives, but they haven't found a better solution than the one they're going with now, so they're going to stick with it."

For characters to change, they need to be convinced that the status quo isn't good anymore. That's what the escalation phase is about: convince your lead character that she can't afford to NOT change.

"People resist change until the cost of staying the same becomes too great," Jeff says. They won't change until it hurts too much to not change. Awkwardly said, but true. Jeff offers a detailed example if you need more. 

Bottom line: Bring on the pain. Make it hurt too much to stay the same. 

Along the way, you'll throw little moments of truth at your character, beginning with the inciting incident. A new way is presented, a suggestion that things can be different. The protagonist has the option of choosing this new path. But the old way is more comfy, and she's not ready for it, so the new way is pushed aside. 

Scrooge did not change his miserly ways when Marley's ghost appeared.

By escalating the tension, by heaping new challenges and moments of truth on your protagonist, you get her to the place where she tries harder and harder to resist the new way and stick with the old. Every time, she come to believe, just a little bit more, that maybe the old way isn't going to work anymore. She gets desperate, but you break her. You bring her to the point where she's finally willing to listen to the alternative. 

This is what happens with Scrooge and the three ghosts. It isn't until the last ghost, when presented with a cold and empty death, that Scrooge finally admits that his old misery ways have hurt him and those around him, and he's in desperate need of change.

In my next post, I'll discuss The Final State, or where you want your character to end up.

-Sonja

Monday, April 2, 2012

Building Characters - Escalation

Jeff Gerke's book Plot vs. Character teaches how to build a believable character. So far, I've discussed how to create a core personality with a believable background, love language, and the generalities (appearance, station in life, occupation, etc). Then I dove into the inner flaw, or character arc. It contains five steps: Initial Condition (including the Knot, or problem), the Inciting Event, Escalation, the Moment of Truth, and the Final State. Today, I'm covering the exciting events of the Escalation. If you need more review, check out previous posts.

Escalation raises the stakes, intensifies the problems, and creates greater stress for the protagonist. The purpose of this escalation is to drive the protagonist toward the Moment of Truth, where he makes her decision to either stay with the status quo or make that major change in his life that he needs.

Your hero has a problem. It's poisoning him, even if he isn't aware of it. He's come up with a way of coping that makes life pretty comfortable, but if he doesn't fix it, it will lead to disaster. His knot can't be remedied easily. It's deeply ingrained in his psyche, a deep-seated fear or anger that will eventually destroy him. Then comes the first attack: the inciting incident. It points out that there is, indeed, a doozy of a problem, it's hurting him, and it won't go away. 

The duel begins: he wants to stay the way he is, but this outside force is pushing him to change. He tries to get past this pesky inciting incident, but he's thwarted. He tries again, and again fails. The problem keeps getting bigger, can't be ignored. There's no dodging it now. 

Puerto Ricans keep arriving in Jets' territory (West Side Story). More and more boys leave Ralph's group to join Jack's (Lord of the Flies). Though Frodo doesn't want to leave the Shire, evil spreads (Lord of the Rings).

Radical measures are necessary. The key is to start this duel with a small attack and work toward bigger attacks, ending at the Moment of Truth, his opportunity for change. "The escalating duel is the vehicle that drives him from his dysfunction to his opportunity to change," Jeff says. He's got some great examples in the book, if you need more explanation.

Bottom line: know what the hero's old way of life will do to him if left unchecked and what a wonder future lies in store if he changes his ways. Once you know that end point, you can create plausible escalation attacks that will lead him to it.

I'll continue this discussion in the next post.

-Sonja