Building Better Terrorists

In my last post, I began a discussion on creating a believable terrorist for your antagonist. Today I'll continue the discussion, using information from Sean Mactire's book Malicious Intent: A Writer's Guide to How Murderers, Robbers, Rapists, and Other Criminal Think. 

Mactire says terrorism is "a highly premeditated act of intentional trauma" has three main categories:

1. Goals

The goal of a terrorist is always political. Keep that in mind when developing a bad guy for your novel. Terrorists see themselves as the means of righting some great social or economic wrongs, and they always blame the ruling authorities. They believe that only violence will right the great wrongs that are being done. Their goal is the moral imperative that justifies their means. On a side note, terrorists WILL act in direct violation of their religious beliefs to achieve their goals (commit murder/suicide).

2. Strategies/objectives

Their objective is to "terrorize the enemy government and intimidate the public." They don't intend to destroy the enemy, only to use fear as leverage to achieve their goals. Publicity is a huge part of the production, as it elevates public fear beyond what one or two acts of terrorism could locally generate. The terrorist's best weapon is a reporter with a microphone and a camera, so keep that in mind as you plot your novel. 

3. Operations/organizations

"Terrorists always work in predatory groups," Mactire says. Sometimes you'll find an individual terrorist, but mostly you find groups. "Members derive self-esteem from the group and not from the cause. Thus, peer approval becomes the primary motivation for the individual to commit crimes, and the goals of the group take a back-seat... All terrorist groups need sponsors, hosts or a parental relationship with a country or a larger group in order to operate and survive," but terrorists groups rarely have an allegiance to any one particular country. They're usually small groups dedicated to whatever goal they've established.

In my next post, I'll profile a typical terrorist (that seems wrong somehow...) so you can see what personality traits go into one.

-Sonja

Creating Better Antagonists

I was going to entitle this post "How to Create a Better Terrorist," but I figured Homeland Security would latch onto that and I'd be visited by strange men in black. Hence the vague title. I am using the information from Sean Mactire's book Malicious Intent: A Writer's Guide to How Murderers, Robbers, Rapists, and Other Criminal Think to create more believable antagonists, and chapter 13 is all about terrorists. Let's dig in and see what he says.

Mactire starts off with "terrorists are often misrepresented by gross stereotypes and major misconceptions. Not all terrorists are ignorant, unintelligent, foaming-at-the-mouth Arabs. Of all the different types of criminals, terrorists are the most cunning." Automatically, we can toss out the Disorganized criminal attributes we discussed much earlier in this series. The terrorist antagonist will be Organized, with all that entails (look back at my April 2012 posts if you need a reminder).

There's a brief history of terrorism in the book, then Mactire jumps into What Is A Terrorist. He summarizes that is a "political theater" involving premeditation, a script, actors, a stage, and an audience. Most terrorists want mass publicity to get their political message out to the world. After offering several examples of terrorists from history (some of them quite surprising), Mactire offers this full definition of terrorism: "all acts of politically or religiously motivated violence intended to change, through fear and intimidation, public and/or government policy and which are justified to the perpetrators and are heinous crimes to the targets and victims."

This definition covers everything from Muslim extremists crashing airplanes into the World Trade Centers to pro-life zealots shooting doctors and bombing clinics.  Mactire says, "All terrorists consider themselves soldiers," and that really cemented the idea for me. The terrorist antagonist is on a military-style mission to advance his cause, and like all mission-oriented criminals, he's a sociopath who doesn't see his targets as innocent people who have the right to live. He sees them as enemies who deserve to die. He cannot empathize with his victim's family members, nor does he see non-violent methods as viable options. And because of his high intelligence, he's dangerous to everyone around him, not just his intended victims.

I'll continue this discuss in my next post. Any comments on this topic?

-Sonja

Blogging frequency

Michael Hyatt (see his blog here) has a book called Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World. He's also got a blog that gets awesome traffic--and he posts five days a week. So when he said that "there is a direct correlation between frequency and traffic," he inspired me to post more often and more regularly. Last year, I tried to blog every Monday and Thursday. This year, I started a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule. I've been mostly successful at hitting my target, and it's been fun trying to come up with topics that will pique reader interests.

Today's post by Michael Hyatt quotes another guy, Ali Luke, as saying, "there's been a shift in the blogging world. More and more prominent bloggers-on-blogging are moving away from daily posting--and reassuring their readers that you don't have to post every day in order to be successful... I once surveyed readers here on ProBlogger about the reasons they unsubscribed from RSS feeds, and the number one answer was 'posting too much.' Respondents expressed that they developed 'burnout' and would unsubscribe if a blog became too 'noisy.'"

It made me think. Are my posts, which only come three days a week, getting too long, too noisy? I'll admit, the lengths have been getting away from me. The topics are so interesting to me, I want to cover them in-depth instead of just lightly touching them. So I must ask you, faithful readers, have you been skimming the longer posts, or flat-out skipping them? Do you want me to return to short, pithy posts that can be read in a minute or two? Please offer your opinion. 

-Sonja

Why Drug Addicts Do Drugs

In an effort to create believable antagonists, I'm going through Sean Mactire's book  Malicious Intent: A Writer's Guide to How Murderers, Robbers, Rapists, and Other Criminal Think. I'm in Chapter Eleven now, which is about drug abuse. See my previous two posts regarding alcohol abuse and drug abuse. Today's topic is the motivation for drug abuse.

Mactire begins with, "It is one thing to explain the cultural factors behind drug abuse and another to describe the ways that drugs alter behavior, but neither of these explains why people abuse drugs even when the abusers are fully aware of the dangers." I'll admit, drug use has never appealed to me, so I'm interested in finding out why Mactire believes people do drugs. I've had people close to me delve into drugs, but I never understood WHY they did what they did.

Mactire says the explanation is poverty. People use drugs to escape the pain of poverty. And once they've begun the drug use, it quickly become abuse. Middle and upper class people also use drugs to escape the pain of everyday living, but they choose the expensive illegal drugs or the prescription medications available from doctors, and drug abuse in the upper income brackets is not as common as in the lower ones. Mactire finishes the chapter with a brief history of the opium and heroine trades.

I'm not completely satisfied with Mactire's opinion that poverty is the leading motivation of drug use/abuse, so I went to the Internet where everything is true. I'll let you finish laughing before I continue... I went to drugfreeworld.org. They say, "People take drugs because they want to change something about their lives." They think drugs will be a solution to a problem. Then the site offers six reasons young people have given for taking drugs: "to fit in, to escape or relax, to relieve boredom, to seem grown up, to rebel, and to experiment." I think this is a much fuller explanation than just poverty. 

This explanation is also much easier to apply to characters. You've got a teen-age boy from a middle-income family. Why does he do drugs? To rebel against his parents strict rules (I see a bit of Narcissist Personality Disorder here). Or to seem "cool" to his friends (Dependent Personality Disorder?). Or to relax because the pressure to get good grades is too much to handle. (Note: not every drug addict will have a personality disorder, nor will every teen. A high enough percentage of them are selfish without the personality disorder branding. I bring it up to tie together the concepts Mactire has been doling out.)

You've got a teen-age girl from a poverty-stricken household. Why does she do drugs? To escape the ridicule of the other kids because she's wearing Goodwill bluejeans. To seem "cool" to the richer kids. To relieve the never-ending hunger that followers her through the day. To forget, for a time, that she's got nothing and may grow up into nothing.

This can be applied to older characters, too. You've got a twenty-something young woman who's left home to "make it" in the real world, but reality is that living is expensive and minimum wage isn't enough to pay for rent and food. So she turns to prostitution to help pay the bills. She turns to drugs to tune out the humiliation of her choice. (And it IS a choice. She could choose to go home and humble herself to her parents. She could choose to subsist on minimum wage, risking her health or maybe even her life. She could choose to be a drug-free prostitute. If your character actually weighs all these options in the story, she becomes more sympathetic to the reader, even if she does choose the drugs over something else.) Now you've got a character, with or without a personality disorder, who is trapped in the clutches of an addictive drug and will do whatever it takes to continue the addiction. She is properly motivated for a life of crime.

This is a fun game, and I could go on for another hour or two, but I think you can play it on your own. Choose a personality type, plug in a background conducive to criminal behavior (poverty, sexual abuse, etc), maybe even a personality disorder, then add in an addiction and see what kind of antagonist you come up with. Feel free to share your conclusions in the comments section.

-Sonja

Building a Better Drug Addict

I'm in Chapter Twelve (Drug Abuse) of Sean Mactire's book  Malicious Intent: A Writer's Guide to How Murderers, Robbers, Rapists, and Other Criminal Think. Substance abuse is the largest cause of crime and the most predominant influence on criminal behavior, so it's worth studying when you're creating antagonists for your novels. In my last post, I discussed alcohol abuse. Today I'll tackle drug abuse and how that can affect your antagonist.

I know I said this last time, but it's worth repeating: Mactire says, "Add substance abuse to an existing personality disorder, psychosis or neurosis and you have the makings of a walking time bomb... It is a mistake to blame drugs and alcohol alone. The drugs only helped them commit their crimes with greater brutality. They would have committed the same crimes whether high or sober." 

He continues with this: "Complain of pain, and many doctors will medicate you instead of trying to find and treat the cause of the pain." This gave rise to rampant prescription drug addictions in modern society. I'm talking about normal people, folks with jobs, who find themselves addicted to Valium, Xanax, Oxi, amphetamines, etc. Now take this ordinary character with his addiction and add a disorder, like Narcissist Personality Disorder, and you have a character who must have his meds no matter what the cost. It's a beautiful beginning for a bad guy.

The more common variety of criminal drug user is the nonprescription abuse. Cocaine is highly addictive, and "prolonged abuse causes nervousness, delirium, impotence, malnutrition, anemia, extreme paranoia and depression... there are numerous physical dangers, such as liver damage, heart damage, stroke, seizures and death." Cocaine users usually become thieves to support their habit, and once the drug is in their system, they are capable of all manner of violent crimes. 

Opium, morphine, and heroine are also highly addictive, and the crime sprees that follow their use are actually caused by the withdrawal symptoms or the fear of those symptoms. "The withdrawal symptoms include nausea, vomiting, tremors, cramps, convulsions, sweating, diarrhea, shortness of breath, and sometimes heart problems that can be fatal." Addicts will do anything to avoid it, including robbery, burglary, and murder. 

"LSD and PCP are two of the most dangerous behavior-altering drugs," Mactire says. LSD is a quick-acting hallucinogen that "can cause the brain to distort time and other sensory perception. LSD will unlock the user's deeply repressed memories, fears and anxieties; cause a severe lack of coordination; and cause severe nausea, vomiting, convulsions, panic attacks and psychotic episodes." PCP is a psychoactive drug that affects the entire brain, "acting as a depressant, a stimulant, an anesthetic and a a hallucinogen all at the same time. The effects are extremely dangerous and unpredictable, causing slurred speech, convulsions, coma, panic attacks, psychotic reactions, flashbacks, and heart and lung failure." 

A new variation of LSD, called Ketamine, is now being used to commit crimes. Prostitutes use it to knock out victims to rob them, and rapists use it to subdue women without using force. "Not only is the victim rendered unconscious and vulnerable to attack, the drug also impairs the victim's memory, and he or she usually comes to consciousness unaware of having been victimized."

Use these descriptions to create a believable criminal drug addict for your novel. If you need a criminal who's going to be violent to get his next fix, make him a heroine addict. If you need someone who can blend with society, make him a prescription drug addict. There are so many drugs, prescription and illegal, that Mactire couldn't possibly cover them all. You'll definitely need to do more research than the small amount offered here, but this can get you started in the right direction if, like me, you have no clue what these drugs do or why they're attractive to so many people--which just happens to be the topic for my next post.

-Sonja

How to Build a Better Alcoholic

I'm in Chapter Twelve (Drug Abuse) of Sean Mactire's book  Malicious Intent: A Writer's Guide to How Murderers, Robbers, Rapists, and Other Criminal Think. Substance abuse is the largest cause of crime and the most predominant influence on criminal behavior, so it's worth studying when you're creating antagonists for your novels.

Mactire says, "Add substance abuse to an existing personality disorder, psychosis or neurosis and you have the makings of a walking time bomb." Walking time bombs, in my experience, are always unpredictable, and therefore exciting. That's good, for a novel. Let's dig deeper. "It is a mistake to blame drugs and alcohol alone," Mactire continues. "The drugs only helped them commit their crimes with greater brutality. They would have committed the same crimes whether high or sober." 

He offers a history of drug use and abuse in America, including alcohol abuse statistics that are staggering. But history and statistics alone won't help create a believable antagonist, so I'm leaving all that out. There is one tidbit from this section that does seem important: "Alcohol is not a stimulant. It is a depressant that first reduces inhibitions of the higher brain functions... blood alcohol level and behavior are related as follows:"

• From .03 to .05 percent, inhibitions are broken down
• At .10 percent, behavior can become reckless. However, people with low tolerance for alcohol can experience the same behavior changes at lower levels
• At .20 percent, physical coordination and function becomes severely impaired and behavior become uncontrollable
• At .25 percent, a person is "falling down drunk"

Also keep in mind that women have a lower tolerance for alcohol than men, and smaller people usually have a lower tolerance than bulkier people. Severe alcohol abuse will cause damage to the brain, central nervous system, liver, and stomach. It's also common for "alcohol to cause or aggravate personality disorders, which explains why women commit more crimes under the influence of alcohol. Women are also more prone to sleep disorders and volatile tempers and mood swings." Keep these things in mind when creating your character.

To create a believable criminal alcoholic for your novel, choose a personality type, add a personality disorder, then mix in the alcohol with the appropriate behaviors, body damage, and unpredictable tempers/mood swings. Adding the personality type keeps the character from seeming cardboard. Adding the personality disorder and the effects of alcohol adds believability. Remember that alcohol affects people differently. Some people get giggly/happy when they're hammered. Others get depressed or despondent. Some react with violence. Any of those would work for your criminal alcoholic, but choosing something unpredictable might liven up your story.

Did I miss anything? In my next post, I'll cover Mactire's discussions on drug use.

-Sonja

Creating a Better Hitman

I'm in Chapter Eleven of Sean Mactire's book  Malicious Intent: A Writer's Guide to How Murderers, Robbers, Rapists, and Other Criminal Think. It's called Wise Guys and Hitmen. In my last post, I covered the mafia character. Today I'll focus on Hitmen.

Mactire put hitmen and mafia in the same chapter because hitmen arose from organized crime. The original hitman was a shadowy figured called the "Shotgun Man." He was the muscle of the crime family, using deadly force to back up the might of the godfather. He enjoyed total immunity because, although everyone knew who he was, they all feared him too much to testify against him. He supposedly retired to Sicily after Prohibition ended.

To the mafia, killing is a business. Executions are either a matter of policy of mob bosses or for large sums of money. The executers, called "Enforcers," are soldiers solely at the disposal of the bosses, the only guys with the authority to order a contract hit. Victims of contract hits are usually "someone within the Syndicate, a rival criminal, or someone who is a client of an organized crime family, such as a loan-shark victim, gambler, or drug user. These contracts were strictly for mob businessmen to take care of mob business by using mob talent to handle problems requiring executive action." 

I want to quote a lengthy paragraph of the book because it's worded so well I could never paraphrase:

It may not seem logical that murder could be a "business," but in part, the term soldiers best explains why this cold-blooded mentality exists. To the mob bosses, the victim of a contract is the enemy, some "bum" who wouldn't pay his debts and had to be made an example of or someone who cheated the mob or an informer or a fellow mob leader who got out of line or rival mobsters involved in a "war." The reduction of victims to some subhuman level gives the soldiers, these sadistic personalities, justification and rationalization to kill the people that the bosses have decreed deserve to die.

If that doesn't help you get inside the mindset of a hitman, I don't know what will. Using that mindset, you should be able to create a fabulous character who's totally believable and maybe even sympathetic (if you do it right). Plug this mindset into a personality type and you're on your way.

Mactire goes on with plenty of history, naming famous hitmen, what they did, and some interesting terminology that I'd never heard. "Buckwheats" is killing a man in a slow and painful manner to send a message. Mactire gives real-life examples of some "buckwheats," so don't read that part if you've got a weak stomach. 

The chapter closes with this: "Today's wise guys are better educated and more businesslike than their predecessors. But they are still vicious sociopaths." He goes on to say that today's mafia are moving more toward the narcissistic behaviors, and "ratting out" their superiors to either get ahead or get even. This is important if you're writing a modern novel with mafia overtones. 

Finally, remember that most of the victims of mafia crime are directly related to the mafia: customers, rivals, and family members. If you're sending a hitman after your protagonist, he's going to fall into one of those three areas, or he'll be an innocent bystander (maybe a witness who is willing to testify). Also be careful to avoid a cartoonish hitman. Give him depth and personality, or he'll be cardboard.

-Sonja