Driving my Character to insanity

Ok. I have a villain in my story. She's the token good team mate (she was in fact hired to try and keep some semblance of morality amongst the villains) and doesn't really hold bear a lot of ill will towards the heroes. She's a roboticist, specialising in Cybernetic implants and life support systems. After an explosion caused by the Big Bad levels an entire city, her helicoptor is taken down by one of the heroes (who thinks that all of her team mates are dead) and all of her allies teleport away, abandoning her.

She finds the mangled, but still alive body of the hero in the aftermath of the crash, and feels deep regret over everything she's done. She takes the body and carts it off to her university to be reconstructed.

Now when the other heroes find her, I want something to happen that drives her insane, to the point where she becomes a full on villain, but I can't think of what that could be. I was wondering if I could maybe get a few rough ideas from here.

Simple. Think of something she loves, then make her destroy it. Then, over a short period of time, have every one of the well-intentioned actions she takes to fix her situation end up destroying everything she ever valued or held dear. If she hasn't gone insane by the end of that, either she's a much stronger character than you realized, or you need to think harder.

edited 4th Sep '11 6:32:44 PM by tropetown

When you say "full-on villain", do you mean Well-Intentioned Extremist? Card-Carrying Villain? Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds? What kind of villain?

Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds is what I'm going for. Completely deranged because she's completely broken.

If you want to do that, then you should do what I mentioned earlier; another good idea would be to make the heroes partially responsible for what happens to her. The only problem is that you might end up making your villain more sympathetic than your heroes...

That's actually a big problem I'm having in general. While all of my heroes are unquestionably good, I have a habit of trying to make my villains really sympathetic as well. Only one major villain I have is irredeemably evil

I think the driving thing behind your character would probably be something along the lines of having to have to deal with so much pain/trauma that she doesn't care about anything else, just avoiding more pain/trauma. Not necessarily her own pain either, she could become an extremist Mama Bear.

So... I think having a lot of bad things happen to her comrades would work... but I see you have that... Did she previously have any other morals, ideals, or personal code? Try getting her to utterly lose faith in those, so she'll cling more strongly to the single thing she has left (whatever that is).

edited 4th Sep '11 6:58:10 PM by Merlo

Maybe try a perspective flip? I find the best rule of thumb in writing a story is to follow the character you find the most interesting, whether or not they're the most morally good. If you're a good enough writer, the drama from the situation will write itself. For example, if you're following a villain, creating villains out of the heroes won't be too difficult, since you're now in the Villain Protagonist's head. If, on the other hand, the most interesting character to you is a Wild Card, it could be fun to see just what exactly is going on inside his head, his conflicting emotions, and his ultimate reasoning.

Well the thing is, I've just noticed that I've been focusing more and more on the villains lately. They're still the bad guys. Maybe this is what happens when a guy who's obsessed with villains tries to write

Take what they love, and destroy it. By their hands. Then every attempt they make to atone must fail. They need to see into themselves, and see that it was all their fault. Make them face what they are, what they've done. Few men can look shame and remorse in the eye and come out the same as they went in.

That's my point right there try a perspective flip, you'd be surprised how much better the story will become when you write from the perspective of characters you're actually interested in.

A perspective flip might work. Is a Villain Protagonist supposed to win? Cuz I really don't wanna fall into the realm of Villain Sue with these guys.

And what do I do with the good guys? How much screentime do they get? Am I supposed to make them less sympathetic?

edited 4th Sep '11 7:33:50 PM by gingerninja666

Yes, a Villain Protagonist can win... if you want to avoid Villain Sue, just don't make them invincible. Same rules apply as for regular protagonists, though if you want to have your Villain Protagonist lose, setting them up as a Tragic or Byronic Hero might work out pretty well.

As for the heroes, you don't need to make them unsympathetic, just write your Villain Protagonist in a way that makes the reader care enough about their goals to want the Hero Antagonist to fail in stopping them.

edited 4th Sep '11 7:37:25 PM by tropetown

Shame, because my main villain is REALLY not that heroic. He is really tragic though

They don't have to be heroic in the modern sense; they can just be dramatic enough that the reader will care more about them achieving their goals than about whether or not they're morally good: most Byronic Heroes are like that, which is why people like them, and why I mentioned it as an idea earlier. Just to be safe, adding some sympathetic qualities would do you much good, just so that the Villain Protagonist isn't completely unlikeable.

Plus, the whole Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds angle works out very well for a Byronic Hero, since it adds a lot of sympathy, and makes them act a lot more desperately; I think you might like writing this type of character, actually.

edited 4th Sep '11 7:48:50 PM by tropetown

If the rest of the villains need "some semblance of morality" on the team, then they're not going to feel morally obliged to hire her in the first place. Rethink that one.

It's more the Big Bad knows that he's prone to losing his temper, and coming up with horrific plans. His troops go along with anything he says unquestioningly, so he wants someone that he trusts to be his voice of reason, and to calm him down when he loses it.

Try having someone explain that one to her in depth, and she'll go insane from the nonsense before she's even on the job.

You don't have to be pointlessly nasty. What's wrong with being aware that your prone to losing it and wanting someone to keep you in check? That's not her only job, she's also his Mad Scientist.

I'm sorry, but I also don't buy that premise of "hiring someone to be your personal advisor who will (try to) stop you from doing stupid things in rage because everyone else in your charge will just blindly follow your order". The most logical thing the villain could do at that point, assuming that he is no generic cackling megalomaniac, would be to explicitly allow his other subordinates (of the upper echelon - you don't want a democratic army) to openly voice their opinion. If he understands his weakness enough to do that, he should not be too egoistical to turn a blind eye to a much cheaper and much more efficient method.

Also, what is wrong with making bad guys too likeable? Maybe it is just me and my obsession with the shade of grey, but I believe with all due sincerity that the best story are those whose barrier between heroes and villains, morality-wise, is nonexistent.

It's not being "pointlessly nasty" if I have a point, and I didn't think I was being nasty, so... I guess I'd have to apologise if you took it that way and were really upset.

Basically, any villain who's aware that their villainy is bad, and remains a villain, is not going to actively restrict their own villainy. If they are seeking to do so, then they're not villainous enough to need it.

How about you keep her on as a mad scientist, hired only for that? Then, being a high-ranking goon, let her voice her opinion, which happens to be not-so-evil and also tends to keep the main villain in check. Starting to sound a bit like Argeus the Paladin's idea regarding letting the upper echelons be heard...

Anyway, back on topic, I think mad scientist is a pretty easy character to drive off the edge. Have her be, to some extent, intellectually responsible for the explosion. Alternatively, have the reconstructed hero be in an absolutely pitiable and torturous state. Left alone to contemplate what she's caused (or perhaps told by somebody else how reprehensible her participation was), she decides that there's no turning back and discards what's left of her goodness.

edited 5th Sep '11 7:44:38 AM by ekuseruekuseru

Sure, a villain who wants to restrict their own villainy isn't really a villain—but there's absolutely nothing wrong with a villain who wants to restrict their own excesses of temper. If my excesses of temper were liable to kill hundreds to thousands of people, whatever my end goals I'd probably do the same. There is the question of why he doesn't just tell his immediate army subordinates to do it, but you know, it's handwavable.

He might want someone around to make sure his villainy doesn't become self-destructive, and keeps him at the level of Pragmatic Villainy. I don't see why a villain would want a moral center unless they were an Anti-Villain, and the way you described it didn't seem like that was the case. An idea to drive her insane would be to cause her to unknowingly destroy something she really cared about on her master's orders (you can even make the order her idea, to really make it hit home), or have the heroes prevent her from saving something important to her.

edited 5th Sep '11 8:48:15 AM by tropetown

Yeah, that's basically what I'm thinking. If he's liable to go destroy a city or something in a fit of temper, and knows that, then it's quite plausible that he'd take steps to avoid it.

Thank you for the kind comments. I tend to get a bit defensive about my ideas. I apologize.

Yeah, I think you're right about her being hired just for her Scientific prowess, then her more moral side comes out afterwards.

And since i've decided to go with the perspective flip, I've realised that my Big Bad wouldn't need to be as ridiculously evil as I had originally imagined. He's actually quite tragic (being in constant crippling pain for the rest of his life, not to mention horribly deformed) and his only real goal is to kill exactly 1 of the main heroes, since he blames him for putting him in his horrific state. His pain leads to massive bouts of rage.

Again thanks