Schadenfreude is a word that many of y’all might not have heard of, yet we’ve all felt it. Interestingly enough, it can be a great tool to keep our audience interested and breathlessly wanting more. What is schadenfreude, other than a fifty dollar word we can toss around to impress friends and colleagues?

Schadenfreude—a combination of the German words for damage and joy—is the pleasure we feel at the misfortune of others.

Before anyone gets too judgy on me, we have all felt it.

Have you ever had some driver on the highway who believed they were above the rules and didn’t need to merge and take turns? Instead they sped up the shoulder so they could cut the line instead of patiently waiting their turn? Schadenfreude is the delicious enjoyment you felt when there actually was a police officer present who summarily pulled them over and ticketed the bejeezus out of them.

Don’t you judge me. Y’all know you love it, too.

We humans, by and large, have a sense of justice encoded in our psyche. This is why even a preschooler has a level of acumen usually reserved for an IRS auditor when adults pass out candy. They sense what is fair and unfair, right and wrong.

This ingrained sense of right and wrong and fair and unfair is part of what drives our need for a sense of justice. We don’t like it when others “get away” with doing something we perceive as “wrong.”

Shades of Schadenfreude

Therein lies the deliciousness of schadenfreude…the what we consider “wrong.”

Like most things involving the human psyche, this isn’t black and white, rather it exists on a spectrum. There is wonderful thrill of pleasure we feel when a speeder gets a (deserved) ticket that can go as far as total dehumanization of others and a delight at their complete destruction.

Schadenfreude is story jet fuel.

Before you might believe you are too “evolved” for such feelings, how many movie plots pivot on the bullies finally getting a taste (or more) of their own medicine? When there is a gross power imbalance, and that imbalance is abused, we humans can turn positively feral.

One of my favorite authors, Lucy Foley, wields schadenfreude like few other authors I’ve read. The Guest List and The Midnight Feast are page-turning dark delights. Alice Berman is another author who uses this darker side of human nature to create a thrilling story in I Eat Men Like Air.

Why do I love these books? Because these authors (stories) pick apart “the beautiful people.” From old money to self-anointed Instagram influencer demi-gods-in -their-own-minds, these stories pry at something primal in all of us…that some people are “better.”

Instead of characters who are grateful for a blessed life dripping in privilege, they are the entitled. They amuse themselves at the suffering of others purely for sport. Not only that, but they take great delight in how they, themselves, are above the rules. When these sorts of people commit crimes, the “real” world cannot punish them.

But Author Gods can.

Lovely Loathing

Foley and Berman are of the suspense-thriller variety, but Kevin Follet is another author who is unparalleled at whipping up a fire of resentment that rivals the fires of Gehenna. When I read Pillars of the Earth, I literally had to keep taking breaks reading the book because my own level of hatred overwhelmed me.

Like any book, Pillars of the Earth isn’t for everyone. It nearly wasn’t for me. Every time I considered throwing in the towel, I I found I couldn’t stop because I HAD to know if there was any kind of justice in this mad, mad world.

All of these books have a common thread. Raw, beautiful exquisite revenge justice.

We are ALL wired with a sense of right and wrong.

Even sociopaths have a sense of justice.

Read Martha Stout’s The Sociopath Next Door. A sociopath might not lose any sleep emptying your bank account, but would be horrified if you did the same to him.

Follet masterfully wove situations where I was rendered utterly and hopelessly powerless.

What is the epitome of being a victim? ZERO POWER. When evil strikes, what does it do to a person?

It strips away their power.

From money crimes to sex crimes, to hate crimes to murder it’s the same. Arson, abduction, terrorism, shootings, sex trafficking, burglaries, large-scale vandalism, gossip, slander, lies, it hits us all in the same place.

It makes us afraid and vulnerable and impotent.

What makes it worse? When we KNOW who’s done this, but this is a person no one can touch.

This was what made me practically foam at the mouth reading Pillars of the Earth. Because the story is (loosely) based on actual history. In the Middle Ages, nobility and high-ranking clergy got away with a LOT of really, really bad things.

Talk about powerlessness to the power of a thousand.

*Kristen punching things* *grabbing for inhaler* *ponders subscribing to Hallmark channel*

Yet, it kept me listening (turning pages) because I could not rest until the world was set right and justice was served. I wasn’t even sure it would be or could be. And if it was, HOW?

THAT, my friends, is some fine storytelling (so I am extremely glad I didn’t return the book). Also, THAT is the raw power of schadenfreude.

Villains & Schadenfreude

There are many ways to create legendary villains. And, keep in mind, there are different types of villains. Though, I recommend giving the villain a sympathetic goal, like the word wrong exists on a spectrum, so does the word sympathetic.

I get that far too many “normal people” think writing is easy. That if they only had enough time they’d be the next J.K. Rowling or George R.R. Martin. Sadly, no number of lockdowns is enough to disabuse some folks of the notion that storytelling is more than playing with imaginary friends.

To tell great stories, we are required to think differently than regular people.

***Refer to 13 Reasons Writers are Mistaken for Serial Killers

A book is more than a lot of flowery words, it is a peek into what makes people tick. Which is all well and good except some people’s “clockwork” is arguably manufactured in HELL.

Villains (antagonists) cannot want what they want for no reason. “Just cuz” is not good enough. When storytelling, we must be capable of violence. That is the only way for the “happy ending” to have any meaning.

***And before you think this is only for gritty genres, remember most fairy tales have some pretty horrifying villains.

Even the most revolting people in all the works I have thus far mentioned, deep down, believed themselves the heroes of their own stories. No matter how horrible they were, they genuinely could not see themselves honestly. Their world was a funhouse mirror designed to warp them into something they were not.

That said, some characters deserve destruction for one simple reason.

They are beyond redemption.

They are the rabid dogs of fiction. Writers and audiences alike know that to let some characters live or remain free is unacceptable. They are poison.

Why schadenfreude is such an incredible literary device is because it speaks to justice, which is universal. When crafting a villain (or even side characters who serve as antagonists), what universal rules are they breaking? Why? How? Now, can you dig deeper until the pages BLEED?

Villains & Cognitive Distortion

To a degree, all characters in our story are dealing with cognitive distortions. If they aren’t, then they aren’t interesting. All humans struggle with personalizing, catastrophizing, minimizing, justifying, unattainable standards, wishful thinking, etc.

In fact, for your touring pleasure, here is a list of 50 Common Cognitive Distortions.

All characters should have a cognitive distortion–to a degree–because all characters should arc.

While the MC or other positive forces (allies), grow, mature and evolve, the villain does the opposite. The villain devolves. They become even more convinced of their righteous cause, even more controlling, raise their already absurd standards to new levels of ridiculous, etc.

Ideally, we will give some reason for why the villain does what he does or believes what he believes. While we might not be able to, say, empathize with the actual cognitive distortion, we (the audience) can empathize with either having experienced the distortion ourselves OR the reason for the distortion.

For example, I cannot relate to the same level of entitlement as Francesca Meadows in The Midnight Feast. I am not old money, reared to believe I am privileged and entitled BUT I DO viscerally remember the first time I met another kid named “Kristen” and the raw fury I felt that another kid in my preschool had MY NAME!

MY NAME. MINE.

It’s a silly example, but she had to be destroyed that childlike rage is something a good story can tap into to give us the proverbial “sympathy for the devil.”

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin

The Bible, in the Book of Daniel, tells the story of Belshazzar, who was King Nebuchadnezzar’s successor. Talk about a guy with an ego problem! He holds a banquet for all the nobility and thinks that calling for all the holy vessels from the Jewish Temple is a great idea…since they totally didn’t have enough cups *flips hair*.

What Belshazzar didn’t know—and likely would not have cared even if he did—was that he’d committed a great sacrilege. Y’all know the phrase we toss around, “Read the writing on the wall.” Well, this is where it comes from.

After Belshazzar uses all the holy vessels as Dixie Cups for his Meta-Influencer BBQ, a disembodied hand appears and writes Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin on the wall.

He can’t read the writing on the wall (nod to Shakespeare and IRONY) and calls for Daniel to translate the message, which was in Aramaic.

God tells Belshazzar that 1) his days are numbered (another nod to Shakespeare) 2) that his kingdom will fall, and 3) that he has been weighed, measured and found wanting.

There are good reasons that we find all the best stories mirrored in Scripture or Shakespeare.

Humans don’t change, and if humans don’t change, then—ipso facto—villains don’t change.

The entitled trust fund baby can genuinely believe they are “better” than others. Yet, though they are deeply believe they are better than others, they simultaneously fear their days are numbered. Frequently, they know that while they are better than everyone else, they’re never “good enough” for the person (people) who matters.

Additionally, with villains like this, their pride becomes their Achille’s Heel. They so wrapped up in their agenda, they are blind. Because they are blind, they cannot help but fall.

And none of us (readers) mind if they’re given a little push.

Schadenfreude & Catharsis

From Edgar Allen Poe’s The Telltale Heart to Kathryn Stockett’s The Help we audiences aren’t happy until there is some form of comeuppance.

***Ironically, in The Telltale Heart the MC is the villain. His own inborn sense that evil cannot go unpunished is the point of the story.

All stories are only as strong as their villains. If we are wishy washy on the villain, the rest of the book is bland. When we hold back on our villain, we inadvertently wreck our stakes.

There is something primal in all good stories. Humans have deep sympathy for the unavenged, the disappeared, and the disenfranchised. Every day, we see injustice and evil, and every day we know that the people causing much of this suffering will never be called to account.

Writers & Schadenfreude

Do you wield a little schadenfreude when you write?

I always find it a bit funny when readers ask if my villains are based on people I know because…DUH. YES. #SeriouslyDumbQuestion

Are they wholly patterned off ONE person? No. That would be copying not creating. They’re a collage of a million little events that made me…ME. And I get to enjoy a little bit if schadenfreude by casting them in my world .

*insert evil laughter*

It’s very therapeutic and cheaper than a defense attorney.

Do you see how just a touch of schadenfreude can also help with a “too perfect” character (maybe an MC)?

“Cutting someone down to size” is enjoyable in life and in fiction. Though we didn’t go into it today, can you see how schadenfreude can work in a redemption story, a love story, or wherever a character needs to grown and learn some humility?

I LOVE hearing from you!

Had you ever heard the term schadenfreude? Are you now committed to now finding ways to work this word into everyday conversation? Do you enjoy books and movies that deal out at least a little revenge?

Am I the only person who revels when a hidden cop pulls over a reckless driver?

Thoughts? Opinions? Favorite tales of schadenfreude?

And remember, my perennial author branding book, Rise of the Machines: Human Authors in a Digital World and my mystery thriller The Devil’s Dance are both on sale on Kindle right now for only .99.

Whether it is comments, shares, sales, or reviews, these are the things that keep us content producers (and authors) going and able to keep delivering. I always appreciate your support and love being able to keep doing this for you!

The post Schadenfreude: Misfortune, Revenge, Justice & Catharsis appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

All stories require a core antagonist (the force/character that is responsible for generating the story problem in need of resolution). This said, there are many different types of antagonists. While all villains are antagonists, not all antagonists are villains.

The villain might only be one of many types of antagonists, but they have a power of transcendence that few other archetypes can match.

But since we went there. What goes into creating a worthy villain? How can we create a character that evolves beyond paper caricature and passes into timeless myth?

Moriarty, Darth Vader, Loki, Buffalo Bill, Voldemort, Dracula, Jack the Ripper represent the deepest dark necessary so our heroes can shine the brightest white.

When we think of our favorite stories, how often do we remember the villains, first? There’s something so alluring about the darkness.

This said, it’s the artist who learns how to mold the darkness into something timeless, a character retold every generation in new forms.

Breaking Bad: What Makes a Villain?

I watch a ton of movies and television series. I also read roughly 1-3 novels a week. I’m always studying, breaking stories apart so that I can understand them better. I do it for my fiction, but also so I can share what I learn with you guys.

Though the series isn’t for everyone (it’s pretty gory), I particularly love FX’s American Horror Story (Seasons 1-4) for studying villains.

***Everything was pretty ‘meh’ after Jessica Lang left the cast, but that’s just my personal POV.

Anyway, AHS is one of those shows that you have to get a few episodes into before you connect, namely because it is often cast with truly despicable characters.

It isn’t until you get a few episodes in that the writers start peeling back the layers and exposing the delicate undersides of the villains…and that’s when you really begin to care for them.

I know. On the surface, this seems bizarre, but it’s true. The early seasons of AHS are some of the best writing out there.

Jessica Lang almost always played the core antagonist in each season of AHS. Of all the seasons, though, Season Four Freak Show was my absolute favorite. It’s by far one of the most superlative stories on the small screen, masterful characters…which is why I’m referring to it today.

Btw, there is a bit of spoiler alert, but it’s necessary. So what do we do to really make the villain POP?

Give the Villain a Sympathetic Goal

In Season Four of AHS, Lang plays Elsa Mars. Mars is a self-centered, lying, conniving, murderous woman. But she is a deeply flawed and tragic character. Her goal is two-fold.

First, she wants to become a star in Hollywood. Secondly, she wants to build the best Freak Show in the world.

As a young woman, Elsa is victimized by a man who promises her the starring role in a movie. What he fails to tell Elsa is she has the starring role in a snuff film.

He films another man taking a buzz saw to both of Elsa’s legs then leaves her for dead. Through the sympathy and miraculous skill of an artist-sculptor, she’s saved and given life-like prosthetics and appears ‘normal.’

But this tragedy creates a horrible insecurity. She starts her freak show because deep down, she knows she’s a freak, too.

This makes her feel almost a maternal duty to collect the disfigured. To gather the tragic souls the world casts away and give them a home.

Villains are Heroes of His/Her Own Story

Elsa is a mother figure. Under the circus tent, her ‘children’ are stars and they are a family. She knows what life outside the show is like for a freak (she’s lived it). She also appreciates that she is a very different kind of freak.

She has the ability to blend into society. Her children do not.

Make the Villain Conflicted

Mars is a very troubled and conflicted character. Her goal to take care of her charges and her desire to become famous in Hollywood are always in conflict. Also what makes Elsa so good is also what makes her so bad.

She is relentlessly ambitious (good), but she is relentlessly ambitious (bad).

Remember that our best self and our worst self are often opposing edges of the same blade. This is true for protagonists (heroes) as well.

I see this even in myself. I have a compulsive personality. This is good (2000+ blogs), but can be very, very bad. I latch onto something like a pit bull and don’t let go…but sometimes I’ve latched onto something I should let go of (every ex-boyfriend ever).

As I like to say…

There is a fine line between persistent and stupid.

The reason this duality makes for a layered villain is that great fiction acts as a mirror and reflects a degree of reality back to the reader. When the reader sees the duality of the villain, she is also seeing the duality in herself.

That is the part that can be deeply disturbing.

Maybe we believe we are incapable of murder, but are we really? Or have we simply been blessed with the right life circumstances that have permitted us to never have to really get an answer to that question?

Give the Villain Noble Goals

To dovetail off the last point I made, Elsa does some truly detestable things…but we do see there is a not-so-evil motivation behind her actions. Thus, we sympathize and I think that is one of the ways a good villain can truly get to us.

We see the ugliness in ourselves, the great evil we might be capable of in the right situation.

Elsa is profoundly insecure. She created the freak show largely to ameliorate the pain from her deep psychic wounds. If she owns and runs the show, she can be the main attraction. But again, Elsa’s goals collide with the intensity of a tectonic plate shift.

She knows the show has to make money because she clothes and feeds and shelters her ‘monsters.’ But, to be blunt? She’s also greedy. So when another act overshadows her own? Her greed and her insecurity collide.

Make the Villain’s End Tragic

For me, the best villains are the ones we almost are silently rooting for and are really bothered by that. Elsa is one of those characters that in one episode you hate her and in the next you’re rooting for her and the end of the season is beautiful and tragic.

My friend NYTBSA James Rollins says he knows he’s done his job when the reader cries for the villain at the end.

This is also why NYTBSA Allison Brennan and I have had a long-running argument that Hannibal Lecter is actually not a villain but an antihero.

Allison thinks he’s a villain, but I posit that Hannibal is written SO well, he actually blurs those boundaries and becomes somewhat of an antihero.

Y’all KNOW you cheered at the end of Silence of the Lambs when he said he was ‘having an old friend for dinner.’

And what is SO EPIC about this is that the guy he is going to eat is a law abiding citizen who technically has done nothing illegal…but we still are rooting for Hannibal (a serial killer).

And that freaks us out more than a little bit.

Another great villain? The Goblin King from Labyrinth. Every woman over the age of thirty is still wondering why the hell Sarah didn’t take the deal.

Now for THIS Little Slice…

There is another kind of villain, a villain who deeply upsets us and who’s end is a joyous event. We cheer.

Audiences don’t want this type of villain defeated. Fans don’t want them dead. We want them OBLITERATED.

Salt the very Earth with their souls.

I loved Cercei Lannister from Game of Thrones, but largely because she was so complex. We loved her, hated her, but mostly loved to hate her. Which was why she deserved so much better in the end.

But, we’ve already talked about Game of Thrones...a lot.

Michael Connelly’s The Lincoln Lawyer has the best example of this type of villain. The movie is great but the novel? O…M…G. The villain is positively terrifying.

Why?

Namely because this villain exemplifies what we fear most (and what protagonist Mickey Haller also fears).

That we won’t recognize pure evil when we see it.

At first glance, Roulet is the guy every girl would love to land. He’s smart, rich, handsome and charming. But he is also a stone cold killer who exacts suffering for his own pleasure.

What makes this character so disturbing is, like Haller, we believe Louis Roulet is innocent and that he’s been the victim of a terrible scam.

So when we hit that pivot point where we realize we’ve been duped? It rattles us to the core.

Venus Flytrap Villains

This type of villain will exhibit the same traits mentioned above, but they are all a deception. This villain is a Venus flytrap. The villain looks like a good guy, but is actually disguised death.

In The Lincoln Lawyer, Roulet has a sympathetic goal. He is an innocent man. The prostitute has snared him in an elaborate frame job so she can sue him for damages in civil court and use him as her ticket out of turning tricks.

Roulet is conflicted. He fails to share various pieces of vital information with his lawyer because he is ‘protecting his mother.’

He doesn’t want to upset her and he cares deeply about her perception of him (E.g. he fails to mention he was going to Reggie Campo’s place to pay for sex).

Roulet has noble goals. For instance, Roulet claims he discovered his mother (also a real estate agent) raped and brutalized in a home she was showing. This is why he carries a knife. Trauma. Protective instincts.

He tells Haller that real estate agents often meet clients in homes alone and there is no real way to vet that they aren’t psychos (um irony), so he carries for protection.

Notice how Connelly hits on ALL the notes of a villain, but camouflages them as a hero.

THIS is why our world turns upside down when we realize it is all a lie. Roulet does not have a sympathetic goal at all!

He’s a sado-mysogynistic killer and his only goal is to exact suffering…then destroy another man’s life by framing him for his crime.

This villain is not conflicted at all. He is very well aware of what he’s doing. He’s narcissistic and believes he is above the rules that govern society.

He does not have noble goals. His goals are as black as they come. This is why, unlike a villain like Elsa Mars, when Roulet meets his end? We cheer.

In fact, regarding this, I actually prefer the ending in the movie where Haller’s motorcycle gang clients beat Roulet within an inch of his life before he’s hauled to jail.

A good way to make this kind of villain work is to create a deflection. Cast an innocent character as the ‘villain.’  It is essentially a ‘bait-and-switch.’

In the case of Roulet, the prostitute he brutalized carried the mantle of villain until Act Two.

Practice Makes Perfect

Overall, much of what goes into crafting legendary villains (or any character for that matter) has to do with study and practice. Watch television or movies actively. Take notes. Pay attention. Read a LOT of books.

Why did a villain resonate? Why not? Can you do something similar but different? Perhaps better?

Also PRACTICE. A fantastic way to hone our character-building skills is to use them…as much as possible. We have a brand new class that’s actually PERFECT for this. Maria Grace will be teaching how to write novellas this Friday (use Bite10 for $10 off).

While the full-length novel is what most of us are striving to complete, the novella is wonderful for cultivating an audience and for building skills. How we get good at writing villains is by writing a LOT of them.

The novella is a fantastic place to hone those skills (and also a lot of modern readers have the attention span of a crack-addicted fruit fly).

If we look at the authors most renowned for crafting villains—Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick—they wrote a LOT of short form works. Not only are many of these shorter works now considered ‘literature,’ but filmmakers later adapted many of these works into film. So I STRONGLY recommend her class.

***Remember a FREE recording is included in purchase price.

Also for additional help beyond this blog, I’ll be teaching Dark Arts: Building Your Villain next Tuesday (use Thrill10 for $10 off).

What are your thoughts?

Does this help you understand how to give depth to your villains? What are some of your favorite villains from the page or even the screen?

I love hearing from you!

And to prove it and show my love, for the month of NOVEMBER, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly.

I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

In the meantime, PLEASE treat yourself to a class!

Upcoming LIVE CLASSES Through November

Yes, I know most of us will be doing NaNoWriMo, which is why a FREE recording is included with your purchase.

Bite-Sized Fiction: How to Plot a Novella

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 8th  7:00-9:00 p.m. EST (NYC TIME). Use Bite10 for $10 off.

Dark Arts: Building Your Villain

November 19th, 2019 7:00 P.M. tp 9:00 P.M. EST (NYC TIME). Use Thrill10 for $10 off.

Tick Tock: How to Plot Mystery Suspense

THURSDAY, November 21st  7:00-9:00 p.m. EST (NYC TIME). Use Thrill10 for $10 off.

Why Are We HERE? Scenes that HOOK

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22nd, 2019. Use Thrill10 for $10 off.

ON DEMAND CLASSES

The Art of Character: Writing Characters for a SERIES ON DEMAND

Use Binge10 for $10 off.

How do we create characters that readers will fall in love with, characters strong enough to go the distance? Find out in this THREE-HOUR class that also comes with detailed notes and a character-building template. Again, use Binge10 for $10 off.

This class dovetails with my previous class:

Bring on the Binge: How to Plot and Write a Series (ON DEMAND). Use Binge10 for $10 off.

Need some help with platform and branding?

Branding: WHEN YOUR NAME ALONE Can Sell (ON DEMAND)

Use brand10 for $10 off.

For the complete list, go to the OnDemand Section.

The post The Villain: Crafting Scoundrels, Sinners & Substance of Legends appeared first on Kristen Lamb.