[ SECRET POST #2797 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2797 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 085 secrets from Secret Submission Post #400.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[solticisekf]

Would it be difficult, writing evil characters in the 1st person?

[sparklywalls]

Do you know what? I've never tried it that way and maybe I should. In fact, recently I was thinking about this and wondering if there are any novels written 1st person POV from a horrible character who doesn't see it that way. I'd like to say it wouldn't be much different to writing an evil character's thoughts in the third person. But I guess it depends on the kind of evil - it might mean taking yourself to uncomfortable places.

[sarillia]

The most famous example is probably Lolita's Humbert Humbert but I'm sure there are more. Actually there's another Nabokov book I like where the narrator is pretty bad.

There's also The Screwtape Letters, written from the point of view of a demon trying to collect souls for the devil, and Twain did another book in that vein called Letters from the Earth but that one was more him laughing at how ridiculous humans are than doing anything evil.

[sparklywalls]

Ah how could I forget Lolita. I've been meaning to read that for a while actually (seen the film adaptions though.) A friend has read the book and said it made her feel weird, but she still liked it in spite of this.

The only lighter thing I can think of off the top of my head isn't a book. I did quite enjoy Megamind even though that was obviously restricted with what it could do as it was aimed at children.

[sarillia]

I've talked about this before but in Lolita I just love the gorgeous language contrasted with the terrible things he's saying.

[(Anonymous)]

When was Twain ever NOT laughing about how ridiculous humans are? :P

[tree_and_leaf]

ISTR that Lewis said that writing Screwtape (which has a deeply cynical narrative voice which is very amusing in places) was really easy. So easy that he became very creeped out at himself.

[solticisekf]

Some actors say that they're uncomfortable playing bad characters.) Agatha Crsty's novel -SPOILER- The Murder of Roger Ackroyd has it.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

I do it semi-regularly in limited third, so it's still tightly their POV but with slightly more shielding for the reader. I've also done a first person POV of an interrogator for a police state (he wasn't quite a torturer, but only by dint of having other people to do the messy stuff for him). It's not really that much harder than a good character? Everybody has their own logic for the way their world works, it's just a matter of trying to figure out what this person's is.

That said, I've never written a close POV of villain in the act of hurting someone. I've never done that from the victim's POV either, though, preferring to work by implication and then skip to aftermath, so I think that's less being unable to do the villain's POV and more just me not being able to do a tight POV of a moment of suffering full stop. Aftermath, yes, long-term effects, yes, but the moment of pain is apparently that bit too much.

[solticisekf]

Yes, I can see how writing the scene with people suffering is not a fun doing.
I prefer to skip to the comfort part of h/c personally.

[(Anonymous)]

But Evil Narrator wouldn't think he's evil. He'd just think he's right.

I can't think of any "evil narrators" (must get out more), but take John Dowell, the narrator in The Good Soldier ... as the novel progresses, you realize that he's both morally vacant and essentially unfeeling (even though he keeps repeating over and over again that things are sad or tragic). Not to mention that he has no sense whatsoever of the absurd.

(Brilliant book by the way. Ford Madox Ford.)

[solticisekf]

The book sounds very interesting! I'll check it out, thanks. I like some unreliable narrator in stories)