Writing Likeable Murderers?

[LateWhiteRabbit]

This annoys me too. Choosing to let someone die by not doing anything IS murder, because you are making a conscious decision for them to die instead of live. It bugs me when media treats this as a somehow lesser or more forgivable crime.

Whether a crime of this nature is more or less forgivable than any other type of murder is up for debate, but legally speaking, there are different classifications of murder and other crimes. Manslaughter is considered less culpable than murder, for example, and is a separate crime.

But manslaughter is when your actions unintentionally caused another person's death. That IS more forgivable.

The situation Papillon and I describe would be classified as second-degree murder in the U.S. Basically, it can't be proven that the murderer PLANNED to kill the person, but they just took an opportunity when it presented itself.

I would almost argue that it is worse from a character sympathy standpoint to make the character commit second-degree murder. It makes the character look unstable, and also implies more cruelty than first degree murder (to me). Because often it involves the character standing by and waiting and watching for someone to die while doing nothing, often while the victim is calling or indicating for help, and EXPECTS the other person to help them. At least with first-degree murder, the murderer has a reason to kill someone that is strong enough (rather vindicated or not) to make a plan and act on it. Meanwhile, with a second-degree murder, the murderer has decided on the spur of the moment to kill (or let someone die).

Character sympathy involves some measure of trust between the audience and the character. I don't know about you, but I'd feel better hanging around someone who PLANNED their murders, rather than someone who randomly decides to kill at the spur of the moment.

[Mad Harlequin]

But manslaughter is when your actions unintentionally caused another person's death. That IS more forgivable.

That's involuntary manslaughter. There's also voluntary manslaughter, which is defined by federal law as "the unlawful killing of a human being without malice aforethought upon a sudden quarrel or heat of passion."

The situation Papillon and I describe would be classified as second-degree murder in the U.S. Basically, it can't be proven that the murderer PLANNED to kill the person, but they just took an opportunity when it presented itself.

Yes, I gathered that much. I was just making the point that the media isn't really responsible for something like second-degree murder being considered a lesser crime, because that's how the law works. Bear in mind that "lesser" isn't a synonym for "more permissible."

I would almost argue that it is worse from a character sympathy standpoint to make the character commit second-degree murder. It makes the character look unstable, and also implies more cruelty than first degree murder (to me).

A character's instability doesn't necessarily mean he or she is less sympathetic. It really depends on the circumstances.

One thing to remember is that there are three typical situations that can constitute second-degree murder.

• A killing done impulsively without premeditation, but with malice aforethought
  A killing that results from an act intended to cause serious bodily harm
  A killing that results from an act that demonstrates the perpetrator's depraved indifference to human life

Often it involves the character standing by and waiting and watching for someone to die while doing nothing, often while the victim is calling or indicating for help, and EXPECTS the other person to help them.

This would probably fall under the third category and is defined in the United States as depraved-indifference murder or "depraved-heart murder," "an action where a defendant acts with a 'depraved indifference" to human life and where such act results in a death. In a depraved-heart murder a defendant commits an act even though they know their act runs an unusually high risk of causing death or serious bodily harm to someone else. If the risk of death or bodily harm is great enough, ignoring it demonstrates a 'depraved indifference' to human life and the resulting death is considered to have been committed with malice aforethought."

A possible additional charge brought would be negligent homicide, the killing of another person through gross negligence or without malice.

At least with first-degree murder, the murderer has a reason to kill someone that is strong enough (rather vindicated or not) to make a plan and act on it. Meanwhile, with a second-degree murder, the murderer has decided on the spur of the moment to kill (or let someone die).

Character sympathy involves some measure of trust between the audience and the character. I don't know about you, but I'd feel better hanging around someone who PLANNED their murders, rather than someone who randomly decides to kill at the spur of the moment.

I don't think a crime of passion, say, is somehow more or less cruel or trust-shattering than premeditated murder. That's not what constitutes the difference between degrees of murder or manslaughter. It comes back to mens rea.

That being said, I believe it's entirely possible to write sympathetic characters committing crimes of this nature; the crimes in question don't necessarily have to constitute all of who a given character is. Now, I'm not saying an angst-ridden backstory is needed---we should just bear in mind that the character doing X is still a human being. It doesn't mean that character has to be forgiven by others, or even by the reader (obviously that's up to the audience), but he or she is still capable of suffering as other humans do.

[Kailoto]

I think it's also worth mentioning that the setting and scenario have a lot to do with how much sympathy the character gets as well. Take Mirai Nikki, for instance - Yuno Gasai is a hardcore yandere that most people would outright despise, but the fact that the story takes place during a survival game, where many other people are also committing murders and it's partly needed to survive, makes her a more permissible character. Yuno is very easily the type of person who can end up on a Criminal Minds episode, but the setting she lives in vindicates her actions to some extent, even before she's given any sort of backstory.

The same goes for vigilantes and the like. Batman and Daredevil are sympathetic antiheroes in part because the cities they live in are rife with criminal activity that the police can't fully control. Take a character like that and put them in a setting where crime is controlled reasonably by the police, and their law-defying actions seem a lot less warranted.

Again, you can go one of two ways; either write a character that the audience can be sympathetic with, or one so bad that they're captivating in a different sense. In either case, the types of adversaries they're facing (as well as their targets) help define them on relative terms.

[LPRe]

When it comes to likeable murderers, I kind of feel it's really in their personality/how they handle it. I'm not really fond of sympathetic pasts either, they tend to feel a little cheap -- and after a while, they start feeling unrealistic, even if they aren't.

There's a lot of factors with a murderer: how do they murder people? how often does it happen? is there a reason/several reasons? Do they feel guilt or do they feel elation/something else? Do they kill specific people? What are they like when they aren't murdering people?

Personally, the first character that comes to mind is Hannibal -- I like him because outside of his murders, he's this dignified, sophisticated figure(though I guess that also sort of depends on which version of Hannibal you're looking at.) It's such a big contrast to the messes he makes that it makes me interested in what he's going to try next. It also helps that he tends to target people who aren't very good people in the first place -- all his murders feel far more justified then if he killed just willy nilly all over the place. I kind of forget his backstory to be honest, I started enjoying his character before I knew about it.

It's also a matter of how you handle the murders in the narrative -- if you treat them as big deals and Very Wrong, the effect of the death is bigger, where if you just sort of sidestep the seriousness of the murder, the way people see the character is different. Like skimming over the murder versus the exact details of how it happened -- depending on the viewpoint, the murderer can seem justified or in the right or a monster of a person. And a lot of murderer's seem to mentally justify why they killed people, so if you play it from their standpoint, they can be sympathetic in a twisted kind of way, kind of like Humbert Humbert in Lolita: you know the man is doing terrible horrible things, but because he's the one telling the story, you can't really escape feeling some kind of pity for him unless you're constantly on guard, which is hard if you get someone engrossed in a story. I mean, he's not a murderer, per-say, but his crimes are just as bad if not worse, so.

[Quelcezot]

Murderers don't have to be likable to make them likable. If you make a tiny hint towards there being something human about them, even if you just show them eating breakfast, people will wonder if there isn't something sympathetic to them - even if that something is never revealed.

[Grant2600]

Just an idea, make it comical, the murderer always killing the victims for silly reasons, for example if some of the deaths were funny accidents caused by the murderer (think Mr Bean).

Maybe the killer accidentally caused a death and in a silly panic attempted to eliminate all of the witnesses, and if there aren't any left, he could be paranoid and some characters may speak with him and make some ambiguous jokes which he interprets wrongly and thinks they know something about it, so he tries to eliminate them too which only makes the whole thing worse.

Regards

[Quelcezot]

Just an idea, make it comical, the murderer always killing the victims for silly reasons, for example if some of the deaths were funny accidents caused by the murderer (think Mr Bean).

Maybe the killer accidentally caused a death and in a silly panic attempted to eliminate all of the witnesses, and if there aren't any left, he could be paranoid and some characters may speak with him and make some ambiguous jokes which he interprets wrongly and thinks they know something about it, so he tries to eliminate them too which only makes the whole thing worse.

Regards

This idea could also be played to have the opposite effect. A killer without a good reason who is as incompetent as they are heartless.

Readers would want them dead so much.

Actually, you could make a likable murderer by having somebody else kill that one.

[Caveat Lector]

Just an idea, make it comical, the murderer always killing the victims for silly reasons, for example if some of the deaths were funny accidents caused by the murderer (think Mr Bean).

Maybe the killer accidentally caused a death and in a silly panic attempted to eliminate all of the witnesses, and if there aren't any left, he could be paranoid and some characters may speak with him and make some ambiguous jokes which he interprets wrongly and thinks they know something about it, so he tries to eliminate them too which only makes the whole thing worse.

Regards

If you're intentionally writing a black comedy (like Arsenic and Old Lace) or an absurdist comedy (like Monty Python), that could work. But in a serious, dramatic story that's actually grounded in reality? That'd work better to establish the character as a sociopath, or a reincarnation of the Joker, probably. I'm assuming the OP is talking about either in general or along the lines of a story you're supposed to take seriously.

I'd say, make them likeable by showing what they are like outside of their plot-mandatory murders. What kind of person are they? Do they take an extra lump of sugar with their coffee or drink it black? Do they even drink coffee at all and just prefer tea? Is their favourite movie Gone With the Wind or Citizen Kane? What are their opinions on the current/former political situation of the story (either the fictional politics set up within the story itself, or real-world politics)? How do they relate to others, if they're capable of feeling empathy at all? And if they do feel empathy, to what extent does that empathy go and when does it end? Do they kill for pleasure, for vengeance, for their own survival and safety, for personal gain?

As for a sympathetic backstory, that can only work so far. If you're going to go that route, show what kind of person they were before they became a murderer, or were set on the path to murder. Don't just simply have their mother heartlessly abandon them on the snowy streets of London. SHOW them attempting to survive in their one-room London flat. Show them interacting with people at their school, if they can relate to others or just feel cold, if they can easily fight off school bullies with brazen wit or fisticuffs or if they just run into the bathroom and cry or if they WERE the bully. It's one thing to SAY "this person is a murderer because their mother abandoned them when they were young", it's another to actually delve into that backstory and SHOW them as a person.

Or, look at other murderers people seem to like and root for. They usually have some kind of element other people find identifiable, even if they really shouldn't. Hannibal Lecter loves paintings and classical music (and eating people). Dexter Morgan drinks coffee and drives even when he shouldn't (and kills criminals in his spare time). And the Joker has a great sense of humour (while creating mayhem).

[Mad Harlequin]

Murderers don't have to be likable to make them likable. If you make a tiny hint towards there being something human about them, even if you just show them eating breakfast, people will wonder if there isn't something sympathetic to them - even if that something is never revealed.

This is my favorite post in the thread thus far!

[sbester]

I love this topic!

My entire VN series is trying to accomplish exactly this. All of my characters do have the sympathetic back stories that some of you aren't so enthused about, but you live through those stories with each installment (Mafiosi 1 features the cast as children, Mafiosi 2 as teens, Mafiosi 3 as young adults, etc). While it takes some time before any of them become actual murderers themselves, it's that slow progression towards it and their reasoning behind it that makes the whole thing so fun and exciting for me to write. I've been completely aggravated watching shows screw up their "likeable villains" scenario over the years, because I know it can be done right, but instead they all seem to reach this point where they aren't human anymore, and you just stop caring if the characters live or die. Tony Soprano, Nucky Thompson, Walter White, Dexter Morgan, Jacks Teller (the list goes on) - I can actually pinpoint the very moment when I stopped sympathizing with them and no longer cared what happened to them. I think the real trick is to keep them human the whole way through, never letting them get to that point of no return. If they have to kill, make it a kill or be killed scenario where things are seemingly out of their control. Don't have them be someone you understand and feel sympathy for one minute and then have them killing random kids without caring the next, it just feels sloppy (I'm looking at you, Breaking Bad).

[Aviala]

This might be a bit off topic, but I felt like the the brilliance of Breaking Bad was that as a viewer, you expect to be able to root for the main character all the way through, but with Breaking Bad it becomes harder and harder as the show progresses, and in the end you realize that the character you rooted for for so long is a massive dick and a cruel villain. I felt like it was sort of the point of the series.

I think it's really interesting to make the player play a character who's not all goody-goody. It's a lot harder to write great villains or antiheroes than it is to write heroes (at least in my opinion) but I'm looking forward to including some hard choices in my Visual Novel - like would you save a person's life if it would mean that you'd have to abandon the goals that you've been trying to reach the whole game?

I think it's interesting to let the player to make some of these choices. Too many games give the player a "good" option and an "evil/tough" option, and the people-oriented/good action always seems to yield better rewards or results (I'm looking at you, Bioware, and especially Mass Effect). It's more interesting when (for example) the player has a real choice between a "good" choice that may have some nasty side effects, and an "evil" choice that may bring harm to others but help the player progress in the game. I don't like empty choices where the "good" option is automatically the right one.

So basically, if the murderer or criminal is the main characters, imo it's best to let the player have a choice. It's one way of writing "likable" murderers: when the player has to make the choices, they'll stand behind those choices and maybe they can relate to the character more.