Insanity

We are terrified of people who don't live in the same reality we do, who don't have the same definition of rational behavior. You can't talk to them, you can't reason with them; there is no common ground. However much mental health professionals might deplore it, the fact is that when the public is convinced someone is dangerously insane, all considerations go out the window except one: stopping this crazy person. Unless the storyteller works very hard to win sympathy for the insane character, the audience has no qualms about seeing him brutally subdued or killed. The world isn't safe as long as the madman has any chance of escaping. And if, like Charles Manson and his "family" or Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party, the madman has succeeded in convincing others that his version of reality is the truth, the audience's fear and loathing is all the greater.

In film and on stage, insanity is easy to depict-a wide-eyed stare or darting eyes, nervous tics. But the best actors don't resort to such easy tricks, and neither do the best writers. It is far more effective to convince the audience that a character is insane by letting us see her strange perceptions of reality-her paranoia or delusions.

"Do you think I don't know what you're doing?" asked Nora softly. "I know why you brought me here."

"Yeah," said Pete, a little confused. "I brought you here for dinner."

"You just want to impress all your friends," she said. "You just want them to see me with you. But it won't work. I'm in disguise. That's why I wore this red scarf. Nobody ever recognizes me when I wear this red scarf." She leaned forward and whispered a secret. "I took it from my mother's coffin before they buried her."

Oh good, thought Pete. Not only is this the most expensive blind date I've ever gone on, not only did Steve and Gracie back out at the last minute so I had to go alone, but also this Nora turns out to be crazy. If she isn't at least OK in bed, Steve will not live to see another day.

"Don't eat any of the shrimp sauce," Nora said. "It's poisoned."

There is no chance that the audience will be hoping for Pete and Nora to

What Should We Feel About the Character? 91

end up with a long-term relationship. They will have no sympathy for Nora's character-unless the author goes to extraordinary lengths to make her sympathetic, either by showing the cause of her insanity or by convincing us, somehow, that she isn't insane at all.

This is what was done in the brilliant film A Woman Under the Influence. The main character has just returned from a mental hospital, and her family treats her very gingerly; neither she nor they are fully convinced that she is cured. But as the film goes on, we gradually realize that while it was the main character who attempted suicide, she isn't crazy-it's her husband who's truly evil and insane, even though nobody else realizes it, and he makes her life so unbearable that suicide seems like the only possible escape. She is saved from her husband's pathological rage only by the heroic efforts of her little children. By the end of the film our sympathy with the woman is complete-but by then we also don't think of her as an insane person. It's her husband who's insane, and true to the rule, our only feeling for him then is loathing and fear.

The only time insanity can work/or a character is when it's kept within safe bounds-minor eccentricities that can even be rather charming. And even then, an insane character is almost never viable as the main character in the story. The audience is rarely comfortable enough with insane characters to want to spend any length of time with them.

Attitude

The bad guy's attitude toward himself and others is the mirror image of the good guy's. To make us dislike Pete, make him humorless, completely unable to laugh at himself. When things go wrong, have him whine and complain and blame everyone but himself. When things go right, have him take all the credit and boast about his accomplishment. Make sure Pete never shows regard for other people's feelings, judges people without listening to their explanations, and never trusts or believes anybody. Pete always treats rich and influential people better than he treats the poor and powerless, and he has no qualms about being a flaming hypocrite. In short, he treats other people as if they exist only to serve his purposes. You can be sure the audience will detest him.

Redeeming Virtues: The Understandable Villain

While readers will eventually get sick of a hero who's too good to be true, they almost never refuse to believe in a villain. Unless you deliberately make the villain comic, there is almost no limit to the audience's willingness to hate and fear-the seemingly endless series of Friday the 13th sequels makes that plain enough.

That doesn't mean, however, that you should create completely evil villains. While many stories-perhaps most-draw clear distinctions between good guys and bad guys, there are also quite a few stories that don't.

At the beginning of this chapter I mentioned my fondness for stories in which all the characters are at least somewhat sympathetic, so that the audience is never given a clear list of people to love and people to hate.