The Chameleon Artist - writing the bad guys

Someone said something interesting. Well no, that really doesn't happen all that often if you think about it. Most of the time, we're just regurgitating the same old thoughts, ideas, and we're basically having the same conversations. So naturally, when someone says something that strikes you as different, you cling to it. Weird, because I don't even know if it was something that special, just something that appealed to me – I suppose such things are more fascinating for writers.
I went to see this play because a guy I knew was in it and I really enjoyed the play, it really left a mark, I suppose. And afterwards, I asked this guy how he could play the character he played, who wasn't really all that nice, and he said that well, he understands that guy, too.

And it struck me as interesting because I understood what he meant. As a writer, I'm constantly looking for the other side of the story, you know? I mean, you can't write about an assassin and despise him, because that's going to make a bad read and in order to write with honesty about any character, you have to be on their side, you do indeed have to understand their point of view, even if you find it flawed, personally.
You change yourself so as to understand, you get in character, whether it's for a writing session or a representation of a play, you're stepping into someone else's mind, just for a while. If you don't believe in someone or at least understand them, how could you write or play them?

This is a really fascinating subject to me. The idea that for every evil person, everyone on this earth, there is someone who loves them or at least understands them. And thinking about it, I've often found myself in a similar position, although I never realized it. Writing like I do about dark things and mostly not-so-good characters, I often hear people react negatively to them – what a monster, I hate him – and while I'm glad 'cause that was the desired effect, I can't really agree with them.

Because I don't view my characters as such. I'm often going 'well, he's not so bad'. Because nobody wants to hear the story of 'well, there was this asshole and he...'. No.
People want to hear the 'there was this guy who thought this and did that and who was an asshole, incidentally,' story. The motivation, the psychology behind the character, that's the fascinating part – with the good ones, but particularly with the bad. I've written before on the appeal of the anti-hero and the bad guy and in writing that, I noticed that most people favor the evil character if he has a stronger backstory.
Readers aren't picking up a book to see good and bad, black and white. They want to read about the gray area in between, or at least glimpse it, so as to understand the people, to relate to them.
So, you get inside that character's head and you listen, you think them through and you end up understanding all sorts of weird, fucked-up people you never thought you'd understand.

Why can't we be chameleon people?

I often wonder that – if we can get inside the head of a character and see the world from their point of view, why can't we do the same with people around us? Right now, humanity is so divided, we're bickering among ourselves so much. And we choose to see things in black and white. Perhaps it's not a conscious choice, I suppose not, but we do it. We decide someone's bad and that's it. We rarely stop to consider how someone else sees things. God forbid we realize they're right too, in their own way...

The older I get, the more I realize how things aren't really just black and white, they're not really that simple, although we'd sometimes like them to be. Maybe we can be artists for a day and try to understand each other rather than be at another human's throat all the time?

Thank you for reading,

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