Three-Dimensional Villains – Finding Your Character’s Shadow

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If you’ve got ever needed to rise up in entrance of a gaggle of strangers and converse, you are accustomed to the worry that you’ll embarrass your self whereas all eyes are on you. Worse, all that focus appears to enlarge your each quirk, and your flubs can really feel like they overshadow what you get proper.Even once we’re not on stage, stress makes us flounder. It’s straightforward to reside our lives in response to our values and beliefs when the whole lot goes proper; it is lots more durable once we’re underneath strain and within the highlight.

Carl Jung named the face we current to the world, the general public façade we use to cover issues we do not like about ourselves the persona. The flipside of the persona is the shadow, which is sort of a three-dimensional model of our bodily shadows, packed filled with issues we’re making an attempt to cover, typically even from ourselves.

To turn into entire, every of us must individuate, or combine, all of our archetypal elements right into a cohesive entire. That consists of the persona and the shadow.

In any story, the mark of a great villain is his capacity to drive your hero into the proverbial highlight, the place he’ll discover methods to enlarge and criticize the issues your hero would most like to cover.

The Dark and Light Sides of the Shadow

Psychologist Carl Jung believed that regardless of its perform as a reservoir for human darkness–or maybe due to this–the shadow is the seat of creativity.

Author Ralph Keyes argues that most individuals by no means publish as a result of they are not prepared to seek out and face their shadows. Rather than acknowledge our fears about what we’d discover inside ourselves, we challenge the nervousness onto others and obsess about what they may assume. Good writers push previous the worry, Keyes says, regardless of the repercussions: “One reason so many good writers have such tattered personal lives is that they write as if they have no one to protect. Lucky for readers, not so lucky for writers.”

Recognizing Your Own Shadow

Since the shadow is, by definition, upsetting to acknowledge, we shove our consciousness of it down into the unconscious. That signifies that the one strategy to really know what’s in your shadow is to consider the issues that infuriate you, disgust you, and horrify you greater than anything. If cruelty simply makes you sick, Jung would say that cruelty is in your shadow.

Does that secretly imply you are a merciless individual? No, however it does imply you will have an awfully arduous time accepting that you simply actually are able to the sort of cruelty that makes you so sick. (And earlier than you insist you are not, learn a bit about Phillip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment.) Many, many individuals are riveted by true crime and serial killer tales as a result of they provide us a solution to indulge the shadow with out truly acknowledging that the shadow is a part of us.

If you are reacting to the final two paragraphs with skepticism or irritation, you’ve got discovered the sensation meaning you’ve got touched your shadow. If you possibly can’t face it, Betsy Lerner says, “you[‘ll] think you can’t write, but the truth is you can’t tell. Writing is nothing if not breaking the silence.”

And keep in mind: writing about it isn’t the identical as doing it.

Finding Your Characters’ Shadows

Good characters have shadows, identical to you do, and your characters’ shadows ought to repel them as a lot as yours does you. What meaning is that channeling your personal shadow by way of your characters will enable you to create the sorts of villains which have made writers well-known. If Stephen King had hidden from his shadow, The Shining would by no means have been written. The similar goes for plenty of different well-known tales. Dante’s Inferno. Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho. The Exorcist. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Frankenstein. Dracula.

Exercise: Find Your Hero’s Shadow (and Your Villain)

Worksheets that will help you do the workouts might be discovered at Archetype Fiction Articles

Directions

For every half, work as shortly as you’ll be able to. Try to not assume an excessive amount of concerning the solutions; your unconscious does higher work whenever you’re not questioning for those who’re doing the train proper or criticizing the solutions you provide you with. You can write as many solutions as you want for every half, since there isn’t a proper or improper quantity. You’ll in all probability discover, although, that arising with no less than 5 will enable you to get extra out of the train.

PART 1. List the qualities and values that make your hero a hero.

Examples: Is he courageous? Is she selfless? Does he converse his thoughts even when it is going to get him in hassle? Does she get up for many who haven’t any voices of their very own?

* If you will have hassle arising with phrases for traits, attempt Sandy Tritt’s Personality Components chart (scroll about midway down the web page) at http://users.wirefire.com/tritt/tip8.html

PART 2. List the qualities and values that make your villain a villain.

* Don’t fear about your hero, or shadows, or anything we have talked about for now. Remember, it is necessary to provide you with at the least 5 qualities or values. Again, you could discover Sandy Tritt’s chart useful.

Examples: Vengeful, dishonest, energy hungry

PART three. Next to every high quality or worth you’ve got written on your hero, write the precise reverse high quality.

Examples: Let’s say that a few of your character’s heroic traits are appeal, intelligence, confidence, and a great humorousness.

Ex 1. Quality: Charm – Depending on simply what you think about your character’s allure to be like, opposing traits could be issues like rudeness, pushiness, abrasiveness, clumsiness, or crudity.

So relying on which “opposite” feels proper to you, you may put “rudeness” or “pushiness.”

Ex 2. Quality: Confidence – Opposing trait prospects may embrace insecurity, narcissism, fearfulness, embarrassment, or disgrace, which leaves you with:

Heroic Trait………………..Opposite Quality

Confidence……………………..Shame

or

Confidence…………………..Insecurity

Ex three. Value: Honesty – This time we’ll use a worth fairly than a character attribute or high quality. Values which are in opposition to honesty may embrace deceitfulness or dishonesty

Heroic Trait………………….Opposite Quality

Honesty…………………………Deceitfulness

or

Honesty………………………….Dishonesty

PART four. Add a Behavior

Beside the constructive qualities and values you’ve got written in your hero, to the suitable of your record of the precise reverse qualities you wrote in Part three, write an instance of a conduct (not a thought or feeling) that demonstrates the other (non-heroic) high quality or worth .

Ex 1. (Note: The examples are easy for the sake of area, however you possibly can write as a lot as you want, or give examples of multiple “opposite” or “behavior.”

Heroic Trait…………….Opposite…………….Behavior

Charm…………….Rudeness…………..Telling crude jokes

Confidence……….Insecurity…….”Fishing” for compliments

Honesty…………Deceitfulness……Burning a letter that “tells on” your character

PART 5. Compare Your Hero’s Shadow (the Opposite column) to your Villain’s Characteristics

Check the second record you made, the one during which you wrote down the qualities that make your villain a villain, and see if any of them match you are hero’s Opposite traits, values, or behaviors. Since the Opposite qualities and behaviors are your Hero’s shadow, they need to be personified by your villain.

If you do not see loads of overlap, it is time to begin eager about how one can incorporate the “dark sides” of your hero’s qualities into your villain. In most instances, meaning it’s essential consider methods by which your villain can manipulate or drive your hero to precise or embrace the shadow qualities you’ve got listed beneath “Opposite.”

Villains Should Personify Heroes’ Shadows

An excellent villain is all the time the darkish aspect of your hero; the best hazard your hero faces ought to be that beneath the proper pressures and given the suitable circumstances, your hero might embrace the very qualities that make the villain a villain–and sooner or later within the story, she ought to begin to do precisely that, even when she does it accidentally.

If your villain’s qualities are really the issues your hero hates most–especially in the event that they scare him–he’ll do something to convey the villain down, even when meaning turning into the villain. Remember, shadow qualities are the issues that infuriate you probably the most, that make you the sickest. We’re drawn to battle the issues we hate, which signifies that your villain can develop into your hero’s nemesis provided that the villain’s character and conduct actually arouse an obsessive drive in your hero. The Line Between Hero and Villain is Thinner than You Think.

What makes the hero totally different from the villain, in the long run, is selection: the hero chooses to not turn out to be his shadow, and as an alternative acknowledges and incorporates his shadow qualities into the remainder of his character.

In many instances the villain is a fallen hero, somebody who would have been identical to the hero if he’d been in a position to withstand the draw of evil. Even in actual life, the extra we hate somebody or one thing, the extra probably we’re to grow to be the very factor that we hate. Consider the irony of killing somebody to cease homicide, as within the instances of fanatics who kill docs who carry out abortion. There’s irony, too, within the venom of these Christian anti-gay-rights activists who insist that “God hates gays.”(So a lot for “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so…”) Martin Luther King, Jr. was a type of uncommon heroes who by no means swayed from training what he preached. He believed so strongly in peace he refused to harm others in his pursuit of it.

Consider the phrases of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb” and the scientific director of the Manhattan Project chargeable for the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasakai, when he noticed what his creations had accomplished: “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Though some consider that the “Little Boy” and “Big Man” bombs dropped in Japan ended WWII, even Oppenheimer seen the deaths as unconscionable as all of the others. For years after, he was a vocal opponent of the event of extra nuclear weapons. Examples

Fiction is full of examples of heroes and their personified shadows, some extra apparent than others.

Star Wars

In the Star Wars saga, each Anakin (episodes 1-III) and Luke Skywalker (episodes IV-VI) are seduced by the Dark Side of the Force. Anakin succumbs and embraces his Shadow to turns into Darth Vader; he later tries to speak Luke into doing the identical factor. Though Luke is tempted, in the long run he not solely resists however is ready to redeem Anakin as nicely.

Lord of the Rings

In the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Ring primarily attracts every character’s Shadow to the fore; Gollum is consumed by his and the evil within the Ring, and when Frodo carries the Ring, he almost falls prey as nicely.

The Matrix

In the Matrix trilogy, Neo has to turn into Agent Smith and acknowledge, embrace, and overcome his personal shadow to defeat the machine world.

Se7en

In the movie Se7en, Mills not turns into wrath, in so doing he turns into the killer he is pursued, thus falling prey to his personal shadow.

The Prestige

In The Prestige, Angier turns into a assassin to avenge the unintentional homicide his spouse.(You’ll discover he has to kill off his personal ethical aspect to do it.)

The Wizard of Oz

In The Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch is Wicked as a result of she needs revenge on Dorothy for killing her sister; as an alternative, Dorothy turns into a killer by killing the Witch

Fairy Tales

Fairy tales are literally sociopolitical propaganda (see Bettelheim’s basic e-book The Uses of Enchantment), so Cinderella and Snow White epitomize the “good girl’s” ethical path whereas the villainesses epitomize the “bad girl’s” path.

* Snow White: If Snow White embraced the sort of vainness the Queen did (her shadow), she might turn out to be identical to the Queen * Cinderella: If Cinderella indulged herself in self-pity and a way of entitlement (her shadow), she might simply turn into like her depraved stepsisters and stepmother

How Heroes Fall When Villains Push

The trick to shifting your hero from the aspect of excellent into the grey space between good and evil is to have your villain push your hero’s proverbial buttons. Marriage is crucial factor on the planet to your hero, and the very idea of divorce outrages him? The villain will attempt to discover a solution to injury the connection by introducing temptation or doubt into that relationship.

The hero’s most blatant response shall be rage, and doubtless not simply on the villain, but in addition at herself and her partner for being affected. The extra the connection is broken, the extra harm and anger shall be concerned and the much less doubtless the couple is to restore that relationship, which causes the probability of divorce to skyrocket. If the divorce occurs, part of the inspiration on which the hero bases her life and id has been destroyed, and until she’s capable of acknowledge and incorporate the brand new, uglier elements of herself, she’s on the best way to turning into a villain herself.

Works Cited:

Jung, Carl. The Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious (Collected Works of C.G. Jung Vol.9 Part 1)

Lerner, Betsy. (2000). The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers. Riverhead Books: New York.

Keyes, Ralph. (1995). The Courage to Write: How Writers Transcend Fear. Owl Books: New York.

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Source by Carolyn Kaufman