How To Write Evil - Tony DuShane 

"how do you write evil?" "easily enough unfortuntely" that made me laugh hard

Flip side to everything. The hero fears they're the villain, and the villain believes they're the hero.

There's a difference between human and inhuman evil. Human evil is complex and realistic, inhuman evil is imposing and fantastical. Neither one is better than the other

I love the interviewer's voice. It's so calm and warm. Definitely creates the comfortable environment that's essential for getting the most out of these interviews

The Brazilian film "City of God" has one of the best depictions of evil in all its varied forms.

The modern portrayal of Bane in the movies was awesome. He was like a mirror reflection of Batman. They both wanted the same goals but took different roads to achieve them.

Guy talks non stop in Starbucks line, holding the line up This guy: “That guys part of the human collective… he might be dispensable.” 😂😂😂😂 This is morbidly relatable, holy crap! 🤣

Evil are those dark thoughts that slipped through your mind that you dismissed, forgot or ignored.

Tony, so true about evil being within all of us, and we choose not to act on those thoughts! I really appreciate you talking about that.

I would like to see an interview about writing a historical film… how to write characters that really existed, how to choose which actual events to portray, when to be perfectly accurate and when to embellish, etc.

It's childish to say every villain mist be sympathetic. Movies can be symbolic and villains can be elemental evil.

When he said to use yourself as a source to write evil I thought for a second there and realized he’s onto something. I’m coming up on my once in a blue moon snap where I feel like letting out the most evil and apathetic side of me. I don’t like it bc it’s the opposite of my morals but it’s still part of me. That’s still me whether or not i want to acknowledge it, let alone accept it. For mental healths sake, I need to start acknowledging it so I have better inner balance. This was an amazing video and I’m gonna use this newfound knowledge to write compelling villains, thank you

I love the honesty. Embracing and knowing we are capable of good and evil as human beings lifts limitations for all creatives. And i love the advice to write evil as if nobody is going to read it 😆

You have put into words what I have had such a hard time explaining why my stories are soo embellished. I always just say "reality is a nice day with crickets chirping but a good story has a tiger!" :)

Anyone else feel like this guy said a lot without saying much?

Seems pretty straight forward. Evil is about as low as you go.

This is extraordinary. I'm super intrigued! This sounds like an amazing way to work through trauma from abusive relationships and turning the pain into art. I really like this perspective into creativity and the writing process! I think I might have to bust out my laptop again! Thank you for this video and thank you sir for you words of wisdom!!!

My thoughts are there are three kinds of evil. Sick evil and intelligent evil with a spectrum in between. Then there is the evil that doesn't know it's evil. It is moral to the Nth degree but it's morality is not a common morality. The latter is more common in the real world that we'd like to believe. It is, IMO, the most interesting as it creates a clash of moralities (which is what is happing in the real world in a big way today.)

I think what's interesting about "Evil" is that it's the answer to all things that are "Good" It is a constant and comes in all forms and shapes. Exploring evil can help us define what is truly good. The story of Good vs Evil is as old as the cosmos itself, akin to life and death, what is and will be.

The key to creating iconic and well developed evil characters, is to make them believable and sympathetic.

wow these are the old school and best lessons. when he says "yeah it's true but make me care" I think that is the essence of the problem of modern writing. just having your identity in a story doesn't cut it. no one else cares.

Heros tend to rationalise their values While villains tend to rationalise their actions

How do you write evil?

It truly is in all of us, most people just don't want to dive too deep

Great villains never think of themselves as villains. They just do villainous things--perhaps because they imagine that they have to. Consider the Competing Harms Principle (trolley example, pull the lever to kill one person but save five). If the bad guy refuses to pull the lever and lets five people get killed, that's one thing. If he pushes the lever back and kills five to save one whom he/she values more, we tend to view that as evil or villainous. But is it? Star Trek Khan's revenge is villainous, but was it evil? Bad guys need to be relatable. Ideally, they're like the hero but end up with a completely different outlook because of one small difference in philosophy.

I wish I had of watched this before going down the serial killer rabbit hole.

Joker is cool and all, but I love Lex Luthor. So much of what he does is driven by his own narcissism coming up against a superior life form like Superman. All great characters have a flaws, but the kind of flaws determines whether they are viewed as heroes or villians.

Love this guy man 👌

Evil is a lack of empathy or a lapse in empathy. Sympathetic villains are en vogue but the reality is that those that lack empathy or momentarily disregard it are prone to "evil acts" Think spoiled rich kid or someone who is disillusioned to the point of hatred. Also, we've all experienced a lapse in empathy, especially when we're angry, stressed, tired. These are more circumstantial and not inherent evil but then you may be talking about the low agreeableness and low neuroticism that psychopaths tend to have

The last third of this conversation reminds me of a guy I lived and worked with for a month or two when I was younger. Weirdest guy I'd ever met and had my teeth grating with annoyance within minutes of meeting him. Then he had to sort-of saved me from drowning. I'm still conflicted about the guy.

I like this guest he explains things simply but also seems personable in this interview.

Best thing to remember is that evil is often Human

It may be easy to write evil, but a compelling villain that drives a story requires certain energy and belief.

You guys are awesome 👌

Okay. Went to listen to ths because I'm writing a script about a serial killer and in the first minute. "I can never write a serial killer." That was a quick wrap-up.

your question at 1:56 was great, personally I'm intrigued by evil character backstories which reveal how they came to be... Related to this, I like Carl Jung's theories on the Shadow and the Persona architypes and how they are used for storytelling purposes, such as Darth Vader and his conflict with the Dark and Light sides, as well as Batman.

That's so true.

Griffith from Berserk

"The mezzanine" Nicholson Baker. (14,24)

As I was scanning RU-vid titles, I thought this one said : “How to Write Good Evil.”😅

When I think about evil, I just look around, and use exactly what I see around me. Evil is the easiest thing to find, it's everywhere... I spent most of my life just looking at it and feeling horrible. Now, I express it all. I had enough of bottling it in.

Oddly enough, the Abraham "sacrificing" Isaac is not a good example of evil. i.e. who is evil? God or Abraham? - neither. The governmental and religious powers that had an innocent Christ executed is a very good example of pure evil.

1:56 The question that spun this yarn *kisses fingers* "muah"!

It's interesting to hear about how to write evil. Often, I find myself able to do so, but in conflict because I'm a Christian (mention of the Bible, really BOTH testaments are rough!). The hard part is when I play that "evil" character...or many characters of mine that don't align with how I [try to] live. But I'll just make carbon copies of myself if I don't reach out and risk feeling the anguish I feel at times. It's exhausting! Still, I do have a wide range of characters because I allowed them to take over, even tell me to shut up. >_

Best evil is the one that doesnt think they're evil. They think they are right and damn all the people that get in the way.

Film Courage is a film school in itself

Yay I was the first like!

In my story The Star Gem, my evil character is the one taking over a industrialist who is unhappy for not having enough in life. Feral is his name. He controls Ravowl his host in my story. I like Ravowl and Feral. Both of my villains were fun to draw and make for my story.

8:15 - Wait, that was YOU at Pottery Barn?!?

I started a horror storytelling podcast and it’s called Midnight Train to Sleepy Hills on Spotify. Currently working on my own evil characters, and I am always looking for new listeners for my podcast.

This guy is interesting.

Genghis Khan reached out in peace and responded to aggression with more skillful aggression; he created alliances and formed a China unified under law and order; he created the largest contiguous land empire in history. There are some forty million deaths attributed to him. He was complicated.

I feel like writing evil is easier then someone acting evil. Some actors ham it up way too much.

I'm writing an evil character right now and I feel sick to my stomach

“How do write evil? Easily enough...” oh okay.

I want to see evil that is truly inhuman. Something that is actually intimidating and awful is the best type of monstrous.

Unless you are writing a character that is insane then you shouldn't write any character that is pure evil because it will look cartoonish TV has really taken the lead in writing three dimensional evil characters in giving us charismatic extremely flawed protagonists in Breaking Bad, the Sopranos, and Mad Men and more.. the lead character in all of those shows does some despicable evil things but we cheer for them anyway even though they are really just villains

Maybe I over-distill it a little... BUT I divide the concepts of "Good" and "Evil" into their simplest core principles... Good people are "Socio-centric"... meaning their thinking and actions generally revolve around helping and supporting others... society at large. Evil people, then, are "Ego-centric"... meaning they generally think and act around the core of support and help for themselves entirely... There are varying degrees of tolerable evil in most people, so the ego-maniac who only ever acts like a jerk, or treats others like crap as long as they're on the job to serve him, is a tolerable evil. We don't condone it, but nobody's going to arrest him or shoot him for it. Rarely, someone might stand up to him, even as far as punch him in the face... BUT by and large, we tolerate it. To write a villain, I also remember the basic psychology. "Hurt people hurt people." Everyone's got some kind of flaw, a core wound, and a backstory that's less than stellar... BUT heap some rather exceptional misfortune on an ego-centric personality, and you get someone who's much more likely to slide down the rabbit hole of becoming self-serving to the eventual exclusion of everyone else. As to what I dig into? Where do I go for the particular details of a truly nefarious son of a bitch??? We all have a "shadow"... I just embraced mine long ago. It's a part of me that I can tap into when thinking of the most deliciously vindictive ways I could retaliate on someone for crossing me... I embrace the rage and pain and let them go wild on the page. It's only a fantasy, so I can write or draw any stupid thing I like and nobody's going to be hurt about it. You'd have to find the page in question, read and examine it, and THEN assume I was talking about you, personally... rather than some faceless or nameless figment of my own imagination. Might help that I've been examining this exact thing and working toward the most vile and destructive villains I can make since I was about 10 years old, just playing D&D... It's boring to keep cranking out the same mustache twirling "psycho's" that the stock adventures offer... with rare exceptions. My solution was to embark on understanding the very core of Good and Evil to the best of my ability, and that seems to be it... Good people can grow up and mature and understand that they are parts of a much bigger organism... the society they're in. Whether your scope of understanding is for your city or county or up to the State, or even the whole Country or the WORLD... You're one cog in millions of moving parts. When you support and function for others, even as a profession, then they also support and function for you. That's the trade-off for being a part of a society. It's normal, healthy, and in accordance to all the folklore through all the world, "Good"... AND it's not to overtly crush your individualism or your right to self care, profit, or anything. Dead heroes don't save a damn thing. Evil people, through out all the same folklore of all the same world, serve THEMSELVES... period. They do so to the utter exclusion of anyone else, and even get violent about it if they perceive someone in their way. It's all ego... ...AND about 90% of all the rest is a mix of set dressing, semantics, obfuscation, and bullshit. ;o)

Well, it’s been about a year since I first listened to this, though I’ve learned a lot, especially about the dark side of the modern liberal and all the nihilistic madness of this hypersensitive society we live in, not to mention who my friends and, more importantly, my enemies were, all along. So, do not say I didn’t give you your fair share of thought, DuShane; your mustache is imprinted permanently in my neural network like the downer drugs they gave me in my early twenties. It is with this firm conviction that I’ll illustrate exactly why this viewpoint fails. There is an arrogance in people who assume a universal human nature. If we all are born the same, devoid of freedom, products of conditioning, then “evil” is a sort of joke. On one hand, everyone is “evil” by default since Adam ate that goddamned (literally) apple; Tony’s fundamentalist conditioning is not entirely divorced from his contemporary views. Yet coupled with deterministic and postmodern thought, as well as maybe just a dash of Jung, it's easy to imagine how just anyone can be a villain in today’s society, for holding any view, or just for violating social norms because one can. A drama can take place in an L.A. café: I can condemn as evil someone who drinks milk, and I would be condemned as evil for that condemnation. If there is no moral objectivity, then all of us are wrong and no one right. Atrocity and crime are just as trivial. Assuming that hard lives make evil men, as well as the assumption that we have an obligation to make hard lives easier, the human being has become a sort of penny which is dropped in acid or in water and becomes corrupt depending on the solvent. So, to judge the murderer is just to say, “I’m fortunate that I was never dropped in THOSE conditions; where is my soy latte??” Now, with all this in mind, assuming Tony has at least been in the company of fellow liberal professors who maintain such “trending” views, it’s easy to infer why he believes that villains ought to be inspired by oneself and not by others. It is not a strawman to infer the reasoning behind his “humble” point of view that all of us are flawed and that we all have evil “deep within” which we should use for inspiration. Nor is it surprising that he would dissuade us from developing such characters according to the people who have hurt us or have hurt the people that we love, for, after all, we “are no different”, and to assume we are is evil. All of this is absolutely wrong, for one small detail: human will. It is not human nature which determines who I am, but human choice. What’s more: beyond the limits of a Hollywood café, the world is far more black-and-white. The drug cartels who murder small pueblos just to “send a message” cannot be equated with the people whom they kill, nor with the people who would fight them. We are not the same as them, nor are the migrant workers who must flee their persecution, nor the border agents who would send them back to hell. This is because, while good and evil are both absolutes, and the pursuit of good is universal, evil nature is not universal. When a man commits a crime, he is inferior to those who don’t commit that crime, at least according to one rubric. He is not the “product of oppression” or “conditioning”; he’s just a human being who has chosen crime. So, if he’s hated for his crimes, it is because he’s _not_ the same as those who hate him. We do not hate villains, either in the World or in the Movies, just because of pride. One has to be exceedingly myopic to assume that pride could have such influence. Pride is a minor evil; it becomes a deadly sin when it ignores the greater evils it enables. Yet to say that it is only out of _pride_ that we condemn the murderer is psychopathic, since it’s out of basic _decency_ that we must recognize that killing innocents is wrong, and anyone who’s decent (a distinction which one has to make, not out of pride but out of observation of the brutal truth of real-world actions) would be moved to hatred when it happens. Putin can content himself in thinking that it’s out of pride that people hate him, but it's probably the bombs. The greatest villains are inspired by the greatest evils in the World, and the objective isn’t to relate with them but to resist them, for the Greater Good of those who are deserving of one’s sympathy. The Shadow Personality, once integrated, doesn’t make you soft on real-world evil; it just makes you ruthless in resistance to it. Yet contemporary thought pretends that, if I hate the person who betrayed me, I’m the monster, since betrayal is _not_ unforgivable and vile, but attacking narcissistic egos with your petty moral views is horrible. The victim doesn’t even have the luxury of writing his oppressors into fiction. When we vilify the rapist, it’s “projection”, since he is “no worse than we are”; when we shoot the rapist, we’re the monsters. Jung is rolling over in his grave, I think; his concept of “projection” is so bastardized that it is only used by pacifists and nihilists in order to escape the real-world problems; if a truly integrated man should own his dark side and employ it in the service of a higher principle, it’s not “projection” then to put him on the “Villains” wiki. I would like to think that everyone is decent, yet I am no longer ten years old. Nor will I just assume that everyone is rotten; I’m no longer twenty. I must recognize that when I speak of human nature then I have to be specific and distinguish “decent” from “barbaric”. Yet I am not doing that to be a jerk. It’s rather that the monsters we contend with choose to be that way, and they don’t really give a damn about how they are represented in my indie novel. Nor, therefore, do I. If I’m to “write my truth”, as Tony would prescribe, I’m not afraid to illustrate that I have chosen better paths in life, for that’s what I’m _supposed_ to do, and I don’t read the works of people who have been corrupted. It is pride which tries to elevate them, since they have no virtues and rely instead upon the vices which they share with others, and it’s pride which would react so arrogantly when one tears them down, since it reminds them that their target audience is limited, and some of us do not relate and never will. The narcissist will seldom act as though he were superior; that sort of thing takes work. It’s easier to act as though “we’re all the same”, for how could anybody judge the horrid, narcissistic things you do if all are equal? Who will challenge your deep-seated feelings of superiority if no one is externally superior to anybody else? Yet life proves otherwise, each time, and writing must be true to life. True evil does exist, and those who are most fit to write about it are the ones who are prepared to fight it, not embrace it. We can start by writing of the numerous abuses we have suffered at the hands of absolute degenerates. It shouldn’t be a Herculean task to find in California. Enabling is everywhere, but all this does is underscore the power of the human will to rise above it and produce great work, as greatness is attained not for its own sake but for Other People. *[({R.G.)}]* ⚔

"They are all our people" - The Expanse

I like characters that know that they're bad and are okay with it. Hans Gruber was motivated by the money in Die Hard, but it's still unclear what he intended to do with it. He was once a member of a radical West German group, which sound like terrorists. His brother Simon had problem with detonating bombs all over L.A. killing innocent people, which is what a terrorist would do, yet he was also motivated by money(gold), but he also had mercenaries and I'm sure they don't work for free, so he had responsibilities, but also wanted more power. Evil people do tend to have something which drives them to do what they do. Even the Joker is motivated, as he wants to drive the city into chaos and turn neighbor against neighbor, to prove that no one is truly good. Lex Luthor is usually motivated by money, at least in the movies, but sometimes he just wants to test Superman's breaking point, to see how he ticks. Okay, that was a long thought. Apologies.

You always must make the villain the hero in his own mind 2 exception Satan &The Joker.

How to write evil or a talk about evil?

Entertaining listen. Also he looks like Mark Hamill.

How to write evil? The mystery is in our minds, and how we perceive it defines the outcome. For example, a glassless window on the second floor from the outside. Burn marks leaking. There's a garbage bin underneath. What happened? What's in the garbage bin? After a slow attempt to respond, inside, the fireteam discovers an ash home, and in the garbage bin are burnt bodies.

I read news articles all the time about a sister or brother killing their sibling or parents out of hate or just something really really trivial but when I write that into a script, it seems to be a problem for the person(s) reading it. Does there need to be a major reason for say.... a sister to wanna kill her sister beyond "I hate you."?

12:42

Ghengis Khan lined the path with the heads of his enemies on spears. Are there “method” writers as well as method actors?

That should be on a t-shirt: The stupidity is glorious!

How do I write evil? NOT ONLINE FROM HERE ON OUT 😳 chrisakes maaan

Evil characters are all perspective...

I liove stephen king!!!!

I think that evil is simple to write, not easy. Perhaps it's my pagan and dualistic spirituality. I reframe it in my writing from good vs. evil to selfish vs. selfish. Selfishness is the root of survival, and it can be progressive and regressive. Some selfishly want things for themselves. Some selfishly want to be accepted or preserve or keep someone or something. If you look at the depths a person is willing to go to attain their deepest desire, the antagonist becomes equally compelling as the protagonist. My character driven writing demands that motivation be real for every character, and actions have consequences. The question is what does the character do about their consequences. Does it harm or heal?

"It would be so easy…" is what evil is to me. You know, that momentary thought, when you see a situation and you‘re like "I could kill this person. There is nothing anyone could do." The truth is, we don‘t do it because we are afraid of will happen afterwards. Aside from that, we don‘t have a reason not to do it. And thats the scary part

serial killers are classified as people who've killed 5 or more people i think... or some shockingly small but monetized number between 3-7 or somethinG: goes to show how "low" the bar is for being classified as a serial killer lol

One does not simply answer the question "How do you write evil." It is a droning semblance of ramblings, antecdotes, the very dialogue is a cyclical logic. Not with 10,000 years could he answer the question straight forwardly, It is foley!

I can write evil because, believe it or not, I kinda have a dark mind.

DuShane's biblical commentary was somewhat ambiguous; he appears both dismissive and supportive of this part of his youth, as well as how this continues to impact him to this day and to his writing.

Writing a franchise like POTC has to be a can of worms. Because all the interesting characters are pirates, and well, pirates are evil. Yes, even Jack Sparrow does shit-tons of ethically bad stuff. Without any necessity. He could just get a job. But at the same time, the pirates are painted as the heroes, because, well, the audience likes them. And that's why they never do anything particularly piraty. Except embezzle a ship here and there, but that's it. They can't even swear, for fuck's sake. They basically spend all their time fighting each other on personal vendettas. Why does the East Indian trading company even mind their existence? This is when you're trying to write evil, but you can't write evil evil. Must be a really cramped situation.

Write it as awful and terrible as you can. Imagine the worst of the worst. Not per se the goriest or the bloodiest. Just the most awful to whatever the character's hope. Then, re-write it even worse. Find every positive thing, but make it evil. Not killing. Not murder. That's easy. That's over. Evil lasts. Evil worms its way into your characters to live there. To stay there. To corrupt them to be even worse. Ruin a perfectly good person to become a monster than creates more monsters.

Will A.I help you write evil.

Just leanred Jin Bubaigawara's (Twice) Tomura Shigaraki's origin from My Hero and hooo boy... I get it now.

If evil is easy to write, then I'd rather write the opposite of evil.

Wasted my 16 mins. I hope someone really discussed the tool they use while writing an evil character.

Robert and Michelle King are great at this. I literally cried and stopped watching an episode of their show called Evil (CBS) a few weeks ago that's how traumatised I was. It wasn't until I wrote to one of the actors that I was able to be like "calm down its just a show...it's just a show...iwtsts just a show".

This is the first video on the channel that made me go 'meh' throughout. Even videos that start banal or generic sounding it pivots to a fascinating take. Here......I liked the the pragmatic advice to his students.

you can't have a light without_ dark,.😄😄😙😜😜😜😝😝😝📹📹🎅🎅😂👅👀💦👄✌✌✌

Thanos was right though.

Man made my day reffering to the Bible as mythology. I love when smart people talk.

Johan Liebheart is the most evil of all

Evil is the self righteous virtue signalling people

Become evil.

Search RU-vid, Jordan Peterson evil.

So I can't be the only person who doesn't take this guy seriously talking about how to write evil but starts off by stating he can't even stand to read, write or watch a story about a serial killer. That's just ignoring the most pure unadulterated form of human evil, the cream of the evil crop as it were.

@5:25 the Biblical ignorance and judgment this man shallowly passes off like he actually knows something about it is pathetic; yet he does reflect the general disdainful contempt most ignorant people have about it these days. Very sad. Mr. Dushane seems to only be projecting what is in his own heart. Go back to Sunday school lol.