When it
comes to storytelling, you will rarely find anything truly new under the sun. Once you allow for the changing language and
styles and times, you will find that most of the characters in fiction have
existed in various forms for thousands of years. The last century gave rise to
something sort of new though. In the past the lines between good and evil were
pretty clearly defined. You could tell
the good guys from the bad pretty easily by the way they acted and the things
they did. There was a belief that if you worked hard, lived a good and moral
life, did right by your family and community that everything would be alright,
that the good would prosper, and the evil would be punished. Then we had the Civil War, brothers fighting
brothers, then reconstruction, World War I and the Spanish Flu epidemic,
Millions dead. Then the Great Depression…there came a point when people just
couldn’t hold on to that belief anymore against the mountain of evidence to the
contrary? When you lose that surety how do you know right from wrong anymore? Bank
robbers are bad guys,by definition, but how do you feel when the Bank just took your home,
about the guy who took the Banks stuff? This gave rise to the various “folk hero”
bandits like Bonny and Clyde and John Dillinger. Maybe the first of what might be considered “Sexy
Bad Boys” (and Bonny)
So that’s
the back story. But how do you write a …good..sexy bad boy and not just a good
looking scumbag? Because there is a
difference. I have a theory about that. We all learned about the competing
theories of nurture and nature in child development in High School. I think of it like this; a person’s nature is
like Spring Steel. It has a form that it always wants to return to. His “Nurture” is the force that attempts to hold
the spring steel of a person’s nature to a form. When a person’s nurture aligns
with his nature you will see a very strong and pure expression of who that
person is. A good “Sexy Bad Boy” character is one who is a good person by
nature, perhaps twisted to bad by his upbringing or environment, but with
something inside of him actively seeks to return to good. His story arc will be the process of forcing
back the influence of his nurture so that more of his nature can assert itself,
probably with the help of the good guys.
Take
Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer for instance. Before he was turned he was a
decent enough guy if maybe a bit milquetoast. He took care of his mother, wrote
poetry, and wanted to fit in. When he was turned into a vampire, he lost his
soul and went on a 200 year killing spree, because well, Vampire, but even as a
vampire, he wasn’t like the others who all seemed bent on ushering in the
apocalypse. Unlike Angelus, he had
sympathetic aspects to his personality He was a caring and attentive boyfriend
to Drusilla, he liked Manchester United and the Clash. After he got chipped so
he couldn’t hurt humans he started hanging out with the Scooby’s, and more of
his good nature started to show through. He protected Dawn. He brought flowers
when Joyce died. He fought on their side
against Glory when he didn’t have to. He
still did plenty of bad stuff too, but for a guy without a soul he was pretty
ok. When he got his soul and got past the whole first evil thing he became a
pretty Stalwart hero. But he still had that bad boy edginess to him that the
girls like.
Now look at Prince Joffrey from Game of Thrones. Good
Looking Scumbag. His nature is evil. He is a Sadistic, Cowardly, Arrogant
Bully. That’s his nature. His upbringing was being ignored by his “father” and
doted on and spoiled by his mother.
There were social restraints on him for a time, but his innate cruelty
was always trying to get out. Once he became king he indulged it on every occasion.
He was never going to be a good person. Not with the love of a good woman, or
time to mature, or with the responsibilities of Fatherhood. His nature would always be trying to force its
way back to bad. As opposed to Tyrion Lannister whose good nature asserts itself through a largely cruel upbringing.
For
writers I would suggest taking a honest appraisal of a characters nature. What
do his past actions tell you about him? Let go of the idea that being handsome
or wealthy or capable of tossing off snarky dialogue forgives all sins. People
do not really change their natures; maybe a handful in a million, they only conform for a time to the pressures
placed upon them. If you are determined to write fanfiction about one of these
bad boy characters then you need to go back and work in some indicators that
they have within them a good nature. And try not to be a Sansa.
