Evil is Boring (And Your Story Deserves Better)

We've all seen this story before. It's the young idealist versus the Evil Empire in their snappy uniforms and insidious weapons of mass destruction. It's the empty waste of fire and filth that births monsters that fill the ranks of the Dark Army. It's the mummified husk of an ancient sorcerer who serves the Gods of Wickedness. From the Empire, to Mordor, to Mum-Ra, some of our most popular stories have a clear good guy, and a clear bad guy. Right versus wrong, good versus evil.

This week I wanted to talk about that. Because while there's nothing wrong with having two clear sides on an issue so your readers can figure out where the lines are drawn, this is a trope I think far too many of us lean on in our work. In short, the idea that our bad guys are evil... well, because they're Evil!

Well, our holy books explode with hellfire. So that's probably a bad sign, I guess...

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Evil As a Fact Feels Lazy

I blame a lot of things on Tolkien, but honestly he feels like the tip of the iceberg on this topic. From Christian scholars slanting and re-writing pagan mythologies so there was a clear good v. evil dynamic (look no further than the changes to Loki made by Sturlson), to the explosion of knightly tales in the Romantic period, a massive amount of our stories have this dynamic in place.

And what makes it boring is that this capital-E evil is a default. It's a placeholder for actual motivation and purpose held by our villains. And the more detailed and involved our heroes become, the more bland and boring Evil may seem. Because no matter how many skulls are on the warlord's armor, or how fearsome the demons they command are, it can leave the audience scratching their head and asking, "Okay, cool aesthetic... but why?"

Seriously... what are you getting out of this?

No one is evil for the sake of being evil. Not only that, but evil is not a universal constant across all peoples and cultures. Taken on a wide enough scale, the very idea of evil as a force becomes almost meaningless... and that can really bring down the story you're trying to tell.

Take one of the most basic versions of this concept; a knight in shining armor standing against a fearsome foe. Sure, you can just say, "Well, it's a dark army of the undead ruled over by a necromancer who's going to kill everyone because they're evil," and just leave it at that. And there's definite stakes to that confrontation... but it's kind of like a burger with no condiments. You can eat it, and it might be a good experience, but you could make it so much better with a few added spices.

What does this necromancer hope to gain in their victory? Why did they join this conflict in the first place? Why have they chosen this particular method to achieve their goals instead of something else? If we don't have answers to this, then our villain is just some nebulous bad thing that our hero is opposing, and we never have to really think about their actions because hey, whatever the hero does has to be better than the army of the Horned King over here, right?

The Broader The Population, The Worse It Gets

Having an evil god, or a powerful evil enemy, is one thing. Having an entire evil nation, though, is where things can really start to fall apart. Because whether we're talking about a regime of fantasy fascists who bind devils to their service, or a nation of orcs that are seen as brutish, backward, and wicked, there will always be nuance in these populations. By not providing that nuance, though, you just have a big lump of people that are painted with a big brush, and we don't have to think about who they are, what they're doing, or what their place in the story is other than as plot-filler villains.

I'm a respected member of my community, you know.

This is something I've been tackling myself while working on my fantasy RPG setting Sundara: Dawn of a New Age, and I thought I'd offer some tips based on what's worked for me thus far.

As an example, Ironfire: City of Steel is a place that's built on forging Dragon Steel. That's the primary industry, and in the city's early days it was a target for a bandit army that wanted that valuable resource. This conflict escalated to violence, and the city employed several free companies of mercenaries to defend itself. This led to Ironfire becoming the center of the mercenary trade in the region, and it is the presence of so many freelances for hire that has kept the city safe from outward attack as it's grown.

There was no need for an evil, outside force there. No need to make the antagonists bloodthirsty cannibals dedicated to a dark god of murder. A simple economic interest (one side has a valuable resource, and the other wants to take it by violence) was more than enough to stir that conflict and cement the city into both the setting, and the reader's memory.

These are the kinds of conflicts I set up, planting the seed of the challenges unique to the different locations one might come across. In Moüd: City of Bones we have a city deep in the desert run by a guild of necromancers. The challenges are not liberating the city from the black-robed wizards who dabble in the dark arts, but finding relics buried beneath the city, and helping to keep the elements at bay so the living can still survive in this particularly harsh environment. In Silkgift: City of Sails we have a place whose primary industry is innovation and invention, but whose government provides food, shelter, and enrichment for all citizens. As such, industrial espionage, and attempts to sabotage creations that could upset the status quo beyond the city are far more common. And in Hoardreach: City of Wyrms we find a place where refugees and outcasts of every sort are taken under the wings of the Cooperation of 5 dragons. It's a place where there's friction, yes, but also where plotting and machinations of outside forces may try to sabotage this "monstrous" place before it grows too powerful.

Broad social ills can be a part of a given society. Whether it's exploitation of the lower class, human trafficking, chattel slavery, or similar awful institutions, we all know full well that these things can and do happen. Political systems based on fear and hatred, like fascist movements, are also something that can happen. However, it's important to examine the role of these elements in a society, to ask what affect these things have on the story, and to use them to put things into context. Don't just front-load a location or culture with these things so we don't question the actions of our hero who opposes these cultures. That's just cheap shock to code these cultures or nations as evil without having to use the word.

Don't Be Afraid To Ask Questions

To be clear, it's still very possible to have a conflict in a story where one side is clearly in the wrong. Whether it's a more powerful entity trying to force people off their land, one class of people exploiting another, purges over ethnic identity or religion, and so on, and so forth, these are all bad things. However, all it usually takes is a glimpse into the motivations of the antagonists to see the structure of these conflicts at play. It lets us see what our hero is fighting against, rather than just keeping the villains in the dark, as it were.

And, as always, this is your story. If you want to have light side v. dark side, there's nothing to say you can't just do that. Angels and devils, the whole nine yards, if that's the structure you want then it's your story.

All I'm suggesting is taking a moment to pause, and ask if that is the best frame for your conflict. Because if you decide to use it after careful consideration, more power to you! Just don't assume that it will automatically make your story better just because it's worked for other stories in the past.

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That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my cat noir novel Marked Territory, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

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