Inspiration for writing bad guys, with some pictures of good guys, by Catriona

How do you choose your characters? Do you base them off of people from real-life? If so, how you disguise your characters so their real-life counterparts don't recognize them?

I don't base characters on real people, generally.

For instance, I've never written a villain who's utterly and completely without a single redeeming feature. A man who is not only stupid, but also ignorant; not only ignorant but proudly so. Too uninformed to know how uninformed he is and too lazy to amend it.

I've never written a character whose greed is both oceanic and petty, who is so shallow that the greed for trinkets is his entire raison d'etre, whose very shallowness prevents him from understanding the worthlessness, so that he can't comprehend the scorn his obsessions attract from others.

I've never written a character whose cynicism about goodness, kindness and honesty have rotted him from crumbling bone to pitted skin, so that he's blind to what he's missing, but instead blunders about convinced that what he sees in others' eyes is envy.

I've never written a character so self-regarding that he ranks people only in terms of how much they flatter him, while his self-absorption stops him ever seeing the contempt behind the pandering words, even while he has to invent extra, imaginary people stroking his bloated and revolting ego because there aren't enough toadies in the real world to keep the stinking fantasy afloat.

I've never written someone absolutely without humour, who can't delight in anything, whose closest dim approach to joy is a kind of rancid glee in his own perceived triumphs, in others' supposed weakness as they live their lives based on, and bound by, values he is incapable of recognising for the wondous things they are.

I've never written a man drawling, sneering, mocking, mimicking, putting spoiled infant tantrums to shame with his jibes, endlessly embarrassing himself with pitiful attacks on his betters, while being so thin-skinned and insecure, so fragile and patchwork and rickety, that any slight, glancing however lightly against his poor, pathetic vision of himself, sends him shrieking into hysteria, thrashing and squealing like an eel trapped in a bucket, until because of the very humanity he doesn't share and cannot see, we all, from helpless pity, look away.

Cx