Gwen Adshead is a forensic psychiatrist who has worked for many years with the most serious and violent offenders. One conclusion she has drawn from her work is that people who commit really depraved acts are often frighteningly similar to those of us who stay very firmly on the right side of the law. In her recently published book, The Devil You Know, co-authored with Eileen Horne, she writes persuasively about how someone, who could look and sound just like you or me, comes to commit a gross crime. At one point she uses an analogy that creative writers could find useful both in their plotting and character portrayal.
She likens the commission of an act of violence / murder to the undoing of a bicycle combination lock, with each number representing a factor in the build up to a potential crime. So, for example, the first two numbers could be socio-political – issues around masculinity, say, or vulnerability, or poverty … The next numbers could be personal – substance abuse, neglect, physical or sexual abuse … Once these four numbers are lined up, it then only needs the fifth number to fall into place for the opening mechanism to be primed. That last number could something about the victim that is uniquely triggering for that particular offender, like a familiar phrase, or gesture, or smell (for one troubled child – not discussed in Adshead’s book – the trigger was the smell of the new male social worker’s deodorant that reminded him of his abuser).
With all the numbers aligned the lock will, in her words, ‘spring open and release an act of harmful cruelty …’ (or, in creative writing terms, provide the climax of your work, having first set the stage and lined up all the props). Adshead’s analogy with the bicycle lock, dovetails too with the traditional policing ‘triangle’ used to describe the opportunity for the occurrence of a crime: victim / offender / location.
But, as she says, offenders, however evil, rarely come with a scarred face, bulging muscles, and a large badge saying ‘villain’ pinned to their striped T-shirt. Evil, as the poet W.H. Auden wrote, ‘is unspectacular and always human / and shares our bed / and eats at our own table.’ Even a mass murderer is an individual, and stereotypes rarely ring true. Indeed, most killers are not the lonely misfits we tend to assume they are. According to the FBI, they are more likely to be employed, with social lives and families. Just like the Yorkshire Ripper – a married lorry driver who killed women on his evenings out; or Dr Shipman, the family GP with the lovely bedside manner, a wife at home – and a penchant for killing his elderly patients. In short, portrayals of villains need to be as nuanced as portrayals of any other characters in a work of fiction.
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