The Art of Villainy: Creating Compelling Evildoers

Villains are fun to both read and write. But facile, cartoonish villains—who do bad things simply because they themselves are bad—seldom satisfy. In this presentation, David Corbett (The Art of Character, The Compass of Character) will guide participants in an exploration of the roots causes of criminal behavior, the wide variety of villain types, how to use moral argument to create villains whose motivations speak to profound human truths, and how much to reveal of the villain’s inner life without sacrificing his capacity to fascinate—and terrify.