I love a good crazy character. They’re some of the best characters in fiction. What sort of person do I mean, exactly? Harley Quinn, of course. But also Dolores Roach, Azula, Jack from The Shining, The Narrator from Fight Club, Patrick Bateman, Dexter, and The Trashcan Man. And, of course, Annie Wilks.
Kathy Bates, if you ever read this, you are my queen.
Crazy characters are fun because they are wild and unpredictable. When a crazy character is written well, they stick with you for the rest of your life. They make you laugh and check to make sure your door is locked. They’re the class clown who might at any moment shove a pencil through someone’s ribs. Even if they’re the good guys.
When a crazy character is written poorly, though, it’s usually because the writer was trying too hard to write zany, wacky, or unrealistic character traits. Listen, your character cannot just staple a peanut butter sandwich to someone’s forehead and be a memorable crazy character. I mean, they can do that. But there has to be more to it than that.
So today I want to discuss five ways to write a crazy character that will both delight and terrify your audience.
First, though, a disclaimer. This post has nothing at all to do with mental illness, nor is it in any way meant to vilify or objectify people who have mental illnesses. Perfectly sane people commit horrible atrocities and people with mental illnesses get up and go to work without hurting anyone every single day. I have a mental illness, and I’m safe to be around unless you’re a wasp or a lantern fly. We are not pointing and laughing at the crazy person who can’t get help. We are admiring the varied characters in fiction and aspiring to write them in more realistic ways.
No one thinks it’s cool when your character just does weird stuff for no reason
One of the laziest ways someone can write a ‘crazy’ character is to have them do weird things for absolutely no reason. I don’t mean weird things that don’t make sense to the people around them. I mean things that don’t even make sense to the characters themselves. Just in the same way it’s not funny to yell banana hammock for no reason, it’s not fun to see a character doing random stuff that doesn’t tell us anything about their character, their emotions, or move the plot forward in any meaningful way.
No one ever thinks they’re the crazy one
Harley never thinks she’s crazy. She thinks she fell in love and ran away to the circus. She broke out of her life and finally felt free.
Bateman certainly doesn’t think he’s crazy. He thinks this is how one has to act to get by in the high-powered world he’s put himself in.
This is one of the reasons it’s fun to write a character like this. You have to imagine that you see the world in this way. You have to crawl into an unstable mind and stay there for a little while. See the view from those eyes. And those eyes don’t think there’s anything wrong with what they’re doing most of the time. They think they’re the sane ones.
Focusing on their thoughts
One of the reasons why the first season of Dolores Roach worked is that a lot of focus was on how she was feeling and what she was thinking. This worked for Dexter as well. Though I would consider him more of a ‘straight man’ killer.
Much of the fun of these characters is in the novelty of their experiences. Most of us are fairly sane, after all. Most of us would never think to strangle someone, tape them to a table and cut them open, or trap someone in our guest bedroom and break their ankle when they try to escape.
I hope.
So it’s fascinating to see how that sort of mind works. This might take some research into psychology, which I think we as writers should have at least a surface-level understanding of anyway. So much of creating art is seeing the world not just from our limited perspective, but from as many perspectives as we can. Even when we don’t agree with them. Especially when we don’t agree with them.
The trick is to show as much of how that different person sees the world as you can. This not only makes for a more entertaining story but gives more humanity to your character as well. And in doing so, maybe you can help people understand them a little better.
Moments of lucidity
I think every person has had these moments in their lives. Maybe when we’re mad, or scared, or burned out. We realize we are in the middle of doing something or saying something or talking about something that is just bonkers. And we stop, and we either in our minds or out loud ask, “What in the hell am I doing? Why am I doing this? I shouldn’t be doing this.”
Dolores Roach is full of those moments. Largely because we didn’t start that show with a mentally unstable woman. We watched her descend into madness.
I highly suggest giving your characters those moments. There are three ways this can be incredibly useful. If your character, like Dolores, is going mad this can be a great gauge of that. As she gets deeper and deeper into her madness, these moments of lucid self-reflection get further and further apart.
If your character, like one I’m writing right now, is already mad, and they suddenly have a moment of sanity, it might be a sign that your hero can reach them. Can bring them around, can help them come back to the side of goodness. We see this with Harley often. There is one beautiful, heart-wrenching moment in some comic or another when Harley realizes the woman she’s fighting, Black Canary, is pregnant. Harley refuses to continue the fight. She tells Black Canary, who until this point has been an enemy, that she has a daughter. She gave the baby to her sister, to protect her from the Joker. And for a few minutes, Harley seems as sane as you or me. She’s sharing her grief and connecting with another woman on a very personal level. And this does eventually lead to Harley becoming a hero.
As she should have been all along.
Of course, it could be a misdirection as well. Your character might have that moment of lucidity, then sink right back down into her madness. I think the best example of this is Azula from Avatar the Last Airbender. There are many moments in the series when we see someone almost reach her. Aang tries. Zuko tries. Uncle Iro certainly tries. Even Katara tries, and she would have liked to snap that bitch’s neck. And we see her almost come back from her madness.
Then, she doesn’t. And her defeat is so much sadder because of it. It’s clear that Azula is too far gone, but that she almost wasn’t. It’s heartbreaking, and it stays with you. Honestly, I considered the defeat of the Fire Lord anti-climatic after seeing Azula screaming and crying with rage because someone had finally beaten her.
Make them memorable
And that leads me to the most important advice. If you’re going to write a crazy character, don’t half-ass it. Put your whole ass into it. Do not hold back, no one likes a polite crazy character. Give them traits and verbal habits that make them stand out.
You can’t write Harley, The Trashcan Man, or Dexter because they’ve already been written. But you can write someone completely new. Someone that will be on someone else’s list in years to come.
This, honestly can apply to any character you’re writing. Make them their own person, not just one thing. No one is just crazy, or just a hero, or just a love interest. Why is your character who they are? Figure that out, and the character will stand out to your readers and stand the test of time.
In short, your crazy character is going to work best if they’re a fully-rounded person. Not just a prop to occasionally do Wild Card things and then fade back into the background. Just like any character, they have to have character.
Paper Beats World 