There are lots of books that teach you how to write about likeable or heroic 
characters or books that focus almost exclusively on how to create protagonists. This isn’t one of them. This is a book about creating deeply complicated characters that star in all the roles of a drama and about thinking outside of the box. As you read this book I want you to hit the ‘erase’ button on what you’ve learned about fictional characters and I want you to travel with me into a realm of characters that create sizzle and leave a lasting impression: bad asses. We use bad asses in fiction because readers want to meet story people that they’ll never meet in real life, or more likely, because they avoid these types in real life. Especially at your spouse’s office party, especially in a single’s bar, especially in a dark alley. As this book will prove a bad ass can range from a bitchy creature who betrays her friend as Barbara Covet does in Notes on a Scandal, an unlikable protagonist as in J.M. Coetze’s Disgrace, or a scoundrel like Black Jack Randall who appears in several books in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series. 

Now, a bad ass can be a protagonist, or main character in the story; an 
antagonist, or the person who opposes the main character; or a villain, an 
antagonist who has evil as part of his personality make up. A bad ass can also 
be an anti-hero, a protagonist with few or no heroic and likeable traits. A bad 
ass can also play a supporting role in story as a secondary or a minor 
character. Thus a bad ass can star in most any role in the story and their 
personality types can have endless variations. But he or she shares certain 
characteristics and we use them in fiction because a bad ass makes readers 
nervous. As writers we want our readers nervous if not scared about what is 
going to happen next in the story. 

Let’s now talk about these characteristics because I’m sure we all have 
our own definition of a bad ass from real life. This requires that you’ve still got your ‘erase’ button depressed, because I want you to explore a whole new definition of what kind of person might star or co-star in your stories. You use a bad ass in fiction because he or she is going to elicit a complicated set of emotions in the reader, because he or she will create more complex and intense situations {and often more dangerous situations} than typical likeable or sympathetic characters; and because tension swirls around them like leaves in a hurricane.

As in real life, a bad ass makes a huge impression. Now, while a bad ass 
can range from a smart-aleck to a sociopath, he or she will always be somehow edgy and somehow outside the norm. They also possess a large and simmering physical presence, with at least one unsavory personality trait. Bad asses draw heat because he or she will act in unexpected ways in the story. A bad ass might not necessarily be a type that readers can empathize with, because they’re often less fearful, less constrained, and have more attitude than the rest of us. In the animal kingdom they are not the poodles or Persians or even pandas. In fact, they’re not cuddly or domesticated and instead might be compared to cockroaches, sewer rats, wolves, jackals, and other predators.

Again, while the following chapters will delineate the various types you 
can use in stories, in general, bad ass take risks, have chutzpah, and usually 
are the opposite of a wuss. Sometimes a bad ass has adventures we can only dream about. Sometimes a bad ass can intimidate by merely lifting an eyebrow or with a cold stare. If a bad ass appears in genre fiction they are men and women of action, and they especially act when most of us would be ducking for cover. In thrillers readers might watch a bad ass dig a bullet out of his own leg, ignite a fire with a stick and a bow, steal a fortune, save the day, slay vampires, or start a war. But again, a bad ass can appear in any type of story including literary fiction and in the pages of this book you’re going to meet characters that act in ways most of us would avoid and take risks most of wouldn’t dare. 

I need to also want to remind you that a bad ass can also be refined—more fox than sewer rat, more ermine than badger. He or she can possess a great intellect or wit and quote saints and philosophers. He or she might also possess a simmering sexuality, look fabulous in a ball gown or tux, and have admirers or lackeys. You might want to imagine the characters played by George Clooney and Brad Pitt in Oceans Eleven to imagine this type of bad ass. 

A bad ass can be in a position of power or authority which makes readers 
really nervous. Perhaps the bottom line is that they cannot be typecast, cannot be easily explained and certainly cannot be easily dismissed. There is always something slightly or hugely dangerous about a bad ass, but sometimes this danger can be strangely appealing. We write about them because they fascinate and linger in the imagination.

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Copyright © 2008 Jessica Morrell