Becoming Someone You'd Never Want to Be

One of the most surprising aspects of writing [un]civilized was the amount of time I spent trying to understand people I would never want to become.

When readers think about writing, they often imagine worldbuilding, plot twists, or character development. Those things are certainly part of the process, but one of the less discussed challenges is learning how to temporarily inhabit perspectives that feel foreign. Or even uncomfortable.

A believable character can't simply exist on the page. They need to make sense to themselves.

That becomes difficult when you're writing someone who is emotionally detached, manipulative, power-hungry, or capable of causing harm to others without much remorse.

As a writer, you can't just label that person "bad" and move on. You have to understand them.

Throughout the two years I spent writing [un]civilized, I found myself asking questions like:

• How does someone justify manipulating another person?

• How does power alter the way someone sees the world?

• What happens when ambition becomes more important than empathy?

• How does a person convince themselves that the ends justify the means?

The more time I spent exploring those questions, the more I realized that dangerous people rarely see themselves as dangerous. They see themselves as pragmatic or even necessary.

That realization was unsettling because it forced me to move beyond caricatures. Real people are rarely the villains of their own stories. They build narratives that allow them to live with their decisions, just as the rest of us do.

The difference is often not whether a person can justify their actions.

It's where they're willing to draw the line.

What fascinated me most wasn't the darkness itself. It was the process by which ordinary human motivations can gradually evolve into something more troubling. The desire for recognition can become obsession. Confidence can become arrogance. Conviction can become fanaticism. A need for security can become a need for control.

Those transformations don't usually happen overnight.

They're incremental.

They're rationalized.

They're human.

Writing these characters taught me that understanding someone isn't the same thing as agreeing with them. In fact, the best way to explore difficult ideas may be to examine them honestly rather than dismiss them outright.

For me, that's one of the greatest strengths of fiction.

It allows us to safely explore corners of the human experience that we'd rather avoid in real life.

It lets us step into another person's shoes, even when those shoes take us somewhere uncomfortable.

And sometimes, in the process of understanding characters who are nothing like us, we discover a little more about ourselves.