The risks of profiling my villains.

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As a fiction writer, I have a tendency to base my characters off of actors or other people I've read about or seen stuff on. I also focus, in my stories, on the psychological dimensions of my characters. I really explore what makes them tick, or why they're so messed up. For some unknown reason, I find myself drawn to the warped minds of my villains. They're usually modeled after real-life baddies, like serial killers and despots. I think of my stories as mysteries that I have to solve, with the clock ticking as I try to prevent the villain's next crime. To solve the mystery and to help my protagonist(s), I find myself trying to get into the head of the man in the black hat. It gets my creative juices flowing and keeps my fingers firing black on white, but I'm uncertain if this technique will benefit me in the long run on a psychological level.

I style my villains after the "Psychopath" model - typically, an amoral opportunist who uses violence only as a means of expediency, and not as a primary method of operation. After all, why kill a man for one fish, when you can let him live so that you can steal more fish from him later?

Huh. Believe it or not, the villain of my WIP, Klaus Krieger, is described as a psychopath, for lack of a valid clinical diagnosis. The shrinks simply don't know what to call him. Klaus does show empathy, but it's subdued. Rather than being completely amoral and selfish, he subscribes to a moral code that makes sense only to him.

I'm thinking of a villain more along the lines of "Baal" from the "Stargate" franchise. He knows what he wants, is determined to get it at any cost, but does not eliminate those who may prove useful one day, and he's perfectly capable of developing a new strategy when his most recent tactics have failed.

Plus, he's classy!

Sounds like a Magnificent Bastard to me!