Writing Villains And Recognizing Unstable Personalities

When readers ask me how I learned to write believable villains, I simply shrug and say, “By meeting them in real life.”

It might seem an odd thing to say, especially if you grew up in a completely normal and functioning family, but I spent a lot of time around broken people during my childhood. And by “broken,” I mean people with dangerous personalities—narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths.

I gained an intimate, firsthand understanding of criminal predation and violence during my childhood a...