In real life, tyrants are a nightmare. They serve no other purpose than to torture another person they deem weaker than them. Tyrants rely on the fear they produce and the other’s frightened response as the primary way to get what they want. And what they want is never really anything worthwhile or of notable substance. Your average bully and tyrant act the way they do because they enjoy making your life miserable. In this article, learn how you can write a tyrant in your fiction by getting inside their heads and finding why they take advantage of others. Learn how they manipulate others. And discover ways to make a three-dimensional tyrant that everyone loves to hate.
Why do Tyrants Take Advantage?
The reason why each tyrant hurts others is specific and unique to that tyrant and the one they are hurting. Maybe they see a shorter stature as a physical weakness. Perhaps they are jealous of status. Or maybe they just don’t like someone’s face. It could be as simple and pathetic as that.
But usually, there is more to it.
Tyrants have an agenda. They don’t just randomly choose a person to pick on. They watch and wait, like a lion scoping for a slow zebra. Once that lion locks in on that limping zebra, it will pounce. Bullies and tyrants are the same way. There is no honor in what they do. They have an agenda. And it is to someone else for their gain. Commonly, the gain is for the short term. Long-term bullying isn’t common because the bullied will eventually fight back. In that way, the tyrant is somewhat of a strategist. They know how and when and with whom to pick a fight.
How do Tyrants Take Advantage?
They do what comes naturally to them. For whatever reason—maybe they are larger in size or they are more intelligent than another—the tyrant uses their best skills against a weaker person, rather than using their best skills to help themselves or help others.
Making the life of another person miserable is an art form to a tyrant. Like I said earlier, bullies are great observers. Let’s say a character unfortunately has a boss that is a bully. He or she has, by policy, corporate power over them (to a certain degree). But, the problem is that whenever they feel the need, they can make their life a living hell for whatever reason. If they missed a deadline or botched an important project, rather than give a chance to redeem themselves, they could cut them off from other opportunities or ways to improve. And once an employee is on the bad side of a bully boss, there is usually no going back. No amount of ass-kissing can get them on their bully boss good graces again.
The most common way a bully takes aim at their prey is through physical force (at least for males). Most males will face bullies in their youth and then tyrants in adulthood. A tyrant is just a bully who never grew out of their bully ways. Now, a bully doesn’t necessarily have to physically strike their target to bully them. A simple gesture or expression or flinch of their body language can do the trick. Sometimes these subtle ways are better than producing a major scene of action.
More importantly, a writer should know that a bully is not a murderer. A bully character only wants to destroy someone’s life, not end it. If the bully character kills a weaker character, the bully will have crossed the line and they would then be in a world of trouble. Bullies are smarter than that. They don’t want to get into trouble for their actions because that would mean they don’t get to bully anyone anymore. Maintaining the fear and control they have over another person is their primary motive.
Creating a 3-D Tyrant
As a writer, this is the fun part. You can dive into the mind of your character and discover why they treat others that way. In one way, you might create a sympathetic character. These effects will be acknowledged and realized during the final moments of their character arc. Your reader will then know why the bully hurts people or why the tyrant scolds his employees.
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The Sorrowful Backstory
I would say this is the most cliché way to portray a bully character. But it is known to work. Using this method, the tyrant has had something horrible or traumatic in their past and now they treat other people like shit. Maybe they had a rough childhood because their drunk father beat them, or they were mentally abused by their domineering mother. Whatever their history, the implication is that, at one time, the character was normal until someone else came along and altered their projected future by traumatizing them. And since then, they have become a bully to others.
This method isn’t necessarily wrong. But it is played out. Also, this method takes responsibility away from the character by highlighting that they were normal before a trauma. Therefore, they are not responsible for their actions later on. And moreover, the story is really trying to say that because of their past, it is simply up to the ones that were affected by the bully to forgive and forget. Those stories are usually about lessons of forgiveness. And when the bullied forgives the tyrant, the world can go back to spinning because that was what the tyrant was looking for—someone to understand their sorrow.
I’m not a fan of that method. But it is an option.
NEXT!
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The Tragedy
Another way is for an average or weak character to develop into a bully or tyrant over the course of time. Their story is a Tragedy. They were, at one time, a normal individual who was on the right track. However, for specific reasons—maybe money or love or success, etc.—they were corrupted. This catapulted a major change in the character. From this moment forward, they begin treating others poorly, losing sympathy and empathy for others they consider not on their level. It isn’t until later when they lose what they have gained do they realize the mistreatment they gave to others.
The point of this kind of story is a lesson of corruption. They allowed some outside force to come in and corrupt their positive life. And as a result, they lost it all. They fall from grace, either by dying or becoming generally hopeless. The tale of Scarface may not seem like a Tragedy, but it is.
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The Destined Tyrant
This version sees the character trained from youth to look down on others. Typical are those who grew up without financial struggles, which creates a lack of worry and therefore, a lack of compassion for others. Perhaps, this lack of struggle produces a talent for manipulation, a “win at all costs” attitude. They are so persuasive that they get others to do their evil bidding. These types of characters usually don’t ever get the hands dirty because they have positioned themselves behind the scenes, calling the shots. Consider these types of bullies (and later tyrants) as likely groomed this way by their close kin and friends in their youth.
Rather than treating others outside of their circle like humans with feelings, they treat them as employees, thinking of them as a number and a means to an end. Their character arcs are legendary because when they fall from grace, they crash loudly because the loss was never known to them.
Only 2 Outcomes
You have only 2 ways to treat the end of a tyrant’s character arc.
- The bully or tyrant realizes the error of their ways and then changes. Regardless of the history, they must go through some type of special moment when they accept that the life they have been living is hurting others and is unproductive for them. This outcome is the most typical in fiction. It ties everything up in a nice bow. And it gives the writer a complete way of treating an arc.
- The other way is not having the bully or tyrant change. This may seem to go against everything you know about character arcs, but it could make sense given whatever story you are telling. You might need a villain who cannot change, otherwise, they wouldn’t be the villain anymore. And to think more realistically, some people just don’t change. They stay bullies or tyrants. It’s sad but true. They might never go through a moment that changes them for the better. Or they have experienced that moment but disregarded it. The change was never an option for them because they don’t want to change.
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