DUBAI: At this year’s Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in Dubai, a panel on Saturday titled “The Monster Next Door,” moderated by Shane McGinley, posed a question for the ages: Are villains born or made?
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Novelists Annabel Kantaria, Louise Candlish and Ruth Ware, joined by a packed audience, dissected the craft of creating morally ambiguous characters alongside the social science that informs them. “A pure villain,” said Ware, “is chilling to construct … The remorselessness unsettles you — How do you build someone who cannot imagine another’s pain?”
Candlish described character-building as a gradual process of “layering over several edits” until a figure feels human. “You have to build the flesh on the bone or they will remain caricatures,” she added.
The debate moved quickly to the nature-versus-nurture debate. “Do you believe that people are born evil?” asked McGinley, prompting both laughter and loud sighs.
