The Guide to Making a Perfect Killer Character

Behavior

Ah yes, now you have made it to the fun part. This is where you create the killer's actions that put your plot together. For example if your killer's mother got killed by a drug dealer in front of him, and he's obsessive compulsive. Maybe he kills dealers or users in very neat and well kept kill rooms. This is a very small portion of what your killer could do however. What you have to be sure to do, is to make the behavior consistent with the personality and history. This includes crime scene behavior, social behavior, and all other areas of life. For example if your killer has a massive ego maybe he is in danger of losing his house due to gambling and not knowing when to fold 'em.

If you're going to have a letter written by the killer then before you write the first line close your eyes and get into the head of your killer to the point where even if your name is Shaniqua Johnson and your killer's name is Percival O'Toole you will answer to Percy if a person calls that name. The reason this is important is that our identity contributes to the language we use. I doubt Mr. O'Toole would talk about "gatting" any "bitches" for that type of language is not prevalent in Irish culture. Shaniqua however is from an American background which means that those words would be in her vernacular. Also, there are slight differences in the way men write to how women write. Men tend to use less in the way of pronouns, and women use more. Shaniqua would want to cut back on her pronoun use when she writes excerpts from the letter.

The final piece of advice that I can give is rather simple: NEVER have your killer do something on accident. Everything you do has a motive therefore everything he does has a motive. If you can not explain why your character did something in your story with a compelling motive that involves the history and/or the personality then do not have your character do it.