Readers Love To Hate Villains, Writers Need To Understand Them, SIBF Authors Say

Readers may hate the father in The Marsh King's Daughter. Karen Dionne, who wrote him, says she understands him.

“I don't see him as bad because I understand why he's doing what he's doing,” the American novelist told an audience at the 45th Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF 2026).

For Dionne, understanding what drives a character is part of making him believable. Readers can draw their own conclusions about his actions.

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She joined British novelist and journalist Elizabeth S. Moore for a panel titled 'Inside the Dangerous Mind: Villains, Narcissists and Why We Can't Look Away'. The two discussed how childhood experiences, family relationships and even the places characters live can shape a psychological thriller.

Dionne's The Marsh King's Daughter, which was adapted into a film, drew inspiration from a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name. In writing the novel, she chose to spend less time on some of its darkest material, including what the kidnapped mother endured. The isolation of Michigan's Upper Peninsula helped convey the sense of captivity.

Moore used a very different setting to explore isolation. In The Man on the Middle Floor, a murder affects three people who live in the same London building but remain disconnected from one another. The novel reflects a theme Moore returns to in her writing: how people can live close together and still know little about each other.

Moore joked that she had“a terrible lack of process” as a writer, but said she had always“loved analysing people – why they were clever or horrible or mean or confused”. She said looking at a character's childhood and family relationships can help a writer trace the origins of their behaviour.

Both authors also spoke about coming to writing later in life.“An older writer brings more to the table because we have our whole life experience and also what we've observed in other families and places,” Dionne said.

When asked to name a memorable fictional villain, Moore chose Mrs Danvers, the housekeeper in Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. Dionne picked the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park.

The Sharjah International Book Fair runs until November 15 at Expo Center Sharjah under the theme 'Made of Stories', with Oman as Guest of Honor.

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