Writing evil is not supposed to be pretty. There’s a difference between Thanos in the Avengers movies, and say the Red Skull, Crossbones, or even Ultron. The latter three were bad guys. Doing bad guy things. While Thanos could be argued to be included in that mess, what sets him apart is his willingness to take his foes (the good guys) apart not only physically, but spiritually. He is evil. In the comics he is much much worse!
The Fallen features a band of champions facing off against a demon lord. The trouble is that demons haven’t been seen in centuries, and the primary force to defeat them namely the noble order of paladins no longer exist. So the champions must unlock the secrets of the paladins in order to have a chance. Other problem, and the one I was most happy with, is that the champions were used to fighting bad guys. Rampaging orcs, cruel ogres, hill giant raiders. That sort of thing.
Demons (and devils) are not bad guys. They are the embodiment of evil. And what evil likes to do most is destroy good. Not beat them in a game of checkers. Destroy them. Ruin their moral fiber, shatter their spirit. Leave them broken and empty.
The Fallen “title” applies not only to the antagonist, but to the champions as well. They will each have to face their darkest hour and it really doesn’t go well. When I first wrote the Fallen, as a short story, I agonized on how to torture each individual champion. I spent days thinking about one torment or another until each of them had suffered greatly. One of my questions I asked of beta readers was, which character got the worst of it. Amusingly enough, there was never a consensus. My readers all attached to a different character. One even felt for the antagonist. Another even felt for a minor character created to fix a problem with continuity. When I decided to expand the short into a novel, there was room now to fully explore all the main characters that I couldn’t do before.
My biggest concern in the story was the torture and rape of the only female champion. In fact I sought out many females to read the story, because I wanted to know how they felt about it. Among other things, I didn’t want the character to fall into a trope (even though when I wrote the story I didn’t even know the term). I know some won’t like it, and others might even be offended, but all my betas (and most were strangers) actually liked how I handled it. It wasn’t explicit, it wasn’t glorified, and it wasn’t pretty either.
Evil doesn’t play fair, and it always goes after weaknesses. It chose her because she was the heart of the team. Break the heart, team goes down. All the champions are torn apart, physically and mentally in the Fallen.
For the record, I am disturbed by the amount of rape the heroine storylines out there in the media. In many cases, the character exists just for that purpose. Without that scene, the story is muddled. A simple or even complicated torture would not have sufficed. It would not have been enough to crush her, and by association the team.
When writing evil, I think the gloves have to come off. Your editor may have you tone it down a bit (or a lot), but at least that’s better than having them tell you to make your bad guy more evil.
A Darkness Rising 