Expert: Cathy Clamp - 4/28/2011

Question
Hi. My name's Amelia and I am attempting to write a novel. My main character is female and has Antisocial Personality Disorder (a.k.a. psychopath). I am stuck because I want her to be this character you can like, someone you can picture sitting next to you, but I also want to distance her from everyone. Also, I am writing for a young adult audience, and I want to include some kind of intimate relationship. She has one friend and one love interest (both male), and one depressed brother (also male). I want her relationships to be emotional, but this is hard with her mental state. Please help me!

Answer
Hi, Amelia!

I'm glad you're interested in writing a novel. You've picked a difficult subject to tackle but it could be really interesting if you can manage it. We're not really supposed to help plot here at AllExperts but I understand why you're struggling. The trick with picking APD is that it's characterized by lack of emotion--not simple distancing. Generally speaking, APD doesn't automatically create a psychopath. It creates a sociopath. There are few if any moral boundaries, no understanding of right or wrong and no grasp of relationships. That can go either way, though. She could be a lawbreaker, or someone who sees everything in black and white and applies her own sense of right and wrong to a situation (meaning she could be super-law abiding, with no distinction for gray morals. In other words, anything that isn't absolutely perfect is simply wrong and should be punished.) Think about Dr. Brennan on "Bones" on Fox. She isn't good at relationships because she simply doesn't "get" emotions. But she's likeable because of her confusion and her friends' attempt to get her to understand. She's the ultra-moral side of antisocial.

My best advice if you want to keep both the friend and the love interest is to give her a misdiagnosis or a reason she's distant. For example, she could have been told she has APD by someone in authority (maybe after being put on a suicide watch or sent to a psychiatrist by the school?), and it explains her distancing to her parents and teachers. It would also explain it in her own head and cause her to live a self-fulfilling prophecy. It could also help explain why her brother is depressed. But she has two people in her life that knows the reality--the friend and the boyfriend. They want to bring her out of her shell and will stick by her, even when she lashes out or betrays them, to prove the "experts" wrong about her.

That's the best I can offer. Whatever way you choose to take it, it could be a very powerful book. Good luck with it!

Cathy