Nicolette Andrews is a romantic fantasy author of several works of fiction. She often has conversations with her characters, but that’s ok she’s a writer.
Villains, they are the peanut butter to your protagonist’s jelly. All stories have them, and they take many different forms. What do you think of when you hear the word villain? Perhaps it is the clichéd mustache twirling, cackling mad-man who ties the girl to the railroad tracks. But have you ever wondered why he did that. What was his motivation? What does he hope to get out of cutting that girl into pieces via train? Well that’s what we hope to answer today.
Villains have become more sophisticated with time. But some of the same themes remain prevalent. I consider myself a bit of a villain aficionado. Many of my favorite stories became my favorites because of the antagonist. I love a complex, villain.
A good villain can make a story for me, just as a bad one can ruin it.
The villain is the beating heart of your story, and you should be spending just as much time considering their character as your main character. All the same steps in creating a good villain can be found in part one of the Basics of Character building series, but with a slight tweak, because this is the person that takes those flaws and motivations a little too far. In addition to the basics, here are my best tips to consider for writing a villain your readers will love to hate.
Just the Right Amount of Evil:
First of all, let’s clear the air. The number one killer of a potentially great villain is making them too evil. Don’t get me wrong, your villain is the bad guy. He’s the one that makes things difficult for your main character. But even a complete sadist needs something to make him relatable.
That’s right: your villain can be relatable.
Don’t get me wrong, your villain can do unspeakable things. He can burn down entire villages, and torture and maim, but just like everything else with character building there should be a balance. Let’s say we have a super villain, who loves to destroy things, he’s killed hundreds. But he’s harboring a secret love for your heroine. This serves a couple different purposes. One: he’s no longer a ruthless killing machine, and two his love for your heroine is his Achilles heel. It creates a layer of conflict that you can use to further develop his character.
Your character’s balance could be anything. It could be a love for dance or a secret passion for recycling and conservation. Whatever it is, they need something to detract from the blood lust.
Why is Doing Evil Things?
As you may remember from part one, motivation is a major part of character development. Your villain has motives, and it needs to be more than destruction. Who in their right mind would want to destroy the world, unless they benefited from it in some way? Using the example from before, let’s say your villain sees the destruction humans have done to the planet through pollution, and he intends to send us back to historic times to reverse the damage humans have done. Because a villains motives and actions are often misaligned he goes about it in a destructive way, but at the heart of it he thinks he is doing good. Giving him reasons behind his atrocities will make him easier to understand, even if they are twisted and strange, which makes your characters care more about what happens to him.
Don’t forget to your villain, he is the hero and your hero is the villain.
Make Him Sympathetic:
One easy way to make a villain more sympathetic is revealing their tragic back story. No one is born evil, sometimes events shape them that turn them that way, warping their minds and creating them the cackling mustache villains they are. Let’s use the classic arch-type villain the dastardly man who kidnaps a girl and ties her to the railroad tracks. Let’s suppose his mother mistreated him, she tied him up and would lock him in a closet threatening to leave him on the railroad tracks if he misbehaved again. This would have permanently affected his psyche. And when he meets a girl who looks like his mother, he decides to punish her for what she did to him as a child.
Does this excuse the villain for his crimes? Absolutely not. But knowing what awful things happened to him, you better understand his thought process and he goes from mindless psycho to troubled man with a complicated past.
A Hope for Redemption:
One thing that can sway the most hardened of heart is the chance that the villain sees the error of their ways and repents. This can be done in a multitude of ways, it could be expressed through your villains thoughts as he questions his actions, or it could be as he lays dying he repents for all his sins. What you want is a conscious, a brief moment where they see the other side and realize they may have been wrong all along. Even if redemption is never realized, your readers can hold onto the hope that deep down under the torture, murder, and genocide, your villain is really a good guy or gal.
In essence the best villains are multi-dimensional. They are not puppy kicking bad guys. They have a backstory, a reason for who they are, and even if it’s just their affection for fluffy kitties there’s a sliver of hope that they could turn out good. Even if they don’t in the end.
Time for you to Practice:
Take a villain from your current work, or an existing story, whether it be movie or TV, book what have you and figure out what their motivation is. Give them a backstory, give them goals, and then write a scene from their perspective keeping in mind that the villain thinks of themself as the hero. You may be surprised by what you find.
About Nicolette Andrews
Author of several romantic fantasy novels she lives in Southern California where she spends her time talking to her imaginary friends, her characters. She loves flawed characters, and stories with a lot of drama and angst. When she’s not spinning out her epic tales, she enjoys camping and making crafts badly. You can find out more about Nicolette at her website.
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