Create a Credible Villain in Fiction

Creating a credible villain for fiction writing stereotypically evil or just "icky" traits. It requires a delicate balance of bad and, yes, even good to bring a measure of believability to the villain in a tale or novel.

Steps

Sample Villain Descriptions

Doc:Villain Brainstorm,Villain Backstory,Excerpt About Villain

Creating Your Own Villain

  1. Start by reading Create a Fictional Character from Scratch. This will give you a foundation on which you can create any type of character.
  2. What's your story all about and how does a villain fit into the grand scheme of the story as whole? Is his purpose simply to be an obstacle for a hero and a catalyst character for his change? Does he represent an aspect of a story's theme?
  3. Choose the degree of evilness or just plain "ick" you want to place into your villain. Some tales require the viciousness of a serial killer, while others only call for a bully. Fit your villain with a genre of your story. Horror story needs a demon, army of zombies, evil ghosts or an obsessed person with a skilled trait (architect, scientist, etc). A crime thriller calls for a crime lord, a boss of a rival gang or the ringleader of a corrupt police force. An evil alternate universe twin, a killer cyborg or a destructive robot fits in sci-fi. An evil king or warlock is good in fantasy, as is a priest, a highly placed official or a member of a manipulative secret society. In any type of writing, a villain is more interesting if he or she is considered good and trustworthy by others, keeping his or her ambitions secret.
  4. Create a single, traumatic incident for your villain. It could be as devastating as seeing his parents murdered or as sublime as seeing a prized rosebush destroyed by the whims of nature. The reason for this is to create a turning point in the villain's life. It does not need to be a traumatic incident, your character could be raised in such a way to influence his or her present. Also, even a simple defining moment could change a person`s life depending on the person. Some people can be easily corrupt or develop strong values that motivate them to take drastic action.
  5. Expand on this singular incident. Exaggerate it, twist it, and distort it until it becomes the rotten core of your villain. Is it counterpointed in some way by the hero's experience?
  6. Choose a single thing that the character adores without greed or malice. It does not have to be a big thing--in fact, it's better if it's not. For example, the villain may enjoy strolling in a rose garden in order to clear his/her head. Or, even smaller, the villain enjoys the simple pleasure of cracking open a sunflower seed on his tongue and enjoying the saltiness of the meat inside. What about a dependent relative, a lost love, a treasured pet? Does this vulnerability give the hero leverage in some way, and is the hero noble enough not to use it? Perhaps a lost love is reason enough to corrupt him or her. Even a memory can bring someone much happiness.
  7. Combine the "turning point" and the "single thing" and bounce them back and forth in your mind. How are they related? Why does the villain love one thing so much and is still filled with malice, hatred, or just plain "dislike"?
  8. Take into account the hero of the story. How does the hero fit into the villain's life? How do his wants mix, match, and collide? How are they similar; how are they different? The villain should be just as powerful if not more powerful than the hero.
  9. Does the villain get eventually redeemed or does he stay a bad guy? Look how your story folds and your villain develops, and make your decision based on them. Avoid sudden and complete change unless you`re going for the extreme melodrama displayed in How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
  10. Think of some fears. Everybody is afraid of something. The villain may be afraid of anything from the hero to death to the dark or even monsters under the bed! Be creative, but make sure the fears aren't too silly, or your story won't be taken seriously.
  11. Remember that a GOOD villain drives the conflict of the story. Without the villain the hero cannot overcome obstacles and develop as a character.
  12. A good villain is still human. The best villains are ones that readers can connect with. The more human your villain seems the more frightening/captivating their arc in the story will be.
  13. One last thing to remember is that the more evil and threatening a villain is, the more often their evil plans work. Don't always make the villain fail and the hero win. Also, a villain is not all evil! A villain should have positive qualities. Just as a hero consists mostly of positive qualities but has a fair share of flaws, a villain should have mostly flaws but definite positive qualities.
  14. Only kill off the villain if they deserved it. Make sure their death fits how evil they were. If they were a common thief they should only have a simple death like being shot. If they were a brutal/sadistic/plain evil villain then they'll need a more intense, maybe even over-the-top death. It makes the reader feel satisfied that they got what was coming to them.

Tips

  • The villains that work the best are the ones where their motive may be basically understandable, but their ultimate goal and their processes are extremely twisted.
  • Think about motive. There is something the villain wants, or something they think must happen, and they have a belief, sometimes a fanatical belief, about what they think is necessary in order to attain this goal.
  • Subtlety is often better. Some of the best villains in fiction are those who believe, in absolute sincerity, that their actions are good and helpful to others. Such a villain's "turning point" might be a discovery that disturbs his smoothly running life, and his subsequent actions are only an attempt to correct matters. Such villains may end up violating their own ethics, believing that they are preserving the sanctity of said ethics!
  • If you want to create sympathy for your villain, or at least try to flesh him out more, consider writing a few chapters from the perspective of one of the villain's allies, or even the villain himself.
  • While an immediately obvious motive is rarely a good idea, the backgrounds of said motives can be interesting to play around with. A derivative of a deadly sin or similar flaw is a good place to start. Instead of anger, how about resentment? A villain with family issues has a lot of opportunities for evil. Instead of sadness or plain regret, how about guilt? Someone who feels guilty - whether they are actually guilty or not - may go to great lengths in an effort to redeem themselves, and may not go about it the right way. You can build a convincing motive around these, and leaving them hidden until later on in the story can be a great way to build suspense.
  • You might never actually use the "turning point" in your end result, but remember: it's not there for the reader. It's intended for the writer to understand the character's motivations.
  • A good way to show that a villain is beyond redemption is to have them drop their good side altogether. This should be a sign to the hero, and the reader, that they must be stopped.
  • Concerning names. Names for villains can set the mode for the personality of this villain or the genre of the story. Billy Bob Johnson might be a hill billy farmer who wants to take over the hero's family's land. Sir Oswald Walter Richardson III might be a rich tyrant who is intent on becoming the mayor of the city and turning a small town into a tourist resort, something the hero is against highly. Coco Bean might be the villain in a comical story who wants to create a kind of pie that will make anyone who eats it break out into fits of laughter at inappropriate moments. Be creative with names, they really help.
  • For a novel, you may wish to create several "turning points," but they should all reaffirm the initial incident in shining detail in the mind of the villain.
  • Remember, no one is "just a bad guy"; a bully, more often than not, has a reason for being mean to the protagonists.

Warnings

  • A good villain usually has plans or goals other than "bug the good guy". For example, the James Bond villains usually want to take over the world, or steal something valuable. Becoming Bond's enemy is a result of their goals, not their original goal. There are some villains that really only want to kill the hero, maybe for revenge, but that is the exception, and if you don't take care to create a credible goal for your villains, they will seem unconvincing and fake.
  • Remember-sometimes, killing off or harming villains can be as negative to readers as doing it to other characters. Just because a character is the antagonist does not mean you should kill them or have a flood of bad things (except for things relating to the failure of what they plan to do) happen to them.
  • Try to make your villain three dimensional. By the end of the story, the reader should know why they are that way.
  • Avoid the temptation to start a villain from one of the deadly sins. If you do, it's likely you'll end up with a parody of a bad guy instead of a true villain. It is one thing to end up with a character that is the epitome of a deadly sin. Just don't start there.
  • The creation of a truly villainous character can become especially intense. Try writing about them in smaller chunks than you ordinarily would. If you don't take a small break every half-hour or so, you may find yourself absorbing a portion of the villain's negativity, which can affect your relationships with the people you care about.

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