[Perry] Creating a Strong Villain

This is a topic that I’ve struggled a lot with as a writer. If you look at my earlier works (which will NEVER happen *throws them down a well*), you’ll see that all of my villains are…flat.

They’re flat and worse, they’re BORING.

What can I say? Villains are hard.

But over the years, I’ve learned a little bit about how to make my villains stronger. Not enough yet to make them good per se…but definitely an improvement and I thought I’d share.

Because the world deserves better villains.

Evil for the sake of evil doesn’t work.

I don’t really think people are born evil. While there may be people that have a higher “douchebag” potential than others, I don’t think anyone’s born thinking about ways to take over the world.

Essentially, Stewie from Family Guy doesn’t exist.

Having a villain be evil and nefarious BECAUSE REASONS is unrealistic at best and laughable at worst.

While writing, keep at the forefront of your mind that the villain is as important to the story as the main character. The majority of protagonists out there are given exquisitely crafted backstories and a complex set of motivations for the way they’re acting…and these rich, textured characters are pitted against cardboard cutouts who want to watch the world burn just because.

The villain serves as a foil to the hero and the hero can only shine if that foil is sharp.

So spend time with your villain, give him strong, believable reasons for the way he’s acting and your story will be stronger for it.

Crazy for the sake of crazy doesn’t work.

Crazy can’t be the sole reason why your villain acts the way he does. Crazy can definitely be an attribute of a good villain, but it can’t be the sole motivation.

For a bit of comparison, we can look at the Joker from the recent Batman movies and at the character Vaas from Far Cry 3.

The Joker is crazy, there’s really no arguing that. He’s crazy with a purpose, though.

The thing is, crazy people, really crazy people tend to not think they’re crazy. As a result, their actions have to follow an internal logic that makes sense.

His goal in the movie, and his goal as a character is to show the world that everyone can be as ruthless and brutal as he is…given the right conditions. In a theme explored in the graphic novel, The Killing Joke, the Joker’s out to prove that the only difference between him and a regular person is just one bad day.

That’s a good kind of crazy. You can build a story around that kind of crazy.

Now let’s take a look at the kind of crazy you can’t build a story around.

Vaas from Far Cry 3? He’s just flat crazy. Kills without compunction or reason and doesn’t…really have any goals, per se. He just does things.

If Vaas had been the primary villain in the game, it wouldn’t have worked. Vaas doesn’t have reasons. Vaas doesn’t have goals. He just…goes around, saying things that sound kind of deep but have no real meaning.

Vaas works in this game and completely steals the screen (warning: language) every time he shows up because he’s NOT the primary antagonist. Someone else is pulling his strings and that someone else has a firm and meticulous goal in mind.

Vaas works because he’s NOT the driving force of the villains. He’s just…a very interesting side character you run into.

If he HAD been the villain? We would have ended up with something like Moriarty from the BBC Sherlock.

Moriarty started out okay. He had a firm plan and he had goals and his actions reflected those goals. As a result, when we first met him, he was a powerful, threatening figure. It seemed like he was always in control and he made a wonderful adversary for Sherlock.

But then…he falls apart. When we get near the end of his arc, it’s like the writers suddenly decided that he had to be crazy. His internal logic stops making sense. Moriarty starts doing things for apparently no rhyme or reason and it all falls flat. He goes from a threatening, dispassionate shadowy figure (like the Moriarty from the movies!) and into this…caricature of a villain.

It’s hard to care about someone you can’t understand at all.

The villain and the hero should be two sides of the same coin.

Back in high school, I was told by my Writer’s Craft teacher that a villain, a well-crafted villain is someone who could have been the hero.

Circumstances intervene, life happens and they ended up as the bad guy but in another world, they COULD have been good.

I’ve never forgotten that.

You want someone iconic? Take a look at Magneto, from the X-Men. He’s often cast as the villain of the piece due to his desire to subjugate humans but…there are reasons, no? Having lived through a concentration camp and having lost his family to one, it’s no surprise that he rebels against the idea of the government trying to ‘catalogue’ and control mutants when he’s a grown man.

In another life, in an alternate world, he could have been (and actually HAS been) a very believable hero.

For another example, take a look at the three recent James Bond movies, the ones starring Daniel Craig.

Who are the villains?

The first movie had Le Chiffre (him with the bleeding eye). The second movie had…some guy, I honestly can’t even remember his name or what he looked like, he was so forgettable.

But the third movie? The third movie had Raoul Silva, an ex-MI6 agent who’d gone rogue after being left for dead and mutilated by the same cyanide capsule that was supposed to kill him.

Of these three villains, who do you really remember? Who stood out as vibrant? Who seemed to really have a REASON? Who had a burning need to do the things they did?

To me, Le Chiffre and the second guy were largely forgettable…cardboard cutouts. Silva seemed like a man who would jump off a cliff after you for the satisfaction of wringing your neck before you both died together.

He comes across as strong to me because he could have been the hero, hell, he HAD been the hero until he was given a damned good reason not to be anymore and he turned all of that motivation and resolve to revenge.

Bolded TLDR because I can.

Villains are important. Villains are second only to the main character in terms of importance.

The simple villains might have worked well in the past (the dark lord Sauron?) but audiences have largely grown a little more sophisticated now and you’ll need a strong villain if you want your reader to really sit up and take notice.

So don’t skimp on the villain. Make him strong, give him motivations and don’t have him kick a puppy and shoot an infant BECAUSE REASONS and your story will be all the stronger for it.

Related posts:

[Perry] Wherein Not All Things Need To Be Ambitious
[Perry] Be Careful What You Leave Out
[Perry] Magic Systems: The Bait and Switch