The Anatomy of a Villain for Authors, Part Five: As an Adult
Your villain is now an adult, with all the challenges and backstory that comes with it. It is during adulthood that your villain will (if they haven't already) finish their journey from normal to villainy. So at some point in adulthood, before you need them to be the antagonist (or play some other part) in your story, you need to make sure that they've fully switched over. Unless, of course, you want that switch to be part of your story.
Generally, there's one moment that causes them to make that change. A circumstance or event that pushes them over the edge. So for our final post on villain development, we're going to cover that defining event, and, as a bonus, we'll also be looking at what their goals and mode of operations are as a fully-fledged villain.
Defining Moment:
The moment your villain actually becomes a villain is usually the culmination of many different factors. Their upbringing, their parents or parentage, any difficulties they had in school or with relationships, all of that. The defining moment is the last straw, I guess you could say. The final thing that pushes them over the edge.
You have to choose that moment carefully, especially if it's an important part of the plot. If it doesn't come into the story itself, at the least it will give you the motivations and insight for their behavior. This moment needs to be an extension of their difficulties so far, otherwise it won't be the final thing to push them over that edge. It doesn't have to be more of the exact same things they've been dealing with this whole time, but it does need to play on the same emotions in some way.
Perhaps this character developed a negative view of charity due to his/her father's refusal to accept it. Maybe they think charity is for the weak when they get this far. Their defining moment could be an opportunity to offer charity to someone, and they refuse. As a result, that someone dies, cementing their ideas that only weak people need it. It's a very small step, then, for them to believe that charities are really a plague of society, fostering the weak rather than weeding them out to produce the strong.
Goals:
Your villain will have goals in their lives, just as your heroes do. But, unlike your heroes, these goals will have negative consequences. Take the anti-charity villain above. His/her goal might be to eliminate all charity organizations. They might also make it their goal to eliminate all the people that need charity, since in their mind they're weak, and shouldn't be a burden on society.
The goals of a villain are almost always (every time I've seen that I can recall, anyway) connected to the event that turned them to villainy in the first place. Again, it's not the events that make the villain, it's the reaction of the character to those events. If they are very sensitive to criticism, perhaps they received unneeded and unnecessarily harsh criticism on something that they'd worked long and hard on. This is likely to knock anyone down a notch. But a hero would rally and recover. A villain, however, may choose to exact revenge for that criticism. If that criticism is what turned them into a villain, then getting more criticism in newspapers after their vengeance will only make it worse, since there's bound to be a lot and it's more public. Their goal might then be to shut up everyone that ever questioned them.
Mode of Operations:
The way your villain goes about their nefarious plots is another thing that's going to have bearing on your story. Do they meticulously plan everything out, down to the last detail? Or do they just show up with a weapon of mass destruction and hope all goes well?
Maybe they've been planning the achievement of their ultimate goal for years, and have a plan for (almost) everything that could go wrong. Or maybe they've only been planning it for a few days or weeks, and the thought of failure hasn't even occurred to them. Do they prefer emotional attacks and manipulation, or physical? Do they like taking hostages or making threats? Are they the kind of person to leave puzzles for their enemies to find just to mess with their heads?
If their tendencies lean toward physical violence, then what form does it take? Do they use bunt instruments, or sharp? Guns? Knives? Their fists? If they prefer more mental tools, such as manipulation, how do they do it? Typically, manipulation requires a knowledge of the person being manipulated. How did they acquire that information? And then, how do they use it? Does their enemy have a pet they love dearly? Does their chosen form of emotional or mental torture/manipulation involve taking away things their enemies love?
Now that you know what their goals are, you need to know how they're planning on reaching them. This will most likely have direct bearing on how your story goes, since a villain is also usually an antagonist, and an antagonist exists to make life difficult for the protagonist. How your villain plans to go about their business will affect how your hero will have to react to stop them. There's a lot of stuff that you can use to enhance your villain's presence in your story. An important thing to remember, however, is that if you write an enormously detailed backstory, there's a good chance most of it won't get to readers. Unless the backstory is relevant to the current story and plot, it shouldn't appear in the finished book.
But, if you're planning a series, having that kind of detailed knowledge can be important - even if it doesn't appear until much later in the series. Keeping it consistent is a big reason to know more about your characters than the average reader will ever discover. Over a series, it's much easier to lose track of details like what kind of family life or friends a character had. If you know the answers to these questions before you write, it can lessen the chance you'll change it to match the story and then forget you did it.
This concludes our series on villain development! Next week we'll be taking a break from the tutorials. For those of you who have been following Villain Month on Facebook, the surprise will be announced here a week from today. For those of you who haven't, I'd encourage you to head over and like the page. We've been posting lots of creepy Halloween quotes over there, and would love to have you join us. :)
Generally, there's one moment that causes them to make that change. A circumstance or event that pushes them over the edge. So for our final post on villain development, we're going to cover that defining event, and, as a bonus, we'll also be looking at what their goals and mode of operations are as a fully-fledged villain.
Defining Moment:
The moment your villain actually becomes a villain is usually the culmination of many different factors. Their upbringing, their parents or parentage, any difficulties they had in school or with relationships, all of that. The defining moment is the last straw, I guess you could say. The final thing that pushes them over the edge.
You have to choose that moment carefully, especially if it's an important part of the plot. If it doesn't come into the story itself, at the least it will give you the motivations and insight for their behavior. This moment needs to be an extension of their difficulties so far, otherwise it won't be the final thing to push them over that edge. It doesn't have to be more of the exact same things they've been dealing with this whole time, but it does need to play on the same emotions in some way.
Perhaps this character developed a negative view of charity due to his/her father's refusal to accept it. Maybe they think charity is for the weak when they get this far. Their defining moment could be an opportunity to offer charity to someone, and they refuse. As a result, that someone dies, cementing their ideas that only weak people need it. It's a very small step, then, for them to believe that charities are really a plague of society, fostering the weak rather than weeding them out to produce the strong.
Goals:
Your villain will have goals in their lives, just as your heroes do. But, unlike your heroes, these goals will have negative consequences. Take the anti-charity villain above. His/her goal might be to eliminate all charity organizations. They might also make it their goal to eliminate all the people that need charity, since in their mind they're weak, and shouldn't be a burden on society.
The goals of a villain are almost always (every time I've seen that I can recall, anyway) connected to the event that turned them to villainy in the first place. Again, it's not the events that make the villain, it's the reaction of the character to those events. If they are very sensitive to criticism, perhaps they received unneeded and unnecessarily harsh criticism on something that they'd worked long and hard on. This is likely to knock anyone down a notch. But a hero would rally and recover. A villain, however, may choose to exact revenge for that criticism. If that criticism is what turned them into a villain, then getting more criticism in newspapers after their vengeance will only make it worse, since there's bound to be a lot and it's more public. Their goal might then be to shut up everyone that ever questioned them.
Mode of Operations:
The way your villain goes about their nefarious plots is another thing that's going to have bearing on your story. Do they meticulously plan everything out, down to the last detail? Or do they just show up with a weapon of mass destruction and hope all goes well?
Maybe they've been planning the achievement of their ultimate goal for years, and have a plan for (almost) everything that could go wrong. Or maybe they've only been planning it for a few days or weeks, and the thought of failure hasn't even occurred to them. Do they prefer emotional attacks and manipulation, or physical? Do they like taking hostages or making threats? Are they the kind of person to leave puzzles for their enemies to find just to mess with their heads?
If their tendencies lean toward physical violence, then what form does it take? Do they use bunt instruments, or sharp? Guns? Knives? Their fists? If they prefer more mental tools, such as manipulation, how do they do it? Typically, manipulation requires a knowledge of the person being manipulated. How did they acquire that information? And then, how do they use it? Does their enemy have a pet they love dearly? Does their chosen form of emotional or mental torture/manipulation involve taking away things their enemies love?
Now that you know what their goals are, you need to know how they're planning on reaching them. This will most likely have direct bearing on how your story goes, since a villain is also usually an antagonist, and an antagonist exists to make life difficult for the protagonist. How your villain plans to go about their business will affect how your hero will have to react to stop them. There's a lot of stuff that you can use to enhance your villain's presence in your story. An important thing to remember, however, is that if you write an enormously detailed backstory, there's a good chance most of it won't get to readers. Unless the backstory is relevant to the current story and plot, it shouldn't appear in the finished book.
But, if you're planning a series, having that kind of detailed knowledge can be important - even if it doesn't appear until much later in the series. Keeping it consistent is a big reason to know more about your characters than the average reader will ever discover. Over a series, it's much easier to lose track of details like what kind of family life or friends a character had. If you know the answers to these questions before you write, it can lessen the chance you'll change it to match the story and then forget you did it.
This concludes our series on villain development! Next week we'll be taking a break from the tutorials. For those of you who have been following Villain Month on Facebook, the surprise will be announced here a week from today. For those of you who haven't, I'd encourage you to head over and like the page. We've been posting lots of creepy Halloween quotes over there, and would love to have you join us. :)
No comments have been added yet.
