How to Craft a Good Villain The best way to create a strong, believable villain is to write him or her like a hero. A good hero in a novel deserves a just antagonist, someone worthy of their time, someone who makes reading his or her adventures worthwhile. Heroes need to be pushed to their limits, their boundaries tested, their ethics questioned. They need to be complex, driven, and unique enough to set them apart from the rest of their kind. A villain needs to be built in the exact same way. A writer needs to invest just as much time with a villain as he or she does a hero. When constructing villains, what seems to be the downfall for most writers is their adamant, preeminent knowledge that the villain will fail. Writers set up storylines so that the villain will never be victorious, and their hero always so. Because of this predetermined structure, many villains feel lackluster and incomplete. Two dimensional villains are no fun—in fact, they can undermine an otherwise great work. So while they can be constructed as nothing more than a roadblock for a hero to vault, they must still feel realistic. Villains need to know victory as well as defeat—and learn from both. They need to be motivated, and that motivation needs to be clear to the writer, even if not blatantly clear to the reader. A very simple way to understand a villain is to take the time to write about him or her from his or her own perspective. Write a few scenes with the villain as the protagonist. Write with the villain’s own motivation and own worries in mind—something along the lines of an anti-hero. This doesn’t necessarily need to make it into the final manuscript, but it is a good exercise for a writer to fully understand his or her character, and to write the villain more convincingly within the text. Lastly, as with any other character, villains need some sort of identifying characteristic. Something that will set them apart from any others. Often, it is simply a physical characteristic or deformation, such as with J.K. Rowling’s snakelike Voldemort; a personality trait, such as with Ian Fleming’s Auric Goldfinger and his penchant for gold; or even simply a profession, as with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor Moriarty. Crafting memorable villains is the same as with heroes. They need to be as well rounded as any protagonist, and just as memorable. In essence, all villains are a main character, so while some lesser characters can be written less dynamically, or not quite as fully explored, special care needs to be taken when handling villains. Make sure your villain is worthy of your hero.
Posted on: Sun, 11 May 2014 17:20:38 +0000
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