Friday, 12 February 2010
Today's post is about writing villains.
Obviously, not every story will have a villain or even an antagonist, but many will and it's those I'm going to concentrate on.
The first thing to remember is villains are people too. I know that sounds obvious, but it's far too easy to turn your villain into a cartoon bad guy and unless you're writing comedy, that's a bad thing. So start by considering why they're doing what they're doing. No villain in the history of the world has decided to do something purely because it's evil. Sometimes they've done truly horrendous things because it's fun, but even entertainment is a motive.
Your characters don't even have to be evil to make them effective villains, they simply need to have goals that conflict with your hero's goals. Outside of the world of fiction, very few wars have ever involved a group of people who could be clearly categorised as the 'good guys' fighting a group who are obviously the 'bad guys'. Let's say, for example, your hero's goal is to travel to a mystical cave, pull a sword from a stone, and then go home and save his village from some kind of enemy. Your villain could simply need the sword to save his own village. Assuming that time pressure means they can't save both villages then your villain may be willing to do absolutely anything to defeat your hero and save his village. He's not evil, he just has aims that can only be accomplished by thwarting your hero's aims.
Of course, he could be evil; there's nothing wrong with that. His aim could be to stop the hero getting the sword because he's the one trying to destroy the village, and maybe he really wants to destroy the village because he has plans for a nice time share hotel on the spot or he wants to use the threat of destruction to blackmail the village into giving him the hand of the most beautiful maiden. Or maybe he just wants to destroy it because he likes blowing things up and it's been a long week and he's bored. Whatever. Just make sure you know why he's acting the way he is (you don't necessarily have to show your readers his motivations, and in the case of the first example it might even be better if they don't find those out until the end, but you need to be sure you understand them so he can act in a plausible way instead of just randomly doing things because it'll make the plot work better).
Once you know all this, the other big issue is to decide how powerful he is. As a general rule, a hero is judged by the calibre of his enemies. There are exceptions to this - if the point of your story is actually the journey and not the grand finale, then maybe the villain can turn out to be completely inconsequential and easily defeated, because by then it's obvious that it wasn't the fight that was important, but the things the hero learnt on the journey. However, usually, you need a villain who is a challenge.
Superman would be a lot less impressive if he spent his time fighting normal, human muggers. An inhumanly fast, inhumanly strong, bulletproof hero, against two normal humans, isn't going to make for a thrilling fight. If your hero is never in peril, then where's the excitement?
Equally, if you make your villain ridiculously overpowered, then you're going to have to pull some kind of deus ex machina out of the hat in order for your hero to defeat him. If Superman were to lose to those two muggers, no one would ever believe it.
It's easy to overpower your villain, to make him seem utterly unbeatable. It's fun. But then you find you've written yourself into a corner and you need to suddenly give your villain a weakness (which is pretty much how kryptonite was invented actually, the writers discovered that they'd made their hero so powerful that they weren't going to be able to give him any kind of credible opposition without finding a weakness). It's best that you don't suddenly pull this weakness out of nowhere in the finale, it may work for comic books to suddenly 'discover' the way to defeat him, but it's not all that believable for most other forms of fiction.
Ideally your hero should be able to defeat your villain, but only just, often at some cost to himself. And remember, it's often the villains we remember as much as the heroes in fiction, so don't let your story down by creating a cardboard cut out villain when you could have one with real personality, motivation, and character.
Obviously, not every story will have a villain or even an antagonist, but many will and it's those I'm going to concentrate on.
The first thing to remember is villains are people too. I know that sounds obvious, but it's far too easy to turn your villain into a cartoon bad guy and unless you're writing comedy, that's a bad thing. So start by considering why they're doing what they're doing. No villain in the history of the world has decided to do something purely because it's evil. Sometimes they've done truly horrendous things because it's fun, but even entertainment is a motive.
Your characters don't even have to be evil to make them effective villains, they simply need to have goals that conflict with your hero's goals. Outside of the world of fiction, very few wars have ever involved a group of people who could be clearly categorised as the 'good guys' fighting a group who are obviously the 'bad guys'. Let's say, for example, your hero's goal is to travel to a mystical cave, pull a sword from a stone, and then go home and save his village from some kind of enemy. Your villain could simply need the sword to save his own village. Assuming that time pressure means they can't save both villages then your villain may be willing to do absolutely anything to defeat your hero and save his village. He's not evil, he just has aims that can only be accomplished by thwarting your hero's aims.
Of course, he could be evil; there's nothing wrong with that. His aim could be to stop the hero getting the sword because he's the one trying to destroy the village, and maybe he really wants to destroy the village because he has plans for a nice time share hotel on the spot or he wants to use the threat of destruction to blackmail the village into giving him the hand of the most beautiful maiden. Or maybe he just wants to destroy it because he likes blowing things up and it's been a long week and he's bored. Whatever. Just make sure you know why he's acting the way he is (you don't necessarily have to show your readers his motivations, and in the case of the first example it might even be better if they don't find those out until the end, but you need to be sure you understand them so he can act in a plausible way instead of just randomly doing things because it'll make the plot work better).
Once you know all this, the other big issue is to decide how powerful he is. As a general rule, a hero is judged by the calibre of his enemies. There are exceptions to this - if the point of your story is actually the journey and not the grand finale, then maybe the villain can turn out to be completely inconsequential and easily defeated, because by then it's obvious that it wasn't the fight that was important, but the things the hero learnt on the journey. However, usually, you need a villain who is a challenge.
Superman would be a lot less impressive if he spent his time fighting normal, human muggers. An inhumanly fast, inhumanly strong, bulletproof hero, against two normal humans, isn't going to make for a thrilling fight. If your hero is never in peril, then where's the excitement?
Equally, if you make your villain ridiculously overpowered, then you're going to have to pull some kind of deus ex machina out of the hat in order for your hero to defeat him. If Superman were to lose to those two muggers, no one would ever believe it.
It's easy to overpower your villain, to make him seem utterly unbeatable. It's fun. But then you find you've written yourself into a corner and you need to suddenly give your villain a weakness (which is pretty much how kryptonite was invented actually, the writers discovered that they'd made their hero so powerful that they weren't going to be able to give him any kind of credible opposition without finding a weakness). It's best that you don't suddenly pull this weakness out of nowhere in the finale, it may work for comic books to suddenly 'discover' the way to defeat him, but it's not all that believable for most other forms of fiction.
Ideally your hero should be able to defeat your villain, but only just, often at some cost to himself. And remember, it's often the villains we remember as much as the heroes in fiction, so don't let your story down by creating a cardboard cut out villain when you could have one with real personality, motivation, and character.
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