Hero and villain. Protagonist and antagonist. Where one must exist, so must the other, but that doesn’t mean you have to slack off when it comes to developing your evil villains. You can’t just have an amazing and well-crafted hero and a poorly developed made-just-for-the-fun-of-it villain. Because they are equal, and you can’t have the story without both of them, they both need to be created carefully.
For those of you struggling to create the perfect villain, fear not, for I have six solutions to keep your villain as well developed as your hero!
1. Your Villain is Still Human: I’m not necessarily referring to species in this. Your villain could be an alien, ghost, vampire, or whatever you’re into. The important thing you need to remember is that your villain still has vulnerabilities and weaknesses. Just like your heroes, your villains need these, too. This helps make the villain more relatable to your story, and you want this. It’s one thing for your protagonists to have human qualities, but when you put those in your villains, it lets the readers know that they are people, too. Depending on your villain’s situation, this also lets them know that even though the villain or antagonist is opposing the hero, it doesn’t necessarily make them bad people.
2. Give Them Goals: Your villains have things they want to achieve, people they want to get revenge on, and things to steal, etc, etc. When creating your characters, make sure to set a goal for them. This goal should pose a conflict with the heroes, and even be completely opposite from the protagonist’s goals.
3. They’re Not Just Evil for the Fun of It: Unless your writing for a children’s cartoon or your villain is just psychotic, then you know that they’re not just evil just to be evil. If they are, then that’s just lazy writing, pure and simple. When giving your villains goals, make them go to the ends of the earth to achieve them, no matter the consequences, no matter who gets hurt. Just because they want something doesn’t make them evil. Imagine if you wrote your story in your villain’s POV. You would want your readers to root for them, and ultimately, their motivations wouldn’t seem all that wicked. Keep that in mind whenever you’re writing about your antagonists.
4. Tragic Backstories Must Be Used Sparingly: I’m all for character motivations that really hit hard, but guys, seriously? Do we need anymore villains with tragic backstories? I don’t think so, but there are others who disagree with me. You should make a villain seem realistic and relatable, but tragic backstories are not always the way to go. To an extent, this trope is overused. There are only so many tragic backstories you can use before your story just seems like all the others. Why does the villain have to suffer before the story even starts? Why not make the villain live a happy life until tragedy hits? I find the second suggestion to be more tragic than a sad backstory. Does anyone else?
5. False Belief: If you sit here and really think about it, your villain actually believes that what they’re doing is right, or they think it’s absolutely necessary. Whatever your villain’s motives are, whether they be greed, revenge, etc, your villain should be under the impression that what they’re doing is either right or necessary. Most villains don’t think, “oh, this is wrong, but let’s do this anyway just for the sake of the plot!” The closest they ever get is “I know this is wrong, but I’m doing this for _____, and it’s absolutely necessary!” This part right here is what makes your character a villain or antagonist, not the fact that they’re evil or getting in the hero’s way.
6. Let Them Oppose the Hero: This last point seems like a no brainer, but you’d be surprised by how many villains just exist just for the sake of having conflict, and it’s stupid. The whole point of having a villain is so your protagonist has an obstacle to overcome. Villains are an opposite reflection of the hero. They both have completely different goals and each develop differently by the end of the book. Show these qualities, and most importantly, show these two characters going after each other in order to fulfill their own agendas. This is what makes great conflict.
Those are our tips for writing villains. Please let me know in the comments if this blog helped or can be improved.
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