The Novel Workshop: How to Create Believable Villains (Contains Links to Previous Articles and Other Writing Resources)

They're the characters you love to hate--and if you write them well, they can add depth to your heroes that wouldn't exist without them.  In this post, let's talk about how to create believable villains.

1)  There are at least two approaches to writing villains that I know.  One is very simplified--the bad guys are evil because that's just who they are.  Avoid writing villains this way if at all possible--even most children don't want flat characters in their books.

You see this method used a lot in cartoons--you have little to no background on the villain, and they're just there to provide opposition for the hero in short bursts.  You never believe the hero is in any real danger because otherwise the show/cartoon wouldn't exist anymore.

The only advantage to this approach is it's a shortcut method if you have to churn out a lot of short episode-style stories that all have a similar format--but the disadvantages are that it's sloppy, predictable, and has a tendency to cause readers/viewers to lose interest in the story.

2)  Heroes and villains need to be evenly matched--if your villain is weak, then your hero has no challenge and no opportunity to overcome anything.

The best example that comes to mind with this is Batman and Joker, especially the way the characters are portrayed in The Dark Knight.  Joker is insane but highly intelligent, playing off of what he expects to be the behavior of the heroes and citizens he terrorizes.

Unlike Batman, Joker has no moral line--and he sees the line that Batman does have as a limitation and potential weakness to exploit.  Joker has irrational motives for his actions (the line Alfred has in the movie about "some men just want to watch the world burn" is chilling and effective), but in this case it's more Joker being an equal match to Batman that makes him a convincing villain.

3)  Providing villains with a solid background and motives is just as important as developing your heroes.  If they're a main character, address all of their relationships to other characters like you would a hero.

I learned this when I started to adapt a short story series I had written back in 2006 into novels.  In the Hannaria Series short stories, the main villain named Paronis was very simplified.  He was insane (no explanation given as to why) and had a deep desire to kill the hero character named Jernard so he could get what he wanted, but there wasn't much to him beyond that.  I knew what worked decently for a 2,500 word short story was not going to work in a bigger project, so I made a lot of changes to his character to the point he doesn't even resemble the previous version.

Paronis ended up becoming a fallen hero in the novel series (a much more famous example of this character type would be Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader)--a guy who starts out with good intentions of wanting to do right but that goes about it in an extremely wrong way, causing him to fall into insanity and eventually evil.  That's made him a lot more interesting to write because at least in the beginning he's likable, compassionate, and even willing to risk his own life and health to help others--and there's this tension that develops because I let readers know ahead of time that he doesn't remain this way.

I also complicated the relationship between Paronis and Jernard--making him Jernard's mentor and best friend prior to turning evil.  Jernard is barely able to defeat Paronis because he knows his friend's weaknesses, but the victory has a tragic element to it in Jernard losing his friend and realizing the thin line that separates him from turning out the same away.  Though most likely Paronis will only be in one book, his influence lingers through the series as Jernard struggles with his own morality when he's forced into tough situations with no easy answers.

4)  To round out your villains, give them a trait or two that's positive.

The example I want to use for this is Detective Vic Mackey in The Shield because the writers on that show employed this strategy a lot with his character and did an excellent job with it.  Even though you track with Mackey and his team the entire series, Mackey is a villain--he murders, cheats, steals, and manipulates other people around him until the very end.  In a lot of ways, the only thing that separates him from the people he goes after is that he has a badge, and they don't.

Yet there will be positive things that Mackey does that prevent you from seeing him as completely without humanity--capturing a dangerous criminal, risking his life to save a baby, attempting to be a good father to his autistic children--to the point as a viewer there's an internal conflict when he and his team come close to being caught.  Written from another angle, you'd want them to be caught as soon as possible because of all the things they do.

5)  Self-awareness is another important aspect to consider.

Some villains don't even realize they're villains--in their own heads, they may even think they're heroes.  Other villains are aware that what they're doing is wrong, but they don't care.  You wouldn't write each type of character the same way.

6)  Remember that there are characters who walk the hero/villain line and have traits of both (vigilantes, heroes who struggle, villains trying to find redeem for prior actions, etc.)

I've created several characters like this--and there's the automatic conflict added that they could go either direction according to the situation.  I think that in a way, fictional characters like this are amplified versions of real people.  They have to live with the consequences of their decisions (which are often made without having all the information they need), and they make mistakes--some that can be fixed, and others that can't be undone.

As a reader, you find yourself wanting things to work out right for them, and when they do win after a long internal struggle there's a greater emotional impact compared to following a character who does everything perfect from the very beginning.

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I hope you've found these tips helpful, and feel free to add your own comments and suggestions on this topic to the bottom of the post.  I don't want this to be only my perspective, and in this way we can all help each other become better writers.

Other Novel Workshop Articles on Gather:

1. Tips on Writing a Novel in 90 Days
2. How to Create Motives for Your Fictional Characters
3. Tips for Writing Natural Dialogue
4. Basic Fictional Character Development

More Writing Resources and Related Links:

• Fictional Character Development Template (Free Online)
  
• The Writer's Library (More Writing How-to Articles)
  
• Web Writer Central--More Resources for Online Writers
  

Examples of How I Used These Concepts in My Own Work:

• About the Hannaria Series--This blog contains links to read first novel, Out of the Gray, online for free.  Jernard is a main character but not a narrarator in the first book, and Paronis is only mentioned.

• Prologue and Chapter 1 of Legacy (Book 2 of the Series/Currently in Progress)--narrated by Jernard and a police detective named Matthew Verin (ancestor to the narrarator Alex Verin in the first book).  This rough draft can be read independently of the first book and is more related to this post as far as character development examples.  The final version will be published in book format this November.
  

• My Author's Blog--Contains a portfolio of most of my work including nonfiction articles and fiction stories.

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