Valuable Villains
Victoria
Grossack
Many months ago I wrote a column called “Someone to Love,” explaining
ways to make your protagonist – in many respects, the hero – more appealing.
In this column we’ll discuss the attributes of your antagonist, or your
villain.
What Villains Do
Villains are defined by their role in your story. They make life
difficult for the hero, doing their utmost, either on purpose or by
accident, to thwart the hero’s desires and goals. The hero’s desire may be
simple, such as the goal of remaining alive, while the evil villain is doing
his best to kill him. Or the desire may be something less life-and-death,
such as competition for a prize, or for land, or for the love of the lady.
Villains and Power
Generally, your story’s villain should have power greater than or equal
to the power of your hero. If your villains have no power, then they won’t
provide enough tension and conflict.
Here are some ways in which your villain may be more powerful than your
hero:
- Your villain is older and more experienced - Your villain has
more money or better connections
- Your villain is willing to do things your hero would never do
- Your villain is stronger, either physically or mentally
- Your villain is better looking - Your villain has authority
over your hero: a parent, a teacher, a boss, or someone high in the
government
It’s unlikely that your villain will have all of these qualities. You may
also want to give your villains a few vulnerabilities, although these
weaknesses may not be perceived by your readers at first. The villain needs
to have a few vulnerabilities, or else your story will be both short and
depressing as the hero is vanquished in the first ten pages.
Make Your Villains Disagreeable
You may not want to make your villains disagreeable – but writing
about unpleasant people can be fun! Here are some ways to “flesh out” the
unpleasantness, and make your readers dislike your antagonist.
- Your villain does not appreciate what s/he has. Perhaps she
inherited money but wastes it on cocaine and booze. Perhaps he married a
nice woman and cheats on her.
- Your villain takes advantage of people’s good nature. Perhaps
she is a woman who married a rich man by pretending to be pregnant - or
was pregnant with a child actually fathered by another man.
- Your villain doesn’t care about ethics. Perhaps he prefers
money to the environment, or even the health of his community.
- Petty acts can make a villain seem nasty. Perhaps he’s rude
and inconsiderate to the help. Perhaps she’s stingy, even to her own
sister.
Note, that as most of these traits will destroy most reader sympathy for
a character, you should use them sparingly in the characters which you want
your readers to like.
Don’t Overdo It
Don’t ascribe every evil quality to your villain, even if you’re
writing about a psychopath. First, be consistent in your description. I once
read a book where the villain was trying to compel the impoverished,
beautiful heroine to marry him. The author kept describing the villain as
“greedy” and “avaricious.” Well, if he was greedy, why was he so anxious to
marry a heroine who was penniless? The author should have dispensed with the
adjective – there were plenty of other reasons to dislike this character –
or the author could have justified the villain’s interest by making the
heroine the unwitting heiress to a fortune.
Second, be careful with traits that are so over-used that they have
become clichés, such as long red fingernails, sinister scars, twirling
mustachios, and so on, unless you want your villains to be cartoon-like. A
few of these traits are acceptable, but if you lay them on thick your
villains will be paper thin.
I admit that I prefer it when a villain has a few redeeming features.
Consider Leona Helmsley – known as the “Queen of Mean” – who disinherited
two of her grandchildren in favor of her dog, Trouble (the will has been
challenged). First, she obviously had some affection for her dog (who is
still living the high life in Florida). Second, and perhaps more
significantly, she gave $5 million after 9-11 to help the families of New
York firefighters. These traits make her a little more interesting.
Consider How You Will Use Your Villain
Some of the best scenes can occur when the hero and the villain duke it
out. Perhaps this will be the climax of the book, when they confront each
other at last. Or perhaps you have plotted several confrontational scenes.
Some of the decisions about how you use the villain depend on what the
reader and the hero are supposed to know. Should they be aware of the source
of their trouble? Then you, as the author, can be more open about your
villain’s actions. Should the identity of the perpetrator be a surprise?
Then your villain should be less assuming, perhaps even outwardly meek,
while you, as the author, hide the clues in paragraphs full of innocuous
description.
Nevertheless, villains should be daring. They should be clever, to
provide a challenge to your hero. So - let them do neat stuff! Many readers
have a sneaky admiration for criminals - not those who hurt people - but for
bold and brazen thieves, such as Hermes and Odysseus of ancient mythology,
or Frank W. Abnagale of Catch Me if You Can.
When your hero bests your villain in the end, you want it to be because
your hero was smart and lucky as opposed to your villain being stupid. You
want to give your readers the satisfaction of overcoming a worthy opponent!
Consider Your Villain’s End
Will your villain be vanquished at the end? Or have a change of heart and
conciliate with the hero? Or perhaps both?
Consider Star Wars and Darth Vader, which combines both. Story-wise – not
a result of the exigencies of the preceding plot but because this was the
resolution that would satisfy the movie-watchers most – Darth Vader had both
to repent and to die. He had to repent because he was Luke Skywalker’s
natural father, and there had to be a “nice” father-son moment between Vader
and Luke. On the other hand, Darth Vader had blown up an entire planet
earlier so he had to die in order for justice to be served. Prison would
have been too good for him.
On the other hand, some villains can repent and live without offending
your readers. If this is so you need to consider how and why your villain
repents. The repentance should not be illogical, which means that it’s OK
given the new circumstances and the villain’s character. Perhaps the
villain’s deeds were acceptable from his/her point of view; perhaps it was a
misunderstanding instead of thoroughly evil intentions.
Your Villain’s POV and Character Arc
You should understand your villain’s point of view. Now, you may not
actually want to write from the villain’s POV (although it can be a lot of
fun to write a few scenes that way, but not too many or you will be giving
your villain the same weight as your hero) but you should at understand what
motivates your villain.
Villains have reasons for what they do. They may engage in
self-justification, such as: “This isn’t personal; it’s business.” Or, I
must do this in order to save the country. Or in order to feed my family.
Or, I’m going to do this because I’ve been poor all my life and I really,
really deserve that diamond necklace. The justification does not always have
to be completely rational but it should exist.
Or they do what they do but they can’t help it and sometimes they even
regret it afterwards. “I didn’t mean to kill her but I couldn’t help
myself.” Perhaps they show remorse by placing a rose on a grave.
Or perhaps the villain is merely an opponent – such as a parent trying to
prevent a teenager from trying something – with honorable if misguided
intentions. Perhaps the father does not want the son to experience the
humiliation of failure, and hence attempts to prevent the son from trying
out for the football team. Or the mother does not want the daughter to go to
college because she believes that educated girls never marry.
Your story’s focus will naturally be on the character arc of your hero,
but you may want to devote some attention to your villain’s character arc as
well. What is a character arc? This is a topic for a future column, but
according to Wikipedia:
A character arc is the status of the character as it
unfolds throughout the story, or storyline, or series of episodes.
Characters begin the story with a certain viewpoint and, through events
in the story, that viewpoint changes.
If your villain’s attitude shifts throughout your story, there should be
reasons for the shifts.
Conclusion
It’s important to have someone or something that opposes your main
character. Now, it does not need to be an evil person – or even a misguided
person. Your story may be about your character overcoming inconvenient or
even challenging events. (Go to the Fiction Fix archives to read the
article, Satisfaction
through Frustration, from April 2007.) In other words, not every
story needs a personable antagonist or villain – but a good bad guy can
increase the entertainment value of your opus.
Comments? Questions? You want to use this article? Please contact me at
grossackva at yahoo dot com.
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