What does this mean? Moriarty or Dracula or Simon Legree. Yes, you are. You have your days. But you know your true nature, your old nature. We novelists need to become our characters , from young to old, male to female, blue-collar worker to executive, and illiterate to educated. Now take that further. You get over it, I know. But dwell on that initial visceral reaction a moment. But for now, entertain that immediate first reaction. Where was your heart and mind then? But I am telling you to tap into your dark side long enough to know what makes a good villain tick.
Maybe in childhood, maybe in adolescence, maybe later. At some point, rather than learning and growing, their maturation process stunted and stalled. Roots of bitterness and anger sprang up in them. Good vs. Stories are about conflict, after all, and villains can provide a fantastic source of conflict. Villains also make our heroes more likeable. These two terms are often conflated, but they are different. A villain is a character with evil intentions who commits evil actions.
An antagonist is simply a character who opposes the protagonist. Usually in fiction, villains are antagonists and vice versa. But not always. Tom Ripley from The Talented Mr. Some villains are so interesting people love to root for them.
Some of them are truly evil by every definition of the word. Voldemort is a better antagonist than Umbridge. As much as I hate her, Umbridge is a petty little troll in comparison with Voldemort,. But you can with Voldemort. He is the most powerful wizard in the world. He wants to conquer the world and crush all the muggles and mudbloods. He is evil and wields immense power and enormous ambition.
He is a great antagonist. But they sure did when Umbridge was. She calls Harry a liar and refuses to allow students to practice magic in her class. She fires one teacher and tries to kick her out of Hogwarts. She creates all sorts of ridiculous and paranoid rules and creates a goon squad to enforce them.
But again, compared to the crimes committed by Voldemort, Bellatrix LeStrange, and others, Umbridge is a fairly middle-grade villain. And yet readers and audiences hate Umbridge more. Part of what makes all those famous villains Voldemort, Darth Vader, etc. They are so evil and their goals are so over the top, they strike us as more theoretically evil than realistically evil. We know people who do this stuff in real life. She intimidates.
She condescends. She interrupts people. We see this kind of behavior all the time. The scene below offers our first glimpse at the twisted sensibility Umbridge brings to the classroom. Instead, she abuses her power, patronizes her students, and represents a perversion of how a professor is supposed to behave.
And it is amazingly effective at making us dislike her. Like Umbridge, she uses her power and authority to cruelly destroy those below her. We hate her for this even before we know that her actions here will spoiler alert drive Billy to commit suicide. One thing I notice about all these hated villains is how much the writers and directors put into character details. Similarly, attention to character detail is important in bringing out the rage in your readers.
How many teaspoons of sugar she puts in her tea. Her love of cats. Her obsession with pink. The beautiful moment when she adjusts the pen on her desk. None of these details suggest evil. But we do know people who behave like Umbridge. We have Umbridge teachers, Umbridge bosses, and Umbridge politicians. Rowling wrote about how she mined ordinary details from a real-life teacher whom she did not care for in order create Umbridge.
What sticks in my mind is her pronounced taste for twee accessories. I particularly recall a tiny little plastic bow slide, pale lemon in colour that she wore in her short curly hair.
I used to stare at that little slide, which would have been appropriate to a girl of three, as though it was some kind of repellant physical growth. Great novelists have a gift for paying attention to little real-life — but not-obvious — details like these and using them to fuel our dislike for a character even before that character has committed any crimes. It also can take us into the realm of the weird, since a lot of insane screen villains are very unlike insane people we may know in the real world.
Hating her is satisfying enough. But there are characters who are despicable and terrifying. But there is one trait that can make a character both loathsome and terrifying, and that trait is a penchant for unpredictable outbursts of brutal violence. Unpredictability is key. The external villain may not have anything in common with the inner one, or they may draw attention to it. Readers relate to characters who have internal conflicts as well as external conflicts.
Internal villains can be symbolised in an external one to great effect. By defining your villain, you have to be careful of not implying generalisations about others within the same gender, environment, race, and so on. A current prickly but progressive choice is a queer villain—but it can be done well! The first way to avoid generalisations is for the villain to clearly separate themselves as an individual, acting without the support of others. This can be done through dialogue or actions of either the villain or others from the same people group.
We stand apart. This is a successful technique, but may not work in all occasions such as historical novels. Sometimes the key is going to be counterbalance… note that most police procedural shows on television have multi-ethnic casts both in and out of the squad room. Harry Potter does this well; there are both good and bad pure blood witches, muggles and half-bloods.
Try to avoid minorities or disadvantaged groups in general. First, think carefully about whether such an antagonist is necessary for your story.
If it is, make sure to use one of the methods to avoid generalisation. In The Lord of the Rings the orcs are seen to be horrible and evil, as a whole. The insane and mentally ill have been used as villains for decades.
But this is slowly starting to become dangerous ground to tread on. The most important thing is to do your research. When developing your villain, think of them as you would your protagonist. They need all the same things: backstory, motive, dreams, strengths, weaknesses, appearance, and tailored dialogue. If your antagonist is not fully realized, lacks depth or is a caricature of evil, your story will suffer.
Probably the key part to get right for your villain is their motive. Vice versa, creating a solid backstory, goal or personality can help formulate a motive.
Desires such as wanting to be loved, to feel safe or even to get revenge can seed both evil and good actions. A hidden motive may limit a sympathetic bond between reader and villain, but if done well, this can make the villain scarier and fascinating, like The Joker.
In this way, they are foil characters. This causes great conflict for plot-driven stories. They are a shadow version of the hero, and their personality morphs based on the strengths and weaknesses of the hero.
Alternatively, a villain and hero can share strengths and weaknesses, mirroring each other. Both may be extremely intelligent, but full of self-doubt.
Another way to work with strengths and weaknesses is to look at the existing backstory and personalities. A villain who used to be a cop could be quite athletic and a good shooter; one who is prone to anger and emotional bursts could suffer from lapses of judgement.
Make sure you understand INTJs and read guides on how to use their personality. Another popular personality is an altruistic villain —a humanist gone too far. In contrast to seeming emotionless, this villain is a passionate visionary. They fight for freedom, or justice, or for another commendable goal. A villain may want to save the planet : great, you think. Readers expect a villain to be arrogant or boastful.
A really interesting trait to use is one that is less expected, such as being considerate.
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