Everyone Thinks They
Are The Hero (Particularly The Villain)
No
one thinks they are the bad guy. There are bad people in the world, but they
don't wake up thinking they are bad people. Oddly, I know a lot of lovely
people who, due to depression and mental illness, do wake up thinking they are bad people. However the more
you are out there, affecting other people, changing the world around you, the
more confident you have to be in your motives and justifications.
Racists
genuinely believe there is a conspiracy against them. They actually believe
they are protecting their families and defending their nation when they harass
and beat innocent women and children. Paedophiles genuinely believe children
want to be in a relationship with them, or that they won't remember the abuse.
The worst things you or I can imagine a person doing, someone has an excuse and
justification for.
To
write a villain well, you have to know what lies they tell themselves. You have
to know how they justify their beliefs and actions. You probably don't agree
with them, but you have to understand. Because if you don't know and believe,
the reader won't either.
Everyone
Antagonises Someone
You
are the antagonist in someone's life. Right now, someone thinks of you as a
villain (or just an asshole). Even if you work very hard to be nice to everyone,
your gender, your race, your age or your political beliefs mean there are
people who disapprove of you, people who think YOU are what is wrong with the
world. Hopefully, you are also someone's hero too.
The
hero in your story will be someone's villain too. Most likely, your hero will
be your villain's antagonist.
When
developing your villain, it helps to come at them from a place of empathy.
Realising that there are people who hate you too, realising that everyone in
the world is both hero and villain, allows you to see from the villain's point
of view easier. No doubt you see yourself as a hero, or, at least, not a
villain. But to someone you are. Your villain in your story will probably feel
the same way you do. Or, at least, have comparable excuses to your own: Those
people who dislike me are wrong. They don't understand me. They wouldn't feel
that way if they knew me or if they were in my situation. I'm doing what has to
be done. I can't help being this way.
Yeah,
you and everyone else, buddy.
Resonance And Empathy
I
think we empathise with the best villains. We don’t agree with them, but we
still empathize with some aspect of their motivations or back story. Remember
the most powerful stories make us feel things strongly, but abject terror is
virtually impossible to maintain over long periods. You can’t rely on your
villain making people feel afraid for long periods, they have to invoke other
emotions too.
Resonance
in villains can be powerful, if done correctly. You’re not trying to ‘copy’
someone else’s work, you’re trying to invoke echoes of the same feeling, the
same excitement and passion as when they read or watched something else they
loved, and also make them feel like they are in familiar territory.
Its
why we us comparisons so much when recommending books, movies and games. If you
loved X you will also love Y. Resonance is the reason.
When
I was planning a YA novel recently and began doing the character profiles, I
asked some of my teenage friends who their favourite villains were. I made a
list and sorted them into archetypes. There were clear preferences. Teenage
girls have a type, apparently. Which was fantastic, because I knew exactly what
sort of villain I had to write to appeal to them most.
What Makes A
Villain Compelling?
Villains
are compelling if they feel threatening to the reader and the reader should
want to know more about them. The more intense these two feelings are, the more
compelling a villain will be.
I
have talked about villains needing to be more powerful and have more resources
than the hero many times. It's hard to be scared of someone who is less capable
than we are. However to make them both compelling and more interesting to learn
about, it's time to go back to the profile.
Your
villain's motives are going to make them interesting. They need to have a good
reason for what they do. They have to want something, a lot. They have to be
driven by a powerful need. The villain themselves doesn't always have to be
completely aware of this, but it should be clear to the reader. It's even
better if the reader empathises with the motives, if not the method.
What
if the villain is getting revenge for the death of his child? We would all feel
that compulsion, even if we didn't act on it. Maybe some of us would act on it,
but maybe this villain is so driven by his need for revenge, he is willing to
kill innocent people, maybe even other people's children, to achieve it.
Or
perhaps consider a villain like Draco Malfoy. Here was a child who was raised
to be a villain. Raised to be racist, violent and competitive. If he had been
raised differently, perhaps he would have been a very different character.
However he was driven to continue his cruel ways, because he was seeking his
father's approval and wanted to feel a part of his family and their traditions.
We can all empathise with that. We all want to feel accepted by our family,
even if our family is terrible. To Harry, Draco seems like a powerful
adversary. However as readers we can see, particularly in the earlier books, that
he is just a little boy who has been raised terribly. That empathy allowed many
readers to really enjoy Draco as a character, and I think many of us wanted a
lot more for him.
Weaknesses and
strengths (are still the same thing)
Remember
when I said most weaknesses are also strengths? This applies to your villain
too. Confidence becomes over-confidence. Leadership becomes pride. Beauty
becomes vanity. Thwarted hope becomes bitterness. When you are considering
their weaknesses and strengths, flip both. Which weaknesses do you want to also
be strengths? Maybe they are old, but since people pay less attention to the
elderly, it allows them to move around, unnoticed and underestimated. Maybe
they're in a wheelchair, which allows them to sneak weapons through a metal
detector? Maybe they are breathtakingly beautiful, but at a critical moment
they shy away from a fire that would scar them, allowing the hero to get the
upper hand?
Where
a hero's weaknesses are designed to make them relatable to the reader, a villain's
weaknesses are often designed to foil them at a critical moment. A hero
overcomes her weaknesses, a villain succumbs to his.
Remember
though, a villain is most effective when they seem to posses more resources
than the hero. If you villain is ugly, weak, sick and unintelligent, it's not
very impressive when your hero defeats him.
I
think it is easier to get away with wish fulfilment in a villain than in a
hero. The villain can be smarter, prettier, richer, more talented, wittier and
all the things we wish we were. The villain, in short, can get away with being
a bit of a Mary-Sue. Loki from the Marvel movies, played by Tom Hiddleston,
leaps to mind. He is larger than life, effortlessly confident and bold,
capable, sexy and evil in all the right ways. Could he be a protagonist? No, as
much as many of us wish he could have his own movie. We may love Loki, but it
is difficult to side with him when we've seen him kill innocent people, people
who did nothing more than refuse to kneel for him.
If
you are compelled to have that character who can do everything, is perfect and
awesome and loved and impossible cool, make them your villain. It's what I do.
Relationships
With Other Characters
A
villain who exists in a void is a bit... boring. Seeing how villains interact
with their families, their loved ones, their underlings, their superiors--it
makes them much more interesting. A villain who can show compassion to the
people she cares about causes a sort of cognitive dissonance. How can he love
his own daughter so deeply, yet allow these other little girls to die? How can
she run into the road to save a kitten, then torture another person to death in
front of their family?
Its
these relationships that allow you to show your villain's depth of character.
That they are not just one dimensional evil entities. It allows you to make
them human. Flawed and beautiful. It makes it easier for you to blur the moral
lines.
However
you villain will have other relationships too. Relationships with their other
victims. Relationships with your hero. Relationships with themselves. Be aware
of these. When you are planning your synopsis, map these out too. How they
change, how they grow, how they fall apart.
Your
villain is on the same journey as your hero, but when one rises, the other
falls.
Failure And
Darkest Moments
You
villain's highest moment will probably be your hero's darkest moment. It is the
moment it looks like the villain will win and is at his strongest, but the hero
has failed and been abandoned by his friends. In contrast, your villain's
darkest moment will be the climax, when all their success is ripped away from
them as the hero triumphs.
Since
the villain is the bad guy, he will likely end up defeated, possibly dead. In
the case of series, sometimes he will live on, manage to escape and crawl away
to lick his wounds and muster another offensive. But the story isn't over until
the evil is vanquished somehow, unless you are going for a very unsatisfying
ending.
Agency
The
worst bad guys are the ones who just sit around, waiting for someone to stumble
into them. Tell me what is worse:
1. You're in a maze and you know
there is a minotaur guarding the exit
OR
2. You're in a maze and you know the
minotaur is hunting you as you desperately try and find the exit?
I
know which one would scare me more. The minotaur with agency. The minotaur who
is actively looking to hurt me, not just standing around, waiting for me to
come to him. Your villain should be active. A threatening villain is always a
few steps ahead, with your hero desperately trying to catch up (using her own
agency, not just passively reacting).
A
good tip I have heard from a lot of authors is: If you get stuck and don't know
what happens next, ask yourself, what is your villain doing? Usually their
goals and actions will serve to move the plot forward.
The Difference
Between A Hero And A Villain
The
key difference between the hero and the villain is at the critical juncture,
the hero chooses to do the right thing and the villain chooses to do the wrong
thing.
Voledemort
and Harry had a lot in common. A rough start, a magical school, access to unnatural
power. By the time they met, Voledemort was already past the point of
redemption. However through the series, we learn about him as a child. Where
his path branched, over and over and each time he chose the wrong one.
Meanwhile, Harry chose goodness. Despite being an orphan, despite his abuse at
the hands of his own family, he chose to protect others. To be brave. He didn't
always get it right, but he tried to get it right. Tom Riddle did not.
If
you're still wondering who you are a villain to, you should keep this
distinction in mind. When you choose to do the right thing, the brave and
compassionate thing, the unselfish and generous thing, you are being the hero.
And,
well, none of us are the hero all the time.
NEXT WEEK, we look at character
consistency and wrap up the character series.
The
previous parts of the character development blog series can be found here:
5. Characters: Gender and Gender Roles
6. Characters: Conflict, Conflict & More Conflict
7. Characters: Motivation & Stakes
6. Characters: Conflict, Conflict & More Conflict
7. Characters: Motivation & Stakes
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