Perhaps because of our rich comic book history, many of us love villains. They’re fun to read, they’re fun to write, and they can symbolize everything we see as wrong with the world. If you want your antagonist to be personified in one or a few characters, you’ll need to know how to write a villain.
- Like all characters in your story, your villain must have a want. And don’t just say “to destroy the world.” Your antagonist’s wants must be clear and plausible in order for them to drive the plot. Even chaotic villains, like the Joker from Batman comics, have motives for what they do. That doesn’t mean that their motives have to make sense, mind you. Irrational motives often make an evil deed.
- Giving your villain a back story can change the way your audience is affected by them. Often, when villains have a back story to explain the reason why they’re evil or whatever, it deflates them. This might be what you want. Goob, from Meet the Robinsons, was meant to be deflated, because it was important that in the end he showed that he was nothing more than a man with a rough history. However, if you want your villain to have a more striking effect on your readers, if you want him or her to constantly remain truly, truly evil, conceal their stories. The Joker in The Dark Knight does this well, for he never seems to quite remember how he got his scars. He comes across as wonderfully insane.
- Your hero must be motivated by more than a desire to defeat the villain. As cool as your antagonist is, he or she cannot be the only thing driving the plot. Your other characters must have wants of their own, otherwise your story is about nothing more than a petty grudge.
- Be careful of what your villain symbolizes. Villains often become the subjects of political, social, and religious criticism. If you don’t want your villain to symbolize big business, be careful having them be the head of a large corporation that runs everything for the sake of profit. However, you might be out to make such a statement, in which case, don’t have your villain symbolize too much. Overloading your villain with social commentary means making him cliché, which is a grievous sin in fiction writing.
Now that you know how to do it, go do it. Personally, I love villains. I think they make epic stories and strong heroes. Avoid rewriting the same old villains, too. There’s enough evil in the world to write more good ones.
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