The Big Bad Evil Guy

     The villain of your story is arguably the most important character-- even more important than the protagonist. A good villain will challenge your other characters. A great villain will drive your story. 

    When characterizing your bad guy,  not only do you have to define why they are the way they are, but you also have to make them reasonable. You can't just give your villain a tragic backstory and call it a day, because oftentimes that's not what makes a villain a villain. There has to be some deeper reason behind it. You have to design a character with such depth that your readers can understand them. You know you've done your job well when your readers begin to sympathize with them.

    Take Draco Malfoy for example. He bullies Harry Potter and all of his friends, and just generally isn't a good person. But for some reason, fans of the Harry Potter series love Draco, and some even prefer him over the other characters. That's because of his backstory. He grew up in a family that worshipped Lord Voldemort, and obviously they raised him to not be a good person. But if you dig a little deeper, you realize that Draco grew up in a household with very high expectations. The way he is the way he is isn't because he was raised to be mean, it's because he's seeking his father's approval. Readers can sympathize with this, and thus they grow to like Draco more as an antagonist. 

    One way you can become better at writing your villains is to try writing a scene from their point of view. What's going through their head as they're torturing their protagonist. If you can fully understand their deeper motives, you will better be able to show them to your readers. This exercise actually inspired me to write a novel (still being drafted) entirely from the villains point of view. Writing about the bad guy, in my opinion, can be way more fun than writing about the good guy.

    Another thing about writing villains: never let them be predictable. When your readers think they've done the worst thing imaginable, have them do something even worse. Their job is to push the limits of your other characters, and their goal is to change the story for the better. 

Comments

  1. Heidi RottierOctober 31, 2024 at 8:04 AM

    The villain backstory is really important. I don't buy it if they are just bad to be bad, there has to be a reason!

    ReplyDelete

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