The Villain

Among all of the characters in a novel, the villain, the antagonist, is one of the hardest to write. Sure, you can make a villain that's big, bad, and mean - but a villain with actual depth is rare.

This is something all writers struggle with, including myself. I don't have all the answers to the villain question; in this post, I'll share what I do know.

Villains are essential. Without a tangible villain, the story lacks balance. If a story portrays only good, it portrays only half of life; because life is a struggle between good and evil, between Christ and the forces of darkness.

The villain, therefore, is the embodiment of that evil, and usually exhibits one main evil trait. Hate, bitterness, immorality, revenge, greed, envy, murder, brutality; all are evil ideals that the villain might embrace. Usually, it's the opposite ideal of what your hero represents. The hero shows love; the villain shows hate. Etc.

All right, so it's easy enough to tack on a trait to your villain. But how do you give him depth, humanity, and a truly chilling presence?

That's what this post is about.

1) Don't make the mistake of making your villain single-minded. That is, don't make it to where he has just one negative ideal.

Villains, like all people, have many motivations. Aside from his main ideal, he has other desires and interests. A villain can combine hatred and revenge, greed and envy, murder and and brutality and bitterness; real villains are many-layered. They have more than one desire, and when those desires conflict, that's when we are shown the villain's true driving desires.

Edmond Dantes, in the movie The Count of Monte Cristo, is a very conflicted character. He's something of an anti-hero, which gives me a lot of fertile ground for proving my points. Nothing stands in the way of his revenge; not his wise mentor, not his money, not his former dependence on God, and not even his love. Revenge is what sustained him in prison. In one scene, he says something along the lines of, "Don't take away my hate. It's all I have."

In the same way, make your villain have one driving desire; but you have to prove that his desire really is what drives him. He has to want something so badly that he'll do anything to get it.

2) Make your character have some good in him.

The scary thing about villains is that we can see ourselves in them. The villain is who we will be if the protagonist doesn't win. The villain is mostly bad, just as the protagonist is mostly good. But the "mostly" part is what makes the struggle between the two so fascinating. To our horror, we find that, in some ways, we empathize with the villain, even as we hate him.

Give him some humanity; a tenderness that seems bizarre at first. Say one villain has a reluctance to kill priests, since a priest helped him and sheltered him as a child. Make it something that makes sense but conflicts with his evil ideals.

Even better, let what is bad in the villain come about because he did something good. Again, Edmond Dantes is an excellent example. He was an honest man who trusted everyone, even the people who betrayed him. That honesty proved to be his downfall. When he was sent to prison, however, he destroyed his trust and let revenge rule him.

3) Let us know what the villain is capable of.

If the villain doesn't come into the story until the end, then why will we fear him? But if we've seen his handiwork before the hero confronts the villain, we'll be a lot more frightened for our hero's safety. In my outline of Tornado C, I already have several instances in which the villain shows just how far he has fallen, and that makes him chilling.

Again, Dantes comes up as an example. (No, he's not a villain, but he has a lot of villainous traits up until the end.) Dantes will do anything to get revenge. When he escapes from his prison, Chateau d'If, he pulls the master of the prison with him off of a cliff. The master has tortured him for years, so...well, only one of them survives afterward. This shows how far Dantes will go, and creates a fear in us. "No, Dantes, don't do it!" we want to shout. "There's a better way! Let go of your revenge!" Every time he comes near one of his betrayers, we feel a shiver of fear, because we know the need for revenge that drives him.

This doesn't mean that you have to write something gory in order to make the villain scary. In fact, the worst fear is the fear of the unknown. Leave the details to the imagination; imagination is best at scaring itself.

4) Make him or her realistic.

In other words, not everyone is a mass-murderer. But everyone struggles with anger. Make the villain understandable, because we struggle with the same things. The difference is, the villain uses that evil and embraces it to elevate himself and his desires, rather than struggling against it.

The villain must have normal human needs as well. He needs love; but because he doesn't get it, he hates those who do. An inhuman villain becomes a supernatural villain who can wave his hand and do anything, regardless of morality and conscience. Like I've said before, a true villain is horrifying because he was once like us.

Now, before I finish this post, I have one more thing to say, and it's about anti-heroes.

I mention The Count of Monte Cristo quite a bit, and Dantes (the main character) is pretty much an anti-hero. That is, he's a hero without too many heroic qualities, at least in the middle of the movie.

Here's my advice: stay away from anti-heroes. If a hero isn't heroic, then why are we reading this story? If the tale is bad-versus-bad, why write it? Honestly, which of us has the wisdom to write a story that is steeped in evil?

The Count of Monte Cristo is one of the few stories that pulls off an anti-hero, mainly through good storytelling, superb characters, and a strong theme. It's very hard to write an anti-hero story well, at least for Christian writers. Why?

I believe that the purpose of the Christian story is to build up, to glorify God and retell the truths of the Bible. The problem is, anti-heroes make me feel dirty. It's not about good versus evil. In those stories, the character often hate themselves for their evil. I've read stories from young Christian writers that are, frankly, hopeless. That is, they're lacking the hope that Christianity offers. (There's a disturbing trend toward murderer protagonists, too.)

And if such stories do offer hope, they do it in a bad-guy-gets-saved-and-there's-a-happy-ending kind of way...which is pretty much unrealistic and cheesy.

Therefore, I cannot justify anti-heroes unless it is done as well as it was in The Count of Monte Cristo.

(SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE: In that movie, Dantes was redeemed in the end, and that's why it was satisfying and not degrading. He found that vengeance was the Lord's, not his. He found that revenge did nothing but waste his life. He returns to the faith that he had had before he was imprisoned.

(The final image we get from the movie was rather moving: a picture from the prison cell in which Dantes was tortured. He had scraped deep into the wall, through torture after torture, GOD WILL GIVE ME JUSTICE. And on that note, the movie ends.)

So what do you think about villains? How can we, as writers, create truly chilling but believable villains? What do you think about anti-heroes?

I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Tip for April 19, 2010; How to Make an Evil Villain, Part 3

This should be my last post on villains. But I can't guarantee it. :)

Besides the making of villains, there are types of villains you can make. Here's most of the common ones;

Main villain(s); The villain that is the ultimate enemy for the main character. The Nameless Evil named Gnag in the Wingfeather Saga is an example. These villains are in both stand-alone novels and series of any length. They have all of the traits and more that I described in my previous posts.

Temporary Villains; These are villains that are in a series, but aren't the main villain. They usually represent the main villain, but the main villain doesn't actually come into play.

To continue the Wingfeather Saga theme, in On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, the temporary villain is one of the lesser Fang officers. In North! Or be Eaten, the next book, the evil guy is another officer, but this one reports directly to Gnag the Nameless. But through all of these books, Gnag is still the main villain, but he doesn't come into play.

Lesser Villains; These are evil people that are usually allied with the main villain. Thorne's lieutenant, Chillevard (I think I spelled it wrong), is a lesser villain. In Isle of Fire, Edward Teach is a mate on Thorne's ship. Thorne is still the main villain, but Teach is a villain too. There's usually only a couple of these.

And, of course, there are a large assortment of evil characters not usually described as 'villains'. Spies, traitors, crew members, soldiers, etc.



Besides this, there's a few more things needed to consider when making a villain. One of which is, how far are you going to go?

I described, in making a chilling villain, about the villain's acts. But I don't necessarily need to describe the acts in any great detail. Like the amount of good and bad in a villain, the detail needs to be very delicately handled. Too much, and it'll make your readers want to stop reading. Too little, and the horror of it won't have the desired effect. But ultimately, it's up to you and God. Pray about it.

Okay, I think I'm done. If you have any more ideas or topics to address about villains, feel free to comment. I might even make another post! :)



***Oh, and here's an update on the poll on the sidebar (20 votes);

'How in the world do you expect me to PICK!?!?!' is still surging ahead with nearly half the votes, 45%.

'C. S. Lewis' is determinedly trailing behind with 20%.

'Bryan Davis' and 'Wayne Thomas Batson' are tied with 15% respectively.

'J. R. R. Tolkien' is falling behind with 5% of the votes.

And finally, 'Christopher Hopper' and 'Brian Jacques' are still in last with 0%.

Tip for April 15, 2010; How to Make an Evil Villain, Part 2

It seems like the more I investigate about well-done evil villains, the more I find out, and the more questions I have. One thing I know for sure; it takes a lot of skill and determination to pull off a villain that is more than second-rate.

Sure, it's easy to make a so-so evil guy. Just follow some of the rules from my previous post, and it's fine. But to make an evil villain that is so chilling that it makes your hair stand on end... that takes a lot of work.

Here's a couple more things you can do;

One; Take a look at your favorite villains. Bartholomew Thorne, Paragor, etc. What makes them so terrible? Try to write a couple of short short stories with a character based on that person. Then, as you get a feel for it, try producing some of that evilness to the villain in a story. It just might help.

Two; The character's looks. I mean, if the villain is rather fat with baby blue eyes, it probably won't inspire fear in the reader. And if it inspires fear in the good guys, the reader will roll his or her eyes and think the good guy is a pushover. My own villain has what I describe as 'a cruel face'. But just because the character is evil doesn't mean it can't look innocent. One very well done villain is from Brian Jacques's Redwall book Salamandastron, Ferahgo the Assasin. He is rather innocent-looking and handsome, with sky-blue eyes. But what's so chilling is that when he smiles his dazzling smile, someone is going to die. Literally.

Three; The character's attitude. In the Redwall books, most of Brian Jacques villains are cowards pleading for their lives when they are defeated. But wouldn't it be truly chilling if the villain had a total lack of terror? Besides that, there are other attitudes; nastiness, cruelty, etc. It would probably help if the villain was particularly known for a certain trait, like cruelty.

These are some of the more minor things, but a villain mapped out to the utmost detail will be a villain indeed. Combined with the major stuff, the villain will definitely be a potent weapon.

One more thing; A fellow named Archer commented on my previous post with this question; "How do make it clear that the villain cannot be turned back to goodness?" [Since there should be both good and bad in a villain].

In a comment, I replied, "In my opinion, there's always a chance for redemption from evil, no matter how high up you are in the chain. Kearn in The Door Within Trilogy is a good example of an evil character turned good.

"But as for making it clear that the character WON'T be turned... Hm. You could have the main good character assume that he/she cannot be turned, but, of course, as you said, there is an option. You don't necessarily need for the character to recognize that there is a possibility of the villain being turned."

In this post, while I'm talking about villains, I'd thought I'd explore this question further. And the problem is, when making a villain, you must be excruciatingly precise. If you have too much good, then the reader will wonder if the villain can be turned. If there is too little, the villain will not have the desired 'human' effect. If you successfully balance the good and bad, then the villain will be memorably chilling.

It doesn't take a good author to make a villain. But it takes an excellent one to make a memorable, evil villain, one people will use when making posts such as these. :)

*Update*
I just recieved Starlighter, Bryan Davis's new book, and I'm looking forward to reading it! I'll post a review once I'm done. From what I hear, it's sure to be a page turner, as usual. :)