Huh. My villain is a dick for no reason. I should probably work that out, shouldn't I? Thanks for the food for thought...
What does they want? What is their background? Their personality? Their circumstances? How do these things interact? Think about that and you'll get there. Though, not every antagonist needs a complicated or sympathetic motive. Some people are just kind of awful. The nuances can be anywhere
My villain is an overweight, hairy, douchebag computer genius who sits in a rolling chair all day wearing khaki shorts. He has AIDS, which, taking into account the nature and history of the disease, reflects his backstory (everybody has neglected and abandoned him), he's ugly, slow and painful decay, etc.... Because of his gradual-yet-lurking death, he is a cyber-terrorist and causes a near-apocalypse, keeping a small population of people alive to acknowledge his work. He obtained the disease (no, he is straight) from ANOTHER terrorist who put an AIDS-infected needle under a gasoline pump. So his death is meaningless and CAUSED by terrorism. His first line in the novel is "Hey, fuckers." For those who understand the reference (I love alluding to pop culture), he has a tattoo on his arm of a moon crashing toward the Earth, representing both his desire to cause the apocalypse, and also alluding to the Majora's Mask. His disease is symbolized by the mask itself; hell, it IS the mask. And he is the skull kid, just yearning to cast havoc onto everybody around him, only for shits and giggles. And that is Timothy Buttons.
One of my villains does shitty things because she was raised by a horrible person and ultimately snaps after a perceived betrayal from her sisters. So, revenge. Revenge is a pretty common theme with my bads actually, now I'm kinda struggling to think of one that doesn't boil down to that :x
My main villain in my fantasy novel is an evil God thrown down by the other gods because of his lust for power and domination. However because the gods in my world cannot interact directly with the world they work through devoted clerics. So I have many villains who do what they do either from religious zealotry, political gain or simply for money. The villain in my sci fi novel is the megalomaniacal head of a kind of galactic corporate conglomerate who wants to rule the galaxy and control all the resources and political power in the galaxy. Probably a bit derivative but who doesn't love a good megalomaniac.
I have couple of bad guys in my story. 1. One is the Phoenician (Lebanese) shipping master Hasdrubal, running a convoy of three Roman ships to China. He is in cahoots with an Arab pirate Ibrahim, planning to tip one of the three ships to him for a cut. He is scheming. double-crossing. Background is that at age 12, he watched his uncle, who had raised him, be crucified for a crime he didn't commit. (Revealed in flashback at a point where he fears he is about to be unmasked) He rose to become a successful businessman in shipping out of Alexandria, but he secretly hates the Romans who enthusiastically hire him, and on occasion some of them wind up dead (never at his hand). Finally caught, imprisoned in Roman jail at a naval station awaiting crucifixion, he seduces a young soldier to help him escape, but then kills him with a rock. The first person he has killed, and it takes much longer than he thought. Next he kills the boatman the young soldier had hired with a dagger, escapes to Persia by boat dumping bodies overside. Seeks friend in Persia, finds himself too hot a commodity, kills his friend and several of his slaves to get the money he feels he deserves, finds he enjoys killing, escapes to Aria (Herat) and sets himself up in style. A few years later, he learns the Roman party from the ships is returning (party of 8) with Ibrahim (now their ally in the overland return), seeks to kill them all. Unsuccessful (forgot to search the girl for weapons, bad move, they never take women seriously), Hasdrubal dies at the hands of Ibrahim, but not before inflicting slow but fatal wound on him. Ibrahim will be missed, Hasdrubal will not. 2. Ibrahim begins as villain, partner with Hasdrubal. Has to chastise (as only he can chastise) Hasdrubal for reckless killing, putting mission in jeopardy. Ruthless, but never kills unnecessarily. Runs a massive piracy enterprise in eastern Med/Red Sea with financing, logistics and intelligence. Background: about 60. Forty years ago, when he was 20 year old illiterate deckhand, his ship picked up important looking Jew going to Rome under escort in Caesarea. Paul talks daily with the young man about things Ibrahim doesn't understand, declines offer to go to Rome with him when Paul changes ships in Myra. Paul wishes him his greatest desire. Few days later same storm that blows Paul to Malta on another ship, has Ibrahim drowning, chained in hold of his foundering ship. Breaks free, finds incompetent captain drunk in quarters, kills him, directs efforts to save ship. When storm blows over they find themselves pirates, having killed the captain and dumped the cargo. Everyone stays with him, he is captain with his first crew. Educates self, become very fluent and literate in Greek, passable Latin, reads philosophers, builds his enterprise. Always wondered what happened to that strange Jew, knew about shipwreck, but not about survivors. After hijacking is immediately aware of double cross by Hasdrubal (other ships veer north rather than continuing east), feels his safe area in Africa is probably compromised, continues east, not sure what to do. Storm blows up, very bad monsoonal cyclone, frees the two Roman soldiers in the hold, because he will never leave anyone to die chained in a hold. Throw them overboard, if necessary, but not that. Soldiers put to work with sailors replacing sea anchors as carried away. Romans impressed with Ibrahim's seamanship. When a sea anchor badly cast snaps pirate's lifeline, centurion goes overside to rescue him, dangling on the sea anchor tether. Beginning of evolving friendship, daily dinners with Romans, senior officer sparring, negotiating ransom in exchange for getting them to China, believing other two ships lost. (They weren't: one rejoins them later with Senator/ambassador on board in South China Sea) Ibrahim ultimately winds up in Chinese capital Luoyang with two deckhands for various reasons of his own with the Romans (obviously not a part of diplomatic party). When they are condemned to death, he concocts a jailbreak, gets everyone out (four men and woman) and they put him in charge of getting them home... after all the man has spent his lifetime evading the law, who better to do it in China? Thus he transitions from initial villain to hero. He discovers the significance of Paul in small Christian community in Bactria (Afghanistan), struggles with concept of forgiveness of sins... he has so many. As noted above, dies at Hasdrubal's hand, but surrounded by friends such as he has never known. 3. Wang Ming. Not a villain, so much as a weak, jealous man. When Chinese seek translators for their mission to Rome, they take ten young people from village of Liqian, descendants of Roman soldiers from battle of Carrhae, to Luoyang for training. One is 12 year old girl Marcia Lucia, Wang Ming takes her as concubine. He goes along on Gan Ying mission to Rome (she is sixteen or so when they leave), the translators' citizenship is affirmed there as they all descendants of citizens on the old legion rosters. His concubine has never known any freedom or respect as an adult, except maybe when her citizenship was also affirmed, sine suffragio, in the Senate curia. He is separated from her by administrative oversight when the three ships depart for China on Roman return mission several years later. She (now 22) is on ship with her brother and the two Roman soldiers, considers life without Wang Ming after hijacking, forms very shy friendship with centurion. However the second ship Asia overtakes the Europa in S. China Sea, she must return to Wang Ming travelling with Senator on the Asia. Wang Ming is insanely jealous for no reason, beats her. Unexpected brief warming in their relationship in Luoyang, but Parthian ambassador is trying to undermine Roman mission, starts preying on Wang Ming's jealousy, convinces him that she is both unfaithful and spying on him for the Romans. Confrontation with emperor, Romans plus the girl and her brother condemned to death, Ibrahim breaks them out. After many adventures and narrow escapes over a year they wind up in translator's hometown of Liqian. Wang Ming also winds up in Liqian with Chinese party, expecting them to go there, arrives just ahead of wedding between Marcia and centurion (You knew that was coming, didn't you?) . Catches Marcia alone, lost in hometown revery, and demands she return with him, attempts once again to beat her into submission. Marcia has however mastered significant fighting skills, he winds up dead, but not before seriously wounding her... the wedding goes on anyway. Ibrahim makes sure his body is properly disposed of, where it will never be found. Wang Ming is not missed by the Luoyang imperial court, his reputation for beating his women was considered "inharmonious" and the subject of a lecture to the court by Emperor He on that subject.
Ooooo this is a toughy. Why are my villains villains? To put most simply because they oppose the protagonist. Generally speaking (and even more so in the current work I'm creating) I prefer my characters to be shades of gray as opposed to black or white on the morality spectrum. I find that leads to more interesting characters and a more interesting story because it becomes less predictable what they'll do and in my opinion makes them seem more human. Yes my story deals directly with good (really less good and more like Divine Justice) and evil so there's my take of characters that are the embodiment of those ideas, but as a whole, my villains along with my protagonist just happen to strongly believe in the views (or a particular person) of one side over the other. I think it's fascinating to delve more into the psychology of why people are doing a particular thing then just throwing them there "just because".
A sociopath who thinks he can save the world and in the process get the one back who left him? That villaineous enough??
I've never written a short story but I'm afraid I might base my villains on people I don't like in real life. Then they just become stereotypical caricatures, I imagine. Do writers do this? I mean get their revenge on people who have bullied them in some way, by putting them in stories? Reverse psychology might be to do the opposite and make them look good. But then, is that therapeutic?
As long as you're character isn't too similar to the real person and stands a a good character on their own then using real people as inspiration for fictional persons is find. However, it sounds like you're not doing that. So I don't find it okay. And I don't think that's very helpful psychologically either.
Ok. So if my motivation to write is to "get even", I'm history. Is that it? My motivation to write is to sort out the internal debates in my mind. To give the internal bully his say as well the eternal victim. My aim would be to feel that all my inner selves get listened to, get voiced. Such psychological therapy is not the place for writers and writing?
The aim of writing is not the therapy. The aim is to make a good narrative, everything else is secondary. And you already said they became caricatures, so they're not good writing. If you derive some healing effect from a certain caringly developed story, go ahead, but if you're adding strange, badly-made things to your ideas you're ruining them. Surely you can do better.
Oscar leigh wow prompt reply, thanks. My writing is still at the stage of therapy. I do it for myself. Not sure I'll ever reach the "good narrative " stage, Hat off to you for putting the work in to reach that stage!
Well, in my story I have two main villains. One of whom is sadistic and evil because they're a power hungry psychopath who doesn't give one iota of a f*ck about anyone else and just views people as objects to be treated however she wants. (Which means all kinds of nastiness for the population at large.) Why? Because it's genetic and that's just how she came out of the womb. The second villain (well, I say villain, she's more of an anti-villain all things considered) is the daughter of the first villain and was raised (if you could call it that) in an extremely violent environment where psychopathic behavior was the only thing positively enforced and the inverse viciously punished, resulting in a nasty case of Stockholm Syndrome, PTSD, and psychopathic coping mechanisms (eg. behaving like a psychopath is her version of a mental shut-down or survival mode) the former only going away after she was nearly killed by her mother for questioning why she killed someone else (over something exceedingly stupid, an off-color joke to be precise). After which the second villain was forced into a leadership position in her mother's terrorist organization and became extremely angry and vengeful before going on a year long killing spree targeting everyone even peripherally involved in her mother's organization. She doesn't really become a full villain until a few years later when she decides to try and cleanse the planet of all amoral scum and establish a 'new world order' because she doesn't like how people treat her albino half-sister. At which point the protagonist of the story is forced to step in.
Ready for a cliché? He wants to take over the universe. Well, that's his ultimate goal. But ATM, he just dropped by Earth to get ice cream for his minions and discovered the sweet sweet taste of cherries... and steals them all!
I think this thread is asking for more detail than that. At the very least I am. Give me some examples please.
Cool, it's just that since there are so many example I wanted to give something simple. In my story, there are multiple points of views, ala Song of Ice and Fire, so really there is not a clear villian who wants to conquer the world or anything. There are 4 points of view: Main character (typical portal modern-world young man), his counterpart who is a mercenary from the fantasy world, a forest tribe member and a power-hungry knight. So my "traveler", the guy who went from our world into the fantasy one, has different ways of doing things compared to the mercenary, and since their destination is the same one, there is conflict between them. There is a mad guildmaster who stirs stuff up but primarily because he is a psycho, and he is one powerful psycho. He has voice in politics, which makes him difficult to deal with when he does what he likes. But the main villian in my story would be the world they live in. Between kingdoms trying to get their hands on more land and power, monsters and even just between themselves, conflict is aplenty. Those are some short examples!
My main character is about an even match between nature and nurture: Nature - she is a sadist who is biologically aroused by the idea and/or act of torturing people to death, but she is not a psychopath who would have no organ for understanding the importance of other people. Nurture - she always empathized with the innocent victims of violence, and she always imagined herself as one of the vigilante outlaws (both in the "real world" that she grew up in and in the fiction that she enjoyed) who exacted terrifying vengeance against evildoers, who risked their lives to protect the innocent even as the courts and law enforcement branded the vigilantes as "murderers" and tried to protect the criminal classes from them. Without her ideology of vigilante vengeance, she would never have started acting on her biological sadism and homicidal fantasies, but without her biological sadism, she may never have been as attracted to the ideology in the first place.
I'm not really into villains all that much (bad heroes and relationship conflicts are where at it's at!) but I suppose that a couple of my characters could fit the criteria. One of them is a caricature of abusive fathers and crime bosses. The main objective of the protagonist (his daughter, who's not exactly shining star) is killing him. He doesn't get a lot of characterization besides being stereotypically horrible. The story is less about interactions with him and more about the trials and tribulations she has to go through before defeating him. I suppose the god of my universe could also be considered a villain. He made the world as a honeymoon gift for his husband, and it has become their home. He doesn't consider the people in it anything more than items to be used in making his very long life a bit more fun, and thus does some pretty f*cked up sh*t!
Well my villain is just that because they are not only trying to make my hero do hurtful things to others and in that go against their own sense of what is right and wrong, but also they will try to kill the hero later.
My main villain is a psychopath who since he was a kid has been good at bribing, manipulating, or blackmailing others into supporting him in his dirty work. Call me a lousy writer, but that's what he is. However, I hope I have given enough backstory as to why his psychopathy took the direction it did. And just the other day I remembered that psychopaths are initially charming with their victims, and rewrote a couple of chapters to reflect that.
One of my favorite villain types to write are ones that are especially menacing but have a weakness that makes the reader feel sympathetic towards them. The reader is torn because they know that this character isn't worthy of sympathy but the villains weakness makes them more vulnerable and therefore more relatable. It disturbs the reader to realize they can relate to such an evil person on any level. A generalization, I know, but everyone here can probably think of an example
