Preventing people from liking my villain.

Based on what I've read about Godwin's Law, I seem to recall that people do acknowledge that there are situations in which Nazi comparisons are not out of place, and to me this seems different from the true spirit of Godwin's Law.

Like, if I said you were being a Nazi in your inflexible enforcement of Godwin's Law, that would be Godwin's Law. But, when we're talking about someone who is literally evil, who is actually committing atrocities -- as this character is -- is it so inappropriate to compare him to Nazi? GL is supposed to be more about lazy rhetoric, hyperbole, and so forth, isn't it?

Not sure why I am weighing in on this though, I guess it's all pretty off topic.

 

Look, mention Hitler and/or the Nazis, you're invoking Godwin's Law. I don't care if it's about the OP's villain, or us accusing Microsoft of being Nazi-like about their X-Box One. Mention the Nazis, even once, regardless of what the discussion is, you're invoking Godwin's law.

That said, I agree with @Mckk . Stop focusing so hard on the villain; instead focus hard on his victims, on all the people he's hurt. Show us how his actions hurt others, let us feel their pain along with them. Let us feel their pain, their anger.

Here's a scenario: An orphanage is burning to the ground as per your villain's orders, because he wants to construct a casino on its ashes.

POV 1- The villain stands there observing the fire with a smile on his face.

POV 2- The children and their caretaker cry helplessly, bemoaning the fates, wondering what they did to deserve this, who could have done this, etc.

Which POV will make us hate the villain the most?

 

No, you're not.

@Jack Asher Please..."An imlied comparison" is the explanation of metaphor you give in fifth grade. After reading a few books and constructing a few metaphors, the gifted child slowly starts to understand the deeper meaning of it all... anyway, am I starting to troll here, or is it you, or am I just too tired?

 

I intend to show this frequently. I mean, the story IS told from another character's point of view.

 

I am much less concerned with this then I am with the fact that @stormcat can't name any of his antagonists motivations except "desire for power."

 

Her. I be female.

anyway, He could be compensating for something, but then again what other villainous motivations are there besides "I want everything"? The hero gets "to protect" or "For love" or "for liberty" or even "To discover myself" but I see no other motivations for villains (Especially stalkers with intent to rape) other than a desire to control their target.

 

To be fair, sometimes that's all a villain needs. The urge to dominate, to stomp their heel on as many as they can, to rule with an iron fist. It's not the 'I want power' that makes these type of villains interesting, it's how they uses this power that makes them interesting.

 

Sorry, I got confused because your octopus is male.

That aside there are tons, tons, of motivations for villains! Because you're not writing a villain, you're writing an antagonist. That is, a real person, with real person motivations for what they are doing. Just saying "he does terrible things because he is a terrible person" turns your character into a pinball, zipping around the machine and bouncing off plot points for no other reason then it is a pin ball.

This might surprise you, but that's actually terrible writing.

Your antagonist had wants and need an desires. He has a personal history, filled with love and betrayal and loss. He has a future of peace and tranquility, and every one of his actions furthers that goal.

If you're having difficulties coming up with these things that a job for another thread, but what you have now isn't even an outline of what you need to have a developed character.

 

I really hate double posting, but I don't want @stormcat to think that's okay. Sorry.

The desire for power must have some root in the character's psyche. People who want power want it because they think it will fulfill their needs, so what needs does the antagonist need filled? Stormcat needs to know that if she's going to build a character that is anything more then a wandering chain of events with no motivation.

 

You had me up until that love part. He is a sociopath, he cannot experience love.

I admit his background is a little underdeveloped (Less than a paragraph, revealed in an intelligence report) but you keep dancing around saying he needs a motivation without giving me any indication of what a good motivation is! He's certainly not acting out of love, or duty, or even to fit in. HE. IS. A. SOCIOPATH.

 

having personally known (and dated, and LOLOL I could write a book about that) a real genuine bona-fide sociopath--what motivated the one I knew was 1. desire to "fit in" 2. need for answers to questions (about all the usual things--"why am I here? what's the meaning of life?") and 3. to WIN. he had very... interesting views on morality and motivations.

I keep seeing sociopathy being illustrated as almost a good thing, but in reality it's a disability; it is an inability to empathize--to even understand other people as independent people. there are a few cases of sociopaths becoming master criminals or mass murderers, but the vast majority of sociopaths are just "regular people" who are maybe a little more mean and self-centered than average. there's an excellent book... ah, The Sociopath Next Door, which does a very good job of explaining what sociopathy is, how it works (or doesn't work), and how people with it generally behave as compared to everybody else. there's currently a trend of saying that any successful person is probably a sociopath--whether that's true is extremely debatable, but the fact is that if a sociopath doesn't have any useful skills, or isn't particularly smart, they aren't going to be successful at anything.

 

Him being a sociopath just means he doesn't care about who he hurts to further his own cause. He does care about himself and will do whatever it takes to better himself.

So, with that in mind...

Maybe he does the things he does because deep down, he's afraid of not being in control. He knows what it's like to be on the weak side and doesn't want to be like that anymore. Maybe he does what he does because he believes the world is an uncaring jungle where the strongest survives and weak perishes, and he'll do things to reaffirm his beliefs. Anyone who deviates from that are delusional. He'll whittle away at the will of others until they buy into his lies and fall in line. Everyone's his personal puppets, and he's their puppet master. They will dance to his commands, or be discarded. His motivation for being this way? Maybe he believes the world owes him something.

 

I'm not trying to make him "The best villain" or even the main villain. He's just a brute who happens to fancy my MC and decided to make her life a living hell because she spited him once.

 

I don't think you know anything about psychopathy other then what you've seen on TV. Believe it or not, but Dexter isn't actually a case study. Psychopaths are capable of every emotion I've talked about. In fact most of them have a deep seated need to be liked by people, and will do anything to achieve that goal. They have a tenuous grasp of morality, but that doesn't affect their desires or their emotions.

I suspect you haven't read much on psychopathy, and to be honest the wikipedia entry is not going to help you much. However most of the other media is extremely vitriolic. The second google entry is written by a criminologist, and (as you might imagine) it's short on humanizing details, and long on superlatives. This article from psychology today is a good start. But you have to remember, being a psychopath doesn't make him any less human.

I did actually give you a good indication of how to write some motivation, I'll quote myself again here:

 

Fear... and?


Edward Cullen has many horrible traits. Cowardice is not one of them.

 

You're kidding, right? Throughout the books he's constantly talking about how worried he is that something will happen to Bella. He leaves her in the second book because he's afraid that being around the vampires will get her killed. Then (on hearing she's died) he goes to kill himself because he's afraid to live anymore. He proposes to Bella so that she won't leave him for the better looking wolfboy, then refuses to fuck her on the honeymoon because he's afraid of hurting her.

Edward is scared all the time, and it shows.

Edited to add: Yeah, I read 'em. What of it?

 

Your instincts were correct right out the gate - you're starting to troll here. But I have to tell you, I lost interest in the content of this thread (or maybe distracted - yeah, that's better) a while back and just kept reading to see how long you could keep it up. I'm making a real bona fide effort to be kinder and after your first few responses I decided I could learn something from you if I kept watch. Regardless of the slip toward the end; I'm impressed. Thanks for the lesson.

And yeah, I know speaking from the heart with no filters and one's 'look good' turned off, appears awful suspicious - but the above wasn't sarcasm.

 

That sort of fear comes from the desire to protect something. But what exactly would my "Edwin Collin" (Not the name I'm going to use) be trying to protect?

 

loss of what he already has, or loss of position/power he already has. people who have power tend to be obsessively afraid that their power will eventually be taken away from them, one way or another. someone who has done things that he knows perfectly well would be found reprehensible if they were attached to his name would have very good reasons to fear public discovery, which might get him disinherited, sued, or even arrested. alternately, he's afraid that somebody is going to take away the toys he's already acquired and that he views as his possessions--be they objects, property, titles, or people.

also, because somebody is incapable of empathizing with others doesn't mean they're immune to the same fears as everybody else--inadequacy, negative perception by important people, meaninglessness, loss of capacity. since they're entirely self-absorbed, they might be more afraid than other people; when you're the most important thing in the universe, being crippled (for example) would damage your entire world.

 

Thank you, Elynne, this is exactly what I needed.

This Kinda reminds me of Azula from Avatar: the last airbender. She was amazingly evil, but when her friends left her she got desperate and was eventually driven insane by being unable to trust anyone else.

Now, I do happen to have a brief period of time where my villain loses his power over my MC and cannot get to her. He's reduced to living on the streets and for some time he cannot contact my MC. Then some time later, just as she's starting to feel safe, he returns to burn down her house in a desperate act to regain what "should have been his".

 

Lol

 

You have a key villain in your book that isn't present in the first 200 pages? I hope he's at least mentioned and he's in the background?

I'm not sure what you're trying to do, but the way you're presenting it makes it sound ridiculous. You seem to have crammed loads into this book - please don't tell me it's all for the sake of making your villain look bad?

If you could shorten your synopsis to about 2 paragraphs, I'd read it. Think query lol. Not 3 pages though.

 

You know what's ultimately wrong with this? Four words - count 'em: Villain With No Motivation. (I should know. I accidentally ended up as one of those in several works of fiction by somebody else, and ye gods, was I a boring character! It's a long story.)

The question you should be asking yourself is not: "How can I prevent people from liking my villain?" It's "How can I write an interesting villain?" Because what any readers you'll ever have are looking for is entertainment. If they happen to be sick people, they'll automatically like your villain because he tortures women. Or kittens. Whatever. There's nothing you can do about that. In fact, if you go over the top in describing the vile things your baddie does to the helpless heroine in order to make him unlikeable, you'll be catering to the very people you're trying not to.

What you're doing here is confusing "likable" and "interesting". Just saying.

 

I'm confused.

As I see it, you want readers to hate Character X, who has some serious but subtle and largely-overlooked-by-fans issues that make less-fanlike people see him as a pretty rotten person.

And then you create Character Y, who has a minor and tangential similarity to Character X, but you abandon all the subtlety and make him really really extremely unmistakably evil.

I'm not clear on how this makes your point. All you seem to have retained is, "Pretty people can be evil."

Wouldn't it make sense to make Character Y extremely similar to Character X, but instead of the scenes that are spun to make the reader like him ("Awww, he just wants to protect her; how can you call him controlling?") you spin them the other way?

 

Lack of motivation? alright then. What is they typical motivation for men who abuse women... other than to asset power?