Is it bad that I love my villain, maybe even more than my protagonist? They're just so fun to write and let all that inner rage out. You can even get away with putting those dark thoughts down on paper. Does anyone have tips on writing villains? I'd also love to hear if anyone gave their villain a weird quirk.
Is it bad that I write a lot of Villain Protagonists? I saw an amazing Youtube video a while back about how the best villains make us consider that they may be right, about whether the world really works the way that they say it does, and about how they make us wonder if we'd be capable of their same cruelty for their same reason... But then the best heroes save us – the audience – from ourselves by showing us why the villains are wrong EDIT: Found it! My three Villain Protagonists are Alec, Amy, and Charlie. Alec and Amy (both hetero, yet completely platonic) find it ironic that Charlie's a lesbian because the two of them are both insufferable goofballs who try too hard to make everything into a joke, and thus Charlie being super serious about everything makes her the Straight Man of the group.
I love my villain/antagonist as much as I love my protagonist. It's so hard to answer this because there's so many types of villains, but if you have someone who's not an entirely evil person like mine, make sure you include scenes showing the goodness in them. My villain/antagonist thinks he's the good guy and the protagonist is the bad guy. With all due respect, he's actually not wrong in some aspects.
Personally, My Villains, are just Antagonists for the MC's. Sure they can do some screwed up stuff, but the world they live in, is screwed up. Hell one of my main MC's is going to become an Antagonist at some point, and it's not because he's evil. It's more so just a difference of Ideals. That said, I try to make my MC's as interesting as my Villains, so I don't like writing them anymore than them. Or any less.
Of course not lol. I like some of the antagonists more than the protagonists in my story. As for tips, well, make them as compelling and complicated as the protagonists. Make them relatable to people. Show them what can happen when someone takes a wrong path, and its consequences. Well in my story the antagonist is an organization. All of the important members are unique in one way or another. One of the interesting things about them is that because the organization's goal is to make the world a better place (with any means necessary), the most evil one of them all actually left them to join the protagonists.
Of late, my stories involve human traffickers. I enjoy letting their victims do away with them. Not pretty. However, I agonize over the deaths of most other characters. More than once, someone has been killed off only to have me delete the scene. Poor Billy. He was young and so full of life, although he never managed a last name. I knew him well, he was loved, but his death was necessary for the second book.
One of the biggest tips I learned when it came to writing villains, they don't consider themselves villains. From their point of view they're the hero, or the victim of a cruel and vicious world. Their actions, however cruel or horrible are, in their own mind, justified. They will often times rationalize the worst actions you could imagine as being for the 'greater good'. Of course this doesn't cover all villains. There are other types like the Joker from Batman. If you use the Chris Nolan version, there's really only one way to describe Heath Ledger's Joker, that mother f**ker is just straight up evil. Then you have villains who are amoral, mind you that's not to say they're immoral, because there is a difference. Amoral characters don't really adhere to concepts like good and evil, they do what they need to in order to reach a goal and damn anyone who gets in their way. One should not that an amoral villain, like Count Dooku from Star Wars, will often have a code they follow. It might not be a good code, but they still have one. Another example of an amoral villain of my own creation would be a necromancer by the name of Nicodimus. He doesn't get up every day wringing his hands, cackling, and checking of an 'evil list'. As a character he has achieved immortality through magic and is ancient, he has lived through history that most people have forgotten. As a result he's become almost totally detached from the world around him. He doesn't see people as people, but as tools to be used as needed and discarded when not. In terms of quirks, Nicodimus may discard someone, but that doesn't mean kill. Despite being a necromancer and lord of the undead he doesn't kill for sport or pleasure, normally he only does so when it's deemed necessary. He does what he needs to do to achieve a goal, and won't hesitate to kill someone who gets in his way, but he doesn't make it a point of hurting people. Collateral damage to him is just the result of peons getting in his way. Nicodimus' evil doesn't stem from an intent to do 'evil stuff' he simply doesn't care about who he hurts or kills while pursuing a goal. That aside, he isn't entirely unapproachable either. If you don't threaten him it is possible to talk with him and not be in danger of being killed.
When I write villains, I try and make them characters, not just villains. The antagonist from my first novel is having a weird relationship with his protege that is never clearly defined, at one point they view one of his memories of him playing in the garden with his three children, he loves coffee and I write the scenes between him and his lackies like they are his friends because he spends every day with them and they are his friends. I personally love scenes when you see villains in their down time doing things like drinking coffee on a porch discussing cars, or shopping for art supplies for their gallery, or even (in my WIP) the villain is on a blind date legitimately just enjoying dinner when she is interrupted by the MC's shenanigans. I love writing antagonists.
I love my villains very much and try to make hem as sinister as possible. I think, in a novel centred around one MC, you have plenty of time to flesh out the protagonist - so why not do the same, wherever possible, for the villain? One thing I have been told (and it was incredibly useful advice) was that one of my villains was too obvious. That is, she needed a layer of charm so that the reader could see why she might be a more powerful character - a villainous trait hidden behind a charming, charismatic facade is more gripping than a straight-up “oh look, she’s evil.” In my new book, I’m hoping to have my protagonist absolutely surrounded by villains - if it works out okay, it should be the most interesting thing I’ve worked on so far!
I hate my villain in my current WIP. I intentionally gave him traits that I dislike, and he's just an overall bad person But to answer your question, no it's not bad you like your villains more than your protagonists
