Four Elements of a Successful Villain - guest post by Josiah Dyck

Today is a special day, my friends! First, I am at my friend's wedding right now (so this post is scheduled to go up on its own).

Second, I'm featured on Stori Tori's Blog, in a post called So Your Character is From Canada, in which the other contributors and I discuss our country. Do check it out! I know the previous instalment, So Your Character is From Australia, was super informative and entertaining.

And third, my brother Josiah has kindly produced a guest post of his own for me to share with you! As a fellow writer, he and I are often the first ones to hear each other's story ideas, talk out the plot knots, and flail excitedly over the latest fictional development in our WIPs. And today, Josiah invites you into a discussion about villains. I'll bow out now and let him take the stage . . .

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Let’s talk about villains.

Authors tend to focus more of their creativity on the hero. That’s all well and good, but villains are vital too. We shouldn’t simply brush them aside, or create them with a half-hearted effort. Without opposition, your protagonist will never grow; without creative opposition, your readers will become bored whenever the villain shows up.

Let me offer you an analogy showing the importance of successful antagonists. Seeing as my sister’s blog readership consists largely of females (if the commenters are any indication), I have tailored this analogy to that gender.

Suppose you are looking to date a guy, and you have only two options. One guy is the very epitome of a stereotypical young male: he lounges around at home playing video games while eating Doritos, he acts like an animal around his friends, and he tries to be suave around girls. The other guy is the polar opposite: he’s got personality, interesting hobbies, and maybe even a measure of class. He can be a gentleman around peers both male and female. He doesn’t put on an act because he can just be himself. Which guy are you going to like enough to date? (If you answered “The first one,” we need to talk later.)

It’s the same way with villains. You must successfully craft your villains so that your readers like them in some form or another. Their opinion of a story may not be as high if you offer an antagonist who lacks creativity.

“But what makes a villain successful?” you may ask. That is a very astute question, one which I will try my best to answer. In order to do so, we must discuss elements that enhance a villain. This is not a comprehensive list, but rather a few things I’ve noticed that strengthen a villain. I shall offer examples from various forms of media.

1. They’re human.

Close your eyes for a moment and reflect on some of your favorite antagonists. Why is it that you like them? Think about it long enough, and you just might discover that one reason why they’re your favorite is because they are human.

I’m not talking about being a Homo sapiens. I’m talking about a villain who is capable of being a real person, who can show emotion, who is not above flawed human nature. It’s a powerful thing. Your readers will connect with him that much more if he is deeper than those villains who think they can rise above the rest of humanity. That kind of antagonist can work, and I’ve certainly written villains like that. But we can relate to the guy who feels the sting of betrayal as much as any one of us, or that girl who has a soft spot for someone and will do anything for that person.

An example of a human villain is Loki (cue the fangirling). He may like to think of himself as higher than mere humans, but this is not so. He obviously craves some fatherly approval, which Odin doesn’t give, especially after the incidents in The Avengers. Learning that he was born of the Frost Giant race distresses him and causes him to feel betrayed for not being told this before.


However, what could very well be his greatest human attribute is his love for his mother. I’ll never forget that one scene in Thor: The Dark World that makes me almost cry every time I watch it. [SPOILER ALERT] Frigga is murdered by Malekith, and the sorrow of it all gets to me. The saddest part, though, is at the very end of the sequence, where we can’t hear anything but music. Loki is reading when a guard comes and says, “Your mother is dead.” Loki simply nods, and the guard leaves. Loki stands up, and nothing happens for a moment. Then Loki uses a blast of his telekinesis powers to knock over the furniture in his cell.

This brief scene—which lasts no more than ten to fifteen seconds—sharply conveys Loki’s grief and rage over Frigga’s death. [SPOILERS OVER] It’s a powerful moment that brings me close to tears and shows that Loki is indeed human. And we feel for him because we have also experienced sorrow over the death of someone in our lives. It goes to show that human villains are some of the best kind.

2. They have conflicting values.

I’ve noticed some successful villains have values that go against one another. This technique—which works for protagonists just as well—is effective. It adds an element of unpredictability to your antagonist. I first learned about this in the book Writing Fiction for Dummies. If you haven’t read it yet, I strongly encourage you to amend the situation. It’s quite helpful, with tips on everything from worldbuilding to writing queries.

But I’m getting off-topic. Every character has a value, or, at least, they should. A value is something that is most important to the character. Say you have a villainess with a value that says, “Revenge is most important to me.” This makes her more interesting than if she didn’t have any values, but she’s still a flat character.

That’s why it’s important to have two or more values. If they oppose each other, your readers will become drawn to your villain, because she’s now become a round character. Suppose she has a husband who’s dying of cancer. Now she has a second value: “Curing my husband is most important to me.” What’s the result? Hooked readers and flying sparks as the values collide.

You may have heard of the classic villain Darth Vader. Black-armored and caped Sith Lord? Has a bit of an asthma problem and fights using a glowing red light on a stick? Well, anyway, this dude has some conflicting values, which the abovementioned book briefly touches on. They are “Power is most important to me” and “My son is most important to me.” These are obviously going to collide, and when they do, it’s going to be big.

As it happens, they create some conflict on more than one occasion. And each time they do, we wonder which one will win out in the end. Vader, at the climax of episode 6, chooses his son over power—and it costs him his life. But it certainly creates a villain of intrigue.

3. They are unique.

Suppose we have an antagonist who’s really cliché. This villain plots and plans and schemes, but he can’t for the life of him come up with a splendidly evil idea. But not to despair! He has the ol’ fallback for all good villains: take over the world . . . just because!

Right. That makes him so interesting.

Look, nothing’s bad, per se, with the “taking over the world” plot. It’s just that it’s so overused. Your antagonist needs to be unique. (And if he is going to rule the world, he needs to have a strong motivation for doing so. But that’s a whole other topic.)

Too often, we as writers don’t infuse our villains with uniqueness. But it’s such an important thing to do. If you’re wondering what you could do to help make your bad guy stand out, it’s actually easier than it sounds. Think about some of your friends. What makes them unique? You may just get ideas for your own villains. He may dress a certain way. She might have a peculiar mannerism. Maybe he’s superstitious and tries to be careful about where he walks. She could be extremely paranoid about anything and everything. The options are virtually limitless.




"I HAVE CHORTLES!"

There’s a villain whom I’m sure you’ve never heard of, and I don’t mean that sarcastically this time. He is a Beanish named Fawful, from the Mario & Luigi video game series. What makes this little guy one of my favorite video game villains of all time is his use of Engrish and his amusing food metaphors. For those of you who aren’t sure what Engrish is, it’s “a slang term for the misuse or corruption of the English language by native speakers of some East Asian languages,” according to Wikipedia.

An example of Fawful’s speech is, “In the last moments of the finale of the finale, when relief leads to negligence that begets rashness . . . That is when the comeback that faltered comes back and beats your pathetic comeback that I scoff at!” And here’s a food metaphor of his: “Now a Midbus battle will unfold like an angry dip of many layers on the chips of wildest hopes!” It’s crazy, but it makes Fawful unique, not to mention humorous.

4. There are many types of villains.

This probably comes as no surprise to you, and it goes hand-in-hand with the above element. Trying out various types of villains can help keep your antagonists unique. For example, there’s the sympathetic villain, who often has a tragic backstory that can shape him in various ways. The misunderstood villain is one who may have noble intentions, but others see his actions as evil. Some villains are loved by us because of a redeeming characteristic of theirs, but we hate them at the same time because they’re devious and wicked.

What about the villain who is purely evil and enjoys inflicting pain on others? One might compare them to the Joker as he was described in The Dark Knight. Alfred tells Bruce Wayne, “Some men just want to watch the world burn.” Then there’s the antagonist who is controlled by a higher being; whether or not she’s actually evil is up to you. Someone could even use an anti-hero as the main opposition: they’re not really bad, but they still don’t have heroic qualities, and could end up hindering the hero. The list goes on and on.

Another one of my favorite video game villains is one from Super Paper Mario, who goes by the name Count Bleck (“Bleh heh heh! Bleck!”). At first, he just seems like an antagonist who wants to destroy all known worlds. However, he is actually a sympathetic villain, named Lord Blumiere, who has lost the girl he loved. Distraught and convinced she is gone forever, he becomes embittered at the world. Without his love, his life has no meaning. He pilfers a magical book, known as the Dark Prognosticus, to destroy his dimension and sets his gaze on terminating all others. But little does he know that the book’s power has magically influenced him. I won’t spoil the ending of the game, in case you decide to play it, but it has a bittersweet finale that you wouldn’t expect from a Mario game.

[source]

For the Rooglewood contests, I’ve determined that not only do I want to use a different genre for each entry, but I also want to use different types of villains to keep them unique. For Five Enchanted Roses, I had a villain who went by the alias “the Master,” and whose real name I won’t disclose. Karnu was the name of the antagonist for Five Magic Spindles.

My friend Christine contrasted the two quite well: “[The Master] was fascinating in the fact that he was off his rocker. Like we’ve said before, those kinds of villains are super interesting and fun. He was manipulative and coy, which kept me guessing. But I like how Karnu is so confident and powerful. While [the Master] did things in secret and more delicately, Karnu just bursts in the room all, ‘BOW TO ME.’ He just oozes with power and it makes me nervous for our heroes. I like when books make me nervous. It keeps me on the edge of my seat. So, all that to say, I like them each differently. I liked [the Master’s] quiet manipulation, and Karnu’s powerful cunning.”

Is one villain better than the other? No, because they’re both different and unique in their own ways. That’s why it’s so important to try out different types of villains. They might be human, they should have conflicting values, and they also should be unique. There are other elements that make a villain successful, and, like I said, this isn’t a comprehensive list. But if you apply these to your antagonist, readers will definitely be more interested in your character and will consider the villain to be a successful one.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments below. I’d be happy to answer them as best I can. May the writing force be with you!

Josiah is an avid writer and enjoys crafting stories for the enjoyment of others. He placed second in a Christmas story held by a local newspaper. He was also one of ten nominees (writing as Feral_Mutant) in the "Write Like a Ninja" flash fiction contest for LEGO/Scholastic. He thoroughly enjoys soundtrack music and owns twenty-odd albums. For most of his recent works, he has created playlists to go with them, and is working on one for Christine Smith’s Burning Thorns novel. He believes pizza should be its own food group.

 

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Tracey here again! Wow, this makes me want to go brush up own villains . . . polish them until they gleam with a malevolent glow. Point #4 gives me ideas for all sorts of new baddies, too! And--I may be somewhat biased here--but I have to say that the Master and Karnu are both superb examples of well-crafted villains. Thanks so much for a wonderful post, Josiah!