Jul 17 2009
Writing Villains Vs. Writing Heroes
1. Villains can be overpowered. In fact, they should be more powerful than the hero. The more a hero is challenged, the more impressive it is when he eventually succeeds.
2. Likability and relatability are much less important for villains than heroes. The quality of a villain usually depends on his style, competence and scariness. If your audience isn’t enthusiastically urging on the hero to beat the villain, they probably aren’t thrilled about the story.
3. The villain’s powers should usually be easier to explain and more generic than the hero’s are. Working in a really complex power for a character that will probably only fight a few times is usually a waste of time. Additionally, most villains have fewer powers than the heroes do. For example, Luke Skywalker has a variety of force powers, but the only power we see the Emperor use is lightning. Batman has a variety of gadgets, but the Joker has just a pencil.
4. Villains can usually get away with a voice and/or personality that are relatively over-the-top. Villains generally aren’t on-stage as much as heroes are, so they have less time to make an impression. In contrast, if a hero were really over-the-top, he’d have enough time to wear out his welcome. Additionally, an over-the-top character is likely to be hard to like and relate to. Those problems are much more serious for a hero than a villain.
5. Villains are generally freer to have messed-up origins and mental disorders, but please stay away from racism and other prejudices. Racism is pretty much the opposite of style and competence. Case in point, Dr. Doom. As far as villains go, he’s unusually likable because his style and good intentions soften his megalomania. Readers reacted pretty strongly when Marvel made him a racist. It’s really hard to make a prejudiced villain that is remotely three-dimensional or sympathetic.
5. Generally, a villain’s backstory and origin story aren’t nearly as important as the hero’s are. Likewise, the family and love interests of the villain are usually forgettable. (There are exceptions. For example, the tragic romance of Mr. Freeze won “Batman: The Animated Series” an Emmy).
6. It’s more acceptable for villains to rely on contrivance (when something just happens to happen for no particular reason). “Good thing those miniguns were lying around!” When the villain gets a lucky break, that’s dramatic. How will the hero respond? When the hero gets a lucky break, that’s usually bad writing. Your readers want the hero to save himself, not rely on corny deus ex machinas.
Interesting – it’s okay to be a sociopath, but an equal-opportunity sociopath (or an out-and-out psychopath) is to be preferred.
I suppose one could break some of these rules if one is intentionally satirizing the the conventions or writing a comic villain, but that would call for a fair degree of care on the part of an experienced writer.
These guidelines are the conventions of the genre, that’s the point, they’re a distillation of what worked the most over the ages in B. Mac’s opinion.
Although, I think the first and second rules can be a bit contradictory, especially in the early portions of a superhero’s career. Lex Luthor is often considered the ultimate supervillain (at least prior to Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker, which tilted the scales unfairly, by being awesome.) quite simply for the exact same reasons while so many people hold so much love for Batman. Batman is just a normal human being that through determination managed to make himself physically and mentally capable of combating the very worst of humanity, whereas Lex Luthor is an ordinary human being that made himself knowledgeable enough to be capable of fighting the very best the world has to defend it, the man of steel, an invincible alien capable of ripping every bone from his body in an instant.
With the exception of a few incidents with lazy or incompetent writers, Lex Luthor has never been able to stand toe to toe with Superman, he has always had to try to succeed simply by virtue of being better then the Last Son Of Krypton, and he has always done so without solely relying on Superman’s no-kill policy to survive.
In light of how much weaker he is then the hero, his victories are vastly more impressive, he becomes scarier, the reader knows that there is truly something to be scared of in him, and Superman’s victories are impressive because he persevered and stuck to his ethics throughout.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have a character like Doomsday. He is in every way utterly superior to Superman, he can push him through a moon without stretching first. His acts are capable of being impressive, if handled correctly, but his victories are assured. Superman’s victories over him have to be handled excessively carefully, otherwise it’s just a “Duh, why didn’t he do that from the start?” or the readers get to wonder how he magically got more powerful.
Of course, most of what I’m talking about has more to do with nemesis villains then Calender Man or other villains of the week, in which all the guidelines apply for the most part.
Despite my praise for weaker villains, it is a delicate thing to handle, because if they’re too weak, no matter what they’ve achieved, you can still completely destroy the severity, respect for your character and turn away readers. The Man Of Tomorrow cannot beat up a six year old midget, even if that six year old midget managed to get Lois Lane killed through precise political machinations, and writers have failed while writing Lex Luthor to the point that sympathy really was engendered towards him due to how far out of his league he truly was, so it is a tight rope walk.