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.
I’m writing a “superhero” novel but in a villain’s perspective. “Black Jack” isn’t insane or over the top but mostly realistic in terms of he’s sarcastic, dry, and tells it like it is. He kind of makes fun of heroes and is kind of like that guy that everyone knows. The cocky ass that you just want to strangle at times but if you understood him you’d hang out with. He’s not particularly evil or causes chaos, he just robs banks and museums. Is this okay for a villain or does he needs to be more sinister or something like that?
Since the villain is the protagonist of your story, I think it makes sense that he’s a bit softer than the typical villain. (Like Dr. Horrible, for example). However, I’d recommend maybe thinking about getting him tied up in something maybe a bit bigger than a bank robbery for the central plot. For example, maybe a hero or villain is trying to do something significant that B.J. has to stop.
Well his “mentor”/”Slayer” kills off heroes and doesn’t care who gets in his way. Black Jack actually has to become one of the people he makes fun of to “save the day”. I use mentor loosely because all Slayer did was give him a notebook explaining how to steal millions and never get caught.
For number six, is it okay if the hero has that as his power? One of my characters has luck as a superpower, and uses it to his advantage. (Need to get away from thugs in a casino? Pull every slot machine you can, which will all score jackpot, and create a crowd trying to get the money, thus blocking the pursuers)
Hey my character lord sovereign is the main character but hes also like dr doom where his megalomanic themes are shofter due to his belief that under his benevolent dictatorship he can abolish war diseases hunger etc.hes like cable when he had the whole messah complex.I really enjoyed cables views on peace and was rooting for him to succeed.Im aiming for a villain whoes morals make you question whether or not hes true a villain.The heroes of my story are a multinational un santioned team who are boggled down by corrupt politicians.Another reason my character feels hes the only one capable of bringing or is that these politicians let petty squabbling prevent a chance for peace.I really like the moral complexity in showing a story where the villains a good guy and the heroes are shown in a darker context
Ok, my first thing to say is DON’T get the new version of internet explorer. It has an awful interface that lost everything that I liked about the old browser.
Secondly, the relevant comment. I think a problem I’ve been having with my villains is that they’re either so nice that you wonder why they’re even villains, or psychopathically evil that people expect to die in gruesome and karmic deaths.
As long as the relatively nice villains have some threatening goals, I think their niceness won’t be a major liability. For example, Napoleon in His Majesty’s Dragon is urbane and doesn’t have a “KILL EVERYBODY!” mentality, but that actually makes him more likely to conquer Europe. For example, he offers an enemy garrison to option to walk away rather than starve, but they must surrender their officers and weapons. He figures that without weapons or officers, they’ll be no threat to him, but the enemy will struggle to feed or rearm all of those men.
In my own writing, one villain spares a hero that had saved his life previously*, but 1) his goal is threatening/mostly villainous and 2) he kills one hero, takes another hostage, and builds his sites in cities to reduce the chance of nuclear bombardment. He’s not unwilling to do nefarious things, but may be willing to consider humane alternatives under some circumstances.
*This is Evil Overlord-approved, by the way. #68 here.
As for the villains that are so psychopathically evil that people expect them to die gruesomely… I think it could work if they’re stylish enough. One really effective example is Hannibal Lecter, from Silence of the Lambs. He’s a cannibalistic serial killer, but his edges are somewhat rounded in a few ways–he’s sort of helping the police catch another serial killer, he convinces another asylum inmate that sexually assaulted the main character to kill himself*, and he’s an extremely high-functioning psychiatrist.
*Even serial cannibals have standards.
I’m working on a story where a man finds out that he is half human & half angel. So my question is, Do the villains have to be supernatural-related? Since angels fall under the supernatural catagory.
^^^I have the same question actually because my hero is a sorcerer & it wouldn’t make sense for his enemy to be a terrorist or some mad scientist right?
“I’m working on a story where a man finds out that he is half human & half angel. So my question is, Do the villains have to be supernatural-related?” No, but I’d recommend against something heavily sci-fi in the interests of genre consistency (which will help with your marketing).
“My hero is a sorcerer…” A supernatural enemy is definitely an option.
I’ve just finished the first draft of my novel. I’ve flicked through it and while I think that most of the important elements are there I’ve found the plot of the ‘villain’ to fall short and not make much sense.
He’s the CEO of Wilkinson Enterprise (who are responsible for designing and producing America’s weaponry) and the hero only becomes interested in their affairs when she realizes they are in business with the mafia. She works out that they are selling designs of weaponry (that the government don’t know about) to the mafia, so they can be sold on to other nations who need to keep up in the arms race + wars.
Now, originally it was going to be that the reason the CEO wanted to prolong the wars and keep the world in terror was so they would blow each other up and then, after that, they would start again, preferably under his rule.
I’m worried this a) this doesn’t fit with his personality (NPD, controlling genius…the usual) but also that it really does not make any sense from an intellectual point of view.
I also have, after starting to research major wars that are likely to happen, realized that a cold war scenario in the near future is unlikely to happen, and if it does it will be in chemical or technological warfare.
How should I approach the editing of this plot line? Any advice on reworking/rewriting/completely changing would be much appreciated!
Some possibilities that come to mind:
–”the CEO wanted to prolong the wars and keep the world in terror was so they would blow each other up and then, after that, they would start again, preferably under his rule.” This feels sort of comic book-y to me. For one thing, if the world blows themselves up, would anything be left that he’d actually want to rule? It might help to go with something more direct (e.g. cutting the arms dealer and just going with an international crime syndicate). Alternately, perhaps his narcissism interferes with and/or comes hand in hand with some vaguely likable goal (e.g. Napoleon the emperor vs. Napoleon the liberator of the serfs).
@Misti
Just my thoughts here but I’d say it depends. I think a story of Magic vs. Science, with the outcome determining which will govern the world to come, would be pretty righteous. But if that’s actually not the thrust of your story, keeping your antagonist in-genre with the pro is probably ideal.
Personally, I want to warn people to be careful with using mental disorders, even with villains.
Some people really suffer from certain negative stereotypes of mental disorders. So be careful with that.
Some people really suffer from negative stereotypes like addiction (example: ‘If they wanted to quit, they could. They just don’t wanna quit, they don’t have any willpower’) or schizophrenia (example: ‘people with schizophrenia are dangerous’) and other diseases. So please be careful with stereotypes about mental disorders.
Otherwise, very helpful article. ^^