Villains and Scoundrels

[justine_currie]

Libby Drew wrote recently about villains, and whether or not they have to have a redeeming quality. Here's a related (and timely) article on the subject of villains and how to craft a better one.

From Writers' Digest - 3 Techniques For Crafting a Better Villain:

CREATE A VILLAIN WORTH PURSUING
You can’t just throw all your suspects’ names into a bowl and pick one to be your villain. For your novel to work, the villain must be special.

So ... what do you think makes a good villain?

Comments

[oldenuf2nb.livejournal.com]

You know, to me that's something that's kind of all over the place. I think villains can be anyone from a person with such strong negative impulses that they can't control them and yet knows that they're wrong, to someone virtually without conscience. I think the case has been made for sociopaths who feel no remorse whatsoever. To me, those are actually the scariest villains at all; the ones that you cannot appeal to in any way.

[subtlefire.livejournal.com]

A good villain makes you feel.

You can feel sympathetic when you read from their POV and are forced to see them feel and do things that you can relate to - and then feel disturbed that you relate to them at all.

Or you can feel grief, rage, despair when you see things from the POV of someone who has been a victim of something the villain has done, even though the villain never sets "physical" foot on the page.

The villain doesn't even have to be a person, it can be an event. A natural disaster, a train missed, an opportunity passed.

I guess it depends on the type of story. Sorry, this isn't terribly coherent :) There are probably literary terms for what I just said that I know nothing about.

[stitchesandlace.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting topic. Sometimes the villain can be more important than the protagonist because they can be the ones to get the ball rolling, they make things happen. It's especially tricky when the villain is the main character, because even though you're not meant to like him at first you don't want to turn off your readers.

It's something I've been thinking about lately because I'm writing a story where the main character is the villain in a way. He's not evil, but he's not meant to be a likeable character at first, because of the things he believes in and collaborates with (he's the son of a major Nazi commandant in a WW2 concentration camp and a soldier himself). The story revolves around his best friend's family being arrested for treason and taken away, and a few years later he's working at a concentration camp under his father's command with no questions or qualms about it when he meets his friend again who's just been shipped to said camp, still a prisoner and sans-family. He essentially ends up keeping his friend alive (he's not a Jew, just a political prisoner) and ultimately the favour is returned in the Nuremberg trials. That's like a super basic outline, lol.

It's a difficult character to write because I want him to be a realistic figure of a young adult who grew up in Nazi Germany and has a father in such a high position (this family has had Hitler over for a personal dinner) and as such not only holds but completely believes all of the rhetoric and prejudice. So in that respect he is the villain - he's committing all these horrible acts and seeing into his head isn't necessarily pretty. But besides the relationship that develops between the two men and the trials they face in such awful circumstances, the story is more about his growth as a person, his relationship with his father, and a very slow change of heart per se and the crushing guilt that comes with it.

WW2 stuff can be really touchy and the idea of having a full fledged Nazi as a protagonist could turn a lot of people off or even anger them, because everyone wants to read about the war hero who 'didn't really believe in it to start with', you know? This guy isn't a hero, at all, so I'm really struggling to write him. :/ I guess the real baddie is the father, but even he has redeeming qualities because he's still family.

Wow that was long, sorry hahah. I just felt like talking about that since it's fitting. Let me know if you have any suggestions :P

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

YES YES YES! I am so glad you have posted this. It's something that I find myself ranting about at times: villains need to be logical, acting for their own purpose, and proportional to the hero!

The number of bad fantasy novels I read as a girl where the hero was a mild mannered peasant and the villain the Super All Powerful Being whose only goal in life was to defeat the mild mannered peasant ... oh dear ...

That's why Lord of the Rings works, because the villain is a Super Being, and the first hero is hopelessly out of scale, so they put the Fellowship together and something approaching the right balance is created. Similarly, in Harry Potter, he faces Voldemort as a horcrux twice when he is a young boy, but is spared from trying to fight him directly until book four, when he has a bit more experience under his belt: the villain grows in proportion to the hero there.

I can't actually think of anything redeeming about Sauron or Voldemort, but those are both classic hero's journeys, so that probably works best for that genre. For most other novels, though, the villains are best when they have at least a good enjoyment of their villainry (Aunt Ada in Cold Comfort Farm is the best example I can think of) or an internally consistent logic to their actions, like Professor Moriarty (he just wants everything).

And then, of course, the villain who is only a villain because he thwarts the hero/ine is also a fascinating device, because he makes you question the narrative voice and see if it is really speaking about fairness and truth, or about selfishness and pettiness. Alexei Karenin and Les Miserable's Javert are two good examples of these, they stand in place of the novel's real villains: selfishness and poverty respectively.

And it's 2pm and I've not had breakfast, so I appear to be rambling, but in short (ha!): books need villains that are proportional to the story and the hero, they should have their own agency and desires, and they should exist wholly independently of the hero, regardless of how much they are subsequently affected by him or her. Unless, of course, you're writing a comedy, in which case have the gnat attack the brontosaurus!

[gabe-speaks.livejournal.com]

Bullies, Bastards And Bitches: How To Write The Bad Guys Of Fiction by Jessica Morrell is another excellent book about . . . well, bullies, bastards, and bitches.

;-)