Conflict is a vital
part of every plot and one of the ways to add that conflict is with a good and
often memorable villain. When we imagine villains we may think of a superhero’s
nemesis, or evil, mustache twirling bad guy who is always planning diabolical things,
or the cruel sadist that leaves miles of misery along the way. But your villain
can also be the nice neighbor who lives next door.
Villains don’t need to
be identified by the color hat they wear or a horrifying mask or a sign around
their neck. In real life, imagine how easy crime-fighting would be if indeed
there was an obvious trait to every evil-doer. Unfortunately villains,
bad-guys, antagonists, or whatever name you can put to it, often blend in with
the masses. And that by itself can be a major twist in an author’s story-line.
If your villain is
human then he or she has human traits, all of them. Human beings feel pain,
they can cry, they may love someone or have a need to be loved, they have basic
necessities of survival – they are really just like you and me. Your villain AND your hero may even have
similar backgrounds or similar goals, the difference is what they make of their
pasts and how they approach their goals. You may be able to vary some of their
human needs and qualities with a good understanding of psychology on occasion. Just
remember that no person, fiction or real, is ever 100-percent good or bad. While
other life forms may have unique needs, they still have that key word “needs”. “Bad-guys”
usually feel justified in their end goal even if they can acknowledge some
naughty things they do in order to achieve it.
Imagine this character:
His father abandoned his mom when he was just a young boy, the father left for
an affair with a younger woman and felt no obligation to his offspring. The boy’s
mother raised him in near-poverty conditions doing the best she could. He’s
grown up and still has insecurities about abandonment. He is very angry at his
now deceased father. After being disappointed in women he was originally
attracted to, he now finds the one woman he decides he wants to marry and have
a family with. Is he a villain – or is he a good guy? In my book Final Sin this
describes TWO different characters, one of them was indeed the “villain”, the
other was the heroine’s best friend and a truly loveable individual.
Depending on your story
you may or may not want the bad-guy identified early on, sometimes it’s good to
keep your readers guessing. Give your antagonist enough favorable traits to
keep your readers interested and give your hero/heroine enough naughtiness so that
your readers are not nauseated by their sugary-sweetness or impossible
saint-hood.
While most mainstream fiction
and all HEAs should allow the villain to be ultimately punished, the punishment
doesn’t need to be the most severe (like death) and may even be a lead into a
series. As a matter of fact, IF your villain is killed, make sure that there is
foundation in your story. In my novel Bartlett’s Rule when the villain died
accidentally at the hero’s hands it became the basis of another conflict where
the hero’s “goodness” was questioned.
Writing Exercise:
Using your own life as the basis, write down the highlights and make sure to
include happy times and disappointments as well as your dreams and hopes. Using
this description, create a “hero” and a “villain” and the way they might react
to marriage, career and money.
Writing Prompt: In
no more than five minutes, write down every action word you can think of (it’s
okay if you use different forms of the word such as run-runs-running)
