Lots of guidelines for making a villain say "don't make him/her evil for evil's sake". But I have no idea what this means. What does it mean when a villain is evil for evil's sake?
Evil For Evil's Sake
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I think it just means don't make your characters two-dimensional. Give them some depth and complexity.
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It means that the villain seems to have no reason for doing evil things. Kills people for no reason, has no apparent reason for his plans, and no plans except doing bad things. There is no rationale given for his actions, except that the plot needs an antagonist. He does bad things because he is a Bad Guy.
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If you don't explain the villain's motivation -- whatever drives the villain to do villainous things -- then he may appear evil for evil's sake. And that makes him a 2D cardboard cutout.
A fully fleshed-out 3D villain might not even think of himself as a villain, he may believe he has right on his side. To him the hero is the bad guy.
If the villain has an understandable goal or point of view, the reader might not think of him as a villain either, even tho' he is the story's antagonist.
-Derek
A fully fleshed-out 3D villain might not even think of himself as a villain, he may believe he has right on his side. To him the hero is the bad guy.
If the villain has an understandable goal or point of view, the reader might not think of him as a villain either, even tho' he is the story's antagonist.
-Derek
For myself, unless the story is the evil person's story, I really don't need to know the whys and wherefores of why a villain is bad, it's just so. When people are up in court for doing evil things, like murder, the judge doesn't ask him why he did the murders, so as a reader I don't need to know the baddies motives either.
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But beware. This can go horribly wrong IMO if you do the whole "serial killer who as abused as a child" thing.
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People in real life can be evil for evil's sake, but in fiction, you always need a reason. Its just one of those weird rules some people have.
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The overwhelming majority of people who do evil things think they are doing good. Of course a lot of them are actually just selfish and are rationalizing what they're doing, i.e., "God wants me to rule this kingdom, no matter how many people I have to kill to accomplish it." But very few people will actually admit to doing things simply because they enjoy being bad (although they may enjoy doing things that other people think are bad). Those few who really evil just for the hell of it are typically pretty non-functional and almost never manage to surround themselves with the people and resources needed for an effective villainy.
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The difference between real life and fiction is that fiction has to make sense.
That was my complaint.
I'm going to use Dexter as an example, because he's one of the biggest "good" villains out there - so good, he's the "hero" of his own show.
Dexter is a cold blooded killer. He murders people with a smile, and does so brutally, graphically, and with a big ewww factor. It's his life's work and he loves it.
Now, in most cases, a serial killer who has a family by day and dismembers by night would be reviled. The audience would be cheering on the police/CSI/BAU, whatever acronym the show relies on to find the guy and get him off the streets, but Dexter manages to be the "good guy". Why? Because he's killing the bad guys.
In real life, a man like that would still be hunted and put in jail/executed if he was caught, but in his world, he's doing the right thing. He's not murdering people, he's helping people by making society safe and killer-free.
He does evil things, but not for evil's sake.
Dexter is a cold blooded killer. He murders people with a smile, and does so brutally, graphically, and with a big ewww factor. It's his life's work and he loves it.
Now, in most cases, a serial killer who has a family by day and dismembers by night would be reviled. The audience would be cheering on the police/CSI/BAU, whatever acronym the show relies on to find the guy and get him off the streets, but Dexter manages to be the "good guy". Why? Because he's killing the bad guys.
In real life, a man like that would still be hunted and put in jail/executed if he was caught, but in his world, he's doing the right thing. He's not murdering people, he's helping people by making society safe and killer-free.
He does evil things, but not for evil's sake.
I can't remember a book I read, though, where I didn't have some idea about why the villain did what he did. I don't think it always needs to be explained in plain terms, and a little mystery is fine, but usually there is some idea--whether it be leftover in clues, or the villain's method, or interactions with the hero--of what the villain means to get. If there wasn't any motivation apparent for the villain then I feel like he'd read all "muahahahaha" on every page. And that can get dull fast.
Some obviously work but don't expect any character depth on the evil side. Jeepers Creepers, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Alien, Jaws, Anaconda. All of them have pretty much pure evil or at least villans who don't really have much reasoning beyond kill. They can work, but again not much depth on the evil side. In order to really pull them off you have to go over time on the other side development.
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It means don't write a villain who doesn't have a reason for doing what he does. You have to do better for a primary antagonist than "It's fun".
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In all of your examples, the "evil" is either supernatural or animal. Human evil, however, should have an intelligible motive. Supernatural evil also works better if it has a recognizable motive behind it. Otherwise, you get a Dark Lord who isn't so much an antagonist as he is a force of nature.
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So, just a desire to rule the world isn't good enough?
We need to psychoanalyze the antagonist so we know why he wants to eat human flesh?
We need to psychoanalyze the antagonist so we know why he wants to eat human flesh?
True, but human wasn't specified so I brought up examples where it has been in place where the killer doesn't really have true motive as we consider it.
All I'm really looking for, as a reader, is plausible motivation in why he's doing what he's doing. So if he wants to rule the world, then sure, that explains why he's doing what he's doing. I might not need to know why he wants to rule the world to enjoy the story.
But as a writer of that story, I don't think it hurts to know what your antagonist wants, and why he wants it. Just as you should know what your hero wants and why, and pretty much every other major/minor character in your book.
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Depends on how ambitious you're feeling as a writer. I'd like to grab a bazooka and blow the pedestal out from under J.R.R. Tolkien, so I put a fair amount of thought into my antagonist's motives. He's not punching kittens just to hear them mewling in agony.
It also depends on what sort of story you're telling. Gig, a demon in Nippon Ichi's strategy-RPG Soul Nomad and the World Eaters, spends most of the game's story insisting that he committed every one of his atrocities for fun. He's lying.
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Freddy Kreuger actually has a pretty complicated back story and supposed motive. He's doing it to revenge himself on the children of the people who murdered him. Freddy was a child molester, so the parents had strong motives, but it's implied that Freddy needed help, not violence. That's why he can come back and haunt people through their dreams--his victims feel guilty and let him in.
In Jaws, the evil shark is portrayed not so much as doing it to be evil, but doing it because humans have arrogantly exploited the ocean and disturbed the ecosystem so that he has no choice but to eat tourists to survive. The humans could easily have solved the problem simply by closing the beach and acknowledging the shark's need to live, but they refuse to do so. So again, the shark is not evil for evil's sake, and the real villains are the greedy townspeople.
The original Halloween also has a complicated back story about a handicapped child being killed, which caused the mother to snap. It's the closest to evil for evil's sake of the three I'm familiar with, but even that has the classic horror movie trope of a force of nature (grieving mother) killing teenagers who, if they don't exactly deserve to die, have certainly violated the "rules" of the horror movie.
In Jaws, the evil shark is portrayed not so much as doing it to be evil, but doing it because humans have arrogantly exploited the ocean and disturbed the ecosystem so that he has no choice but to eat tourists to survive. The humans could easily have solved the problem simply by closing the beach and acknowledging the shark's need to live, but they refuse to do so. So again, the shark is not evil for evil's sake, and the real villains are the greedy townspeople.
The original Halloween also has a complicated back story about a handicapped child being killed, which caused the mother to snap. It's the closest to evil for evil's sake of the three I'm familiar with, but even that has the classic horror movie trope of a force of nature (grieving mother) killing teenagers who, if they don't exactly deserve to die, have certainly violated the "rules" of the horror movie.
Ruv Draba
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In the course of conflict, people sometimes get hurt.
We can have our characters hurt people because of conflict, but they shouldn't normally get into conflict just to hurt people.
A special exception is when a character has a strong inner conflict. Sometimes, under pressure, people pick quarrels just to vent their own hurt.
We can have our characters hurt people because of conflict, but they shouldn't normally get into conflict just to hurt people.
A special exception is when a character has a strong inner conflict. Sometimes, under pressure, people pick quarrels just to vent their own hurt.
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WTF? This is news to me. Of course I've never seen FC, so perhaps that's why...
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