Villains in Science Fiction and Fantasy

I have a whiny teenager. Does that mean I live with a villan? Seriously, you have to humanize your villan. Make them a convincing blend of both good/evil. There is very little in this world that is pure black or white. If your villan kills a litter of puppies, people will hate him. But then have him go home and cook a meal for his/her invalid grandmother. People will still hate him, but they will relate. Then you will own them.

While heroes have to be somewhat similar to people so that we can empathize with them and understand their motivations (even if they're crazy), the villains have no such limitation (especially if they are crazy).

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With the exception of total nutjobs (and perhaps not even then), all characters should have reasonable motivations, whether hero or villain or somewhere in between. As soon as I find a bad guy who's evil "just because", I close the book and pick something else to read.

I have a villian in my current WIP who has to be a villian. Her father made a deal to get what he wanted and it forced her to be a villian like him,or see him parish. She's torn between killing the good guys or letting her father die to do the right thing. I don't have a clue as to what she'll decide just yet.

Conant said:

How do you make your villains evil? Why are they so evil, and how can you present it?

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I don't write villains. I write two sides with opposing views and let the reader sort it out for themselves.

Or, well, it's what I try to do.

Conant said:

I'm relatively new to writing, and through my stories, I have only dealt with an urbane villain, the whiny teenaged one, and the complete psychopath, but I wonder about the people who write for other genres of villainy. How do you make your villains evil? Why are they so evil, and how can you present it?

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Your adversary doesn't have to be evil; he just has to get in the way of what the main character wants. But if you want to contrast the heroism of your main character with the villainy of your adversary then there are a few things worth considering. These come from Joseph Campbell's monomyth theory, partly via James N. Frey's writing book: The Key. Your adversary should:

• be virile, competent in his field;
• be an outsider;
• have a wounded past;
• not be born to destiny (but may pretend or seem to be born of destiny);
• want something that puts him into conflict with your main character;
• be selfish, vengeful and cruel;
• be afraid (often secretly afraid)

The 'evil' is optional. It's sufficient if the adversary is less sympathetic than the protagonist. But audiences love to hate a villain, so let's look at evil in detail.

I consider evil to be 'badness that is also taboo'. Badness could be selfishness, vengeance or cruelty -- although sometimes heroes exhibit these qualities too (e.g. Dexter, Conan, or Dirty Harry). Or badness could just be some behaviour that either prevents necessary good (e.g. stop the medicines reaching the sick), or causes harm (e.g. start a war between two friendly cultures).

What makes the badness also taboo depends on how the acts take place, and your readers' cultural taboos. When badness also breaks taboo we begin to describe the bad-doer as an evil-doer.

Some examples of taboos in Western society include: harming infants, children, women, the poor, sick or the elderly; abduction of children from their families; incest; rape; desecration of the dead; desecration of religion; casual use of weapons of mass destruction; abuse of professional trust (e.g. doctors, lawyers, police, government, judicial or clerical powers); harming civilians during military conflicts; genocide; religious and racial intolerance; cannibalism; attacks on democracy; attacks on sacred institutions such as the church, the judiciary, or government buildings; attacks on symbols of statehood such as monuments and major architecture; permanent damage to the environment; brainwashing; torture; involuntary manipulation of an individual's genes; the use of force against the innocent.

'Good vs evil' stories are a staple of epic fantasy and of space operas. However, a lot of SF is not 'good vs evil' but a clash of cultures. And some fantasy subgenres (e.g. Sword and Sorcery, Cyberpunk) tend to be 'bad vs worse' rather than 'good vs evil'.

On the up-side, good vs evil stories have enormous popular appeal. On the down-side they tend to be trite, simplistic, predictable, melodramatic and often triumphalistic -- even jingoistic. You can see examples of this in Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, Star Wars, Starship Troopers and Harry Potter.

Science fiction is especially good at exploring our taboos -- sometimes other cultures look evil because they break human taboos. Later you may discover that what they're doing isn't even that bad. A good example is the Hugo and Nebula-nominated The Mote in God's Eye (1974), by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It's about a first-contact with a race that routinely commits infanticide.

My advice: have fun writing evil adversaries but don't be limited to all adversaries being villains, or all villains being evil. There's a lot more to explore morally, sociologically and psychologically than simple good vs. evil tussles. SF and Fantasy are excellent vehicles for exploring moral ambiguity and turning reader prejudices on their heads.

Hope this helps.

Many times, evil is merely a matter of perspective. Everyone who is 'evil' ultimately views themselves as good (take middle east terrorists for example).

The best example really is to read books who has awesome villians.

My favorite Villian hands down comes from C.S. Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy

Black Sun Rising.




This book put the villian on the front cover. Even though he is the villian, there are times where you are rooting for him to win. The ending is incredible. I highly recommend this book.

There are a few movies that have great villians. Swordfish isn't bad per say. Hero (Jet Li) is another great example.

In a nutshell, the realer and more complex you can make the villian and his motivations,
the better the villian.

But when the author makes the villian flat and evil just for the sake of being evil, it is a real turn off.

In fact, villian is really the wrong word. The correct phrasing is the antagonist, the person who is merely opposing your MC.

Mel...

dgiharris said:

Many times, evil is merely a matter of perspective. Everyone who is 'evil' ultimately views themselves as good (take middle east terrorists for example).

The best example really is to read books who has awesome villians.

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Or books where it is hard to even decide who the villain is. Like Martin's Ice and Fire Series.

I, too, vote for the villain that's relatable. I do like to call my antaganists villains (or bad guys) but that doesn't mean I don't understand their reasoning. There are times in fantasy when someone (such as Shai'tan (?) in the Wheel of Time or the Emperor in the Star Wars movies) uses a power that is evil that makes them evil. I think the fantasy fans are past that now, and we need to have relatable villains, too. It's ok for them to be corrupted by evil, but you must show us how they got there (which Lucas did in showing us Anikan's path to Vader) There are times of course, when you are dealing with racial division, etc, where one force wants to destroy another one, but the opposing force can't be mindlessly evil, or you really shortchange your story and reader. You must develop both sides, and show the good and bad of both.

Phew. Ok Rant over.

Conant - for discussion of villains that are creepy, perhaps the horror forum might help you out.

Your adversary doesn't have to be evil; he just has to get in the way of what the main character wants. But if you want to contrast the heroism of your main character with the villainy of your adversary then there are a few things worth considering. These come from Joseph Campbell's monomyth theory, partly via James N. Frey's writing book: The Key. Your adversary should:
be virile, competent in his field;
be an outsider;
have a wounded past;
not be born to destiny (but may pretend or seem to be born of destiny);
want something that puts him into conflict with your main character;
be selfish, vengeful and cruel;
be afraid (often secretly afraid)

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Despite my devotion to Campbell, I purposely go against this monomyth when developing my villians.

The antagonist is there to spur the conflict of any well-written story. In the SFF genre particularly, the conflict is essential. What good is just random conflict without an instigator, or a hero without a foil? Not much. As with anything in speculative fiction, there has to be a reason for the motivation of your bad guy. Sometimes, that reason can be spurred by destiny, for example--I never have a problem with heriditary conflicts--or can come from the inner circle--the better to manipulate events, IMO. Whatever reasons you decide upon, the antagonist must provide (1) a challenge to your hero (2) an obstacle to the resolution of the conflict (3) a personification of the consequences if the hero fails. So, when you're crafting your villain the first thing you need to do is know your protagonist.

The reason that human beings are capable of such great evil (a casual glance at history will reveal depths of evil I personally can't even comprehend) is because we are capable of rationalizing anything. ANYTHING. Therefore, in writing as in real life, I have learned to completely discount what people say and focus instead on what they do.

A good villain should be the same way...he should, in his own mind, have a completely rational explanation for what he is doing that makes perfect sense to him.

Of course sometimes people act out of pure greed and are aware of their evil, but I find this type of villian far less interesting and not worth writing about. "Why? You ask why? Because I wanted the money! Muahahahahaha! My evil plan is so mundane and boring! Muahaha! And you have worked so hard to uncover it an understand me!"

I also like the idea of the fallen hero, though.

Someone who was forced into villainy through circumstanes, such as people he trusted betraying him, etc., and is a tragic figure. Unlike the typical villain that thinks he's right, this person knows he's a villain. Unlike the greedy villian willing to kill for personal gain, this villain is acting out of bitterness and other interesting emotions. If done correctly, this can be a fascinating character. If done poorly, it can be Anakin Skywalker.

"Noooooooo!"

mscelina said:

Whatever reasons you decide upon, the antagonist must provide (1) a challenge to your hero (2) an obstacle to the resolution of the conflict (3) a personification of the consequences if the hero fails. So, when you're crafting your villain the first thing you need to do is know your protagonist.

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I think that this applies to all antagonists, even if they're not villains. For instance a rival in a romance may not be evil or even unsympathetic, but should embody these three things.

It's very easy to clutter up your villain with lots of unnecessary information, which is something I notice a lot of in the newer writers I work with. But when you get to the bare bones of the matter, these three things are essential IMO. When I'm drafting characters, I almost always draw up the protagonist and antagonist side by side. My choices become very deliberate, because the similarities between the two are just as important as the differences.

Don't make him flat out evil if he is sane. they should be more like Two Face with some blurring and less like the Joker and the Penguin you know.

My 'villain' is a magical "Clone" of my MC. He is exactly like him in almost every way but the magic cloning causes the clone to be driven to kill the original. However he has all of the same goals and memories from the time of his creation the my MC has.

I actually like my villain more because when he really needs to he is more willing to work with the MC's to reach a goal than my MC's are with him.

an antagonist doesn't need to be evil, just have a single interest that conflicts with the protagonist.

But if you want to write a really good evil antagonist. evil overlord's list

Conant said:

Out of the three villains I have used, only two are intended to be complex characters (the third is actually not intended to serve a dramatic purpose as a foil to the main characters or even a catalyst for conflict, he's just a psychopath).

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Why is he even in the story then?

In terms of pyschopaths. They are incredibly complex. In fact, I can make a compelling argument that psychopaths are more sane than normal people.

A psychopath is merely someone who lives with a set of morals that are outside the norm.

You should study a few, there are a bunch of interviews done and you'd be surprised by the answers to their questions--their brains are just hardwired differently.

Actually, if you are writing a psychopath, you really need to do your homework, otherwise, your character will come across as incredibly fake.

Mel...

mscelina said:

It's very easy to clutter up your villain with lots of unnecessary information.

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I agree, but that's also true of protagonists and major characters. Of all the research you can do into character, very little actually finds its way into (well-written) story. It seems to me that most character research is actually building expertise in understanding why a character is a certain way. Does it matter whether a character's favourite colour is blue or yellow? Probably not, but the why often does.

I almost always draw up the protagonist and antagonist side by side.

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I think that's sensible because it brings out contrasts and similarities which help shape tensions. But the better villains can easily stand opposite many different protagonists. In The Silence of the Lambs Clarice Starling is an excellent foil for Hannibal Lecter because her innocent passion contrasts with his cynical perversity -- but Lecter stands up perfectly well without her. Interestingly too, she's perhaps a better foil for him than vice-versa: just about everyone ends up contrasting with Starling -- from the cunning Jack Crawford through to the haughty Ruth Martin.

In a similar vein, the utterly cardboard Darth Vader doesn't need Luke Skywalker to play off. He plays just fine off Leia, Obi-Wan or any other articulate hero. On the other hand, it's hard to imagine Luke being at all memorable without his history with Darth Vader being intertwined.

Perhaps it's that very agility that makes villains robust and memorable.

Vader and Lecter both fit the Campbell framework (though it's a pretty general framework). Perhaps the important things here are to: 1) make the plot fit the villain -- don't make the villain fit the plot; 2) make sure that the villain and the hero have enough contrasts for sparks.

Ruv Draba said:

Your adversary doesn't have to be evil; he just has to get in the way of what the main character wants. But if you want to contrast the heroism of your main character with the villainy of your adversary then there are a few things worth considering. These come from Joseph Campbell's monomyth theory, partly via James N. Frey's writing book: The Key. Your adversary should:

• be virile, competent in his field;
• be an outsider;
• have a wounded past;
• not be born to destiny (but may pretend or seem to be born of destiny);
• want something that puts him into conflict with your main character;
• be selfish, vengeful and cruel;
• be afraid (often secretly afraid)

The 'evil' is optional. It's sufficient if the adversary is less sympathetic than the protagonist. But audiences love to hate a villain, so let's look at evil in detail.

I consider evil to be 'badness that is also taboo'.

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There's another, mythologically more intricate side to this as seen in:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0195144139/?tag=absolutewritedm-20

http://www.amazon.com/review/R4EVT1XUCEKN8

Anyway...the deal there is that taboo-violation (eg. slaying guests) is a dynamic thing. The bad guys (dragons, suitors, cosmic monsters, rulers of the underworld etc.) may commit the first violation, but the hero gets to strike back in a more twisted way (eg as the guest of the underworld ruler's nubile daughter, the hero tricks the underworld ruler into inviting him in and then kills the underworld ruler with the underworld ruler's own secret weapon). I think this is sort of a plot theme and variations thing as in:

Villian: violate taboo A to secure object B
Hero: Violate taboos A and X using B to get M and Z

The hero wins via plot complexity and a few "poetic" moments of vastly ancient syntactical symmetry. The villain loses via triggering the plot complexity by violating just one taboo to achieve just one end. Obviously he is not thinking ahead or has not read How to Kill a Dragon.

I like the villain winning, as they often do in real life. It just makes too many stories predictable when I know that in the end the good guys will come out ahead. For example one of my favorite movies is the "Usual Suspects" where the bad guy does win, or "Fallen" is another one.

Higgins said:

Anyway...the deal there is that taboo-violation (eg. slaying guests) is a dynamic thing. The bad guys (dragons, suitors, cosmic monsters, rulers of the underworld etc.) may commit the first violation, but the hero gets to strike back in a more twisted way (eg as the guest of the underworld ruler's nubile daughter, the hero tricks the underworld ruler into inviting him in and then kills the underworld ruler with the underworld ruler's own secret weapon). I think this is sort of a plot theme and variations thing as in:

Villian: violate taboo A to secure object B
Hero: Violate taboos A and X using B to get M and Z

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This is especially common in US hero stories where the hero's preferred response is to use overwhelming force, reckless endangerment and multiple excessive crueltues in retaliation for one transgression. As long as the hero displays daring and at least pays lip-service to the taboos, no taboos are broken in spirit even if they're broken in fact. ("No WASP taboos were harmed in the making of this film" is a disclaimer I'd love to see Hollywood put into their credits.) In Celtic, Norse, native American and many Asiatic myths the hero is often at least clever in his hypocrisies -- it's not enough to be daring and spectacular; the hero usually needs to be witty too.

But it highlights a point evident in Campbell and also in Frey's gloss -- the villain is much like the hero, just a bit off. But I think that this ties into MsCelina's comments too, although she's coming at it from broad dramatic considerations rather than tick-the-box character features.

Ruv Draba said:

This is especially common in US hero stories where the hero's preferred response is to use overwhelming force, reckless endangerment and multiple excessive crueltues in retaliation for one transgression. As long as the hero displays daring and at least pays lip-service to the taboos, no taboos are broken in spirit even if they're broken in fact. ("No WASP taboos were harmed in the making of this film" is a disclaimer I'd love to see Hollywood put into their credits.) In Celtic, Norse, native American and many Asiatic myths the hero is often at least clever in his hypocrisies -- it's not enough to be daring and spectacular; the hero usually needs to be witty too.

But it highlights a point evident in Campbell and also in Frey's gloss -- the villain is much like the hero, just a bit off. But I think that this ties into MsCelina's comments too, although she's coming at it from broad dramatic considerations rather than tick-the-box character features.

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Hey! How dare you! our heroes...don't... .... aww CRAP!

Actually, I can think of a perfect example of this from my own works. My character Ma'Hanadel is commanding an army and chasing down a bunch of viking-ish raiders that have taken about twenty girls from his town. As he passes other towns he is building his army. But any way whenever he captures any of their warriors he normaly brutalizes and kills them. After his first battle he has all of the prisoners strapped to a big log and the log pushed into a river. With their hands in bags. Whenever one of his men or advisors points out that what he is doing is evil/violation of war laws/barbaric, he cuts them off with a speach about how the raiders were barbaric to their women, children and friends yadayada.

Jesus no wonder I have a lack of villains. With friends like these...

lol, only half my heroes are like that though. The others are actually good guys. I have parts where my all good heroes fight my partially good heroes. Who is the bad guy there? they are both heroes right?

right?

Nivarion said:

lol, only half my heroes are like that though. The others are actually good guys. I have parts where my all good heroes fight my partially good heroes. Who is the bad guy there? they are both heroes right?

right?

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I believe that heroes are the extraordinary characters we admire; villains are the extraordinary characters we entirely condemn; antiheroes are the characters we condemn but envy. I suspect that this is much more about their relative sympathies in story viewpoint than whether their moralities conform to our own.

The Dexter TV series is very instructive. A sociopath, Dexter murders murderers who've escaped the law. He doesn't do this for the reasons that antihero The Punisher say, does -- to somehow make it a better world. He does it because he needs to kill and these are the targets his police foster-father trained him to kill. To keep Dexter sympathetic:

• the characters he kills are always much less sympathetic than he is;
• he constantly criticises himself in voice-over for killing;
• his relationships are always in a mess -- he suffers in ways he doesn't deserve;
• the story emphasises his childhood psychological trauma;
• he scorns/disdains the company of other sociopaths, no matter how similar;
• we never see him being sexually aroused by his kills;
• we never see him subjecting his victims to prolonged torture;
• he never loses his temper unsympathetically;
• despite his dissociation, he is somehow able to be empathic to his girlfriend, sister, workmates and kind to children -- this is glossed in voice-over as him 'faking it', although the veneer never cracks;
• Dexter never causes collateral injury, even to save himself;
• we never see the damage that Dexter does to the families, friends and loved-ones of his victims.

Essentially, Dexter is two characters: a mild-mannered well-intended, law-abiding empathic victim with whom we have no problems sympathising; and a cruel killer whose full dimensions never get portrayed because the writers bend over double to keep that from happening. Only one of these (the 'Clark Kent' persona) is a credible character; the other is simply a carefully-constructed 'kill without consequences' fantasy for audience titillation; a prolonged alter-ego dream sequence.

At core what keeps Dexter an antihero rather than a villain is just that -- he (and hence the audience) avoids the full consequences of his actions. The moment we had to face the full moral, social and psychological truth of his murderous psychopathy the fantasy would burst, the audience would cease to envy him and have to just condemn him.

In a Campbellian sense, Dexter's writers have shaved sashimi-thin the already fine line between villain and hero. But as I hope you can see from the above, most of that is achieved through judicious plot construction and careful management of viewpoint.

Ruv Draba said:

This is especially common in US hero stories where the hero's preferred response is to use overwhelming force, reckless endangerment and multiple excessive crueltues in retaliation for one transgression. As long as the hero displays daring and at least pays lip-service to the taboos, no taboos are broken in spirit even if they're broken in fact. ("No WASP taboos were harmed in the making of this film" is a disclaimer I'd love to see Hollywood put into their credits.) In Celtic, Norse, native American and many Asiatic myths the hero is often at least clever in his hypocrisies -- it's not enough to be daring and spectacular; the hero usually needs to be witty too.

But it highlights a point evident in Campbell and also in Frey's gloss -- the villain is much like the hero, just a bit off. But I think that this ties into MsCelina's comments too, although she's coming at it from broad dramatic considerations rather than tick-the-box character features.

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One common villain point is that the villain is in a position of power greater than that of the hero when the story starts. Even Zeus as a Hero has to start out at a low point...though this reminds me there is a different type of narrative that appears when the Hero is challenged from an other worldly source (as when Zeus saves the Olympians from the Titans, or the Green Knight Challenges the Arthurian Court, or a Saint resists temptation, or Hercules does his Labors etc.)...the challenger can maintain their power and status in some cases, and the Hero simply undergoes a mysterious ordeal. The most recent screen versions of Jane Austin's books seem to be more in the ordeal mode than the clever trick saves the day mode.