How do you describe your main villain?

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Kazeno

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Hello,

So I got a great villain. Really scary when you read what he does in the present. He's not a zombie or something however, so there is a story about what happened to him in the past and he became such a creepy person.

What worries me is that he won't seem that evil and scary if I show he was once the victim. The audience feels empathy for him that way, so he's not that bad anymore. What I want to show is that he had it in him anyway, and that wouldn't happen to every victim getting abused so much.

What would you guys suggest?
 

Jess Haines

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Backstory does not a villain make. Also, ensure it isn't just gratuitous, an "explanation" so your readers will "get him." If you include it, it shouldn't be shoehorned in, but should fit naturally with the narrative.

That said, the villain's actions in the course of the story should be what makes him scary. For example, Hannibal Lecter is perhaps one of the most terrifying characters in the horror genre, not just because of his cannibalistic ways, but because of his intellect and deliberation. A real monster.

In Hannibal Rising, you find out that he was a victim of extreme childhood trauma and abuse. While it certainly did not justify the horrific things he did later in life, because of what happened to him and his sister in that cabin, in a way you could empathize with what brought him to that point and led him to act the way he did.

It's a hard movie to watch, not only because of the awful things that Hannibal does, but because of what is done to him. If you haven't seen it, you might consider watching it to study to see how building up an evil character's backstory could be done.

I'll mull and see if I can think up any other examples that might help.
 

Rhoda Nightingale

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Hm. Tricky. Most of my "villains" are monsters, as opposed to humans who do bad things, so I'm not as familiar with that aspect of things.

Do you want the audience to actually empathize with your villain, or do you just want to give him some motivation? Remember, even the antagonist sees himself as the hero of his own story. It's rare for a villain to see himself as "evil"--as far as he's concerned, he's doing the right thing.

Read some Stephen King--anything, really, but the ones with small towns loaded with tons of characters might help you. There are lots of POVs in books like Salem's Lot and Needful Things, many of which focus in on loathsome, horrible people who nonetheless have some kind of marginally understandable motivation behind the horrible things they do.

I'd suggest something like American Psycho as well, but he's actually fairly self-aware--he knows he's a sick, twisted, nasty piece of work, and doesn't ask the audience to excuse his actions. So that's probably not what you're looking for.
 

quicklime

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Hello,

So I got a great villain. Really scary when you read what he does in the present. He's not a zombie or something however, so there is a story about what happened to him in the past and he became such a creepy person.

What worries me is that he won't seem that evil and scary if I show he was once the victim. The audience feels empathy for him that way, so he's not that bad anymore. What I want to show is that he had it in him anyway, and that wouldn't happen to every victim getting abused so much.

What would you guys suggest?


like the girl in misery, or the Hannibal Lechter, or in Red Dragon for that matter, or the male antagonist in Rose Madder or in The Dead Zone?

seems they all did ok.

a bit of empathy is a good thing; I don't need to root for the guy who eats babies, but if I have some idea WHY he does, or HOW he could get to a spot like that, he's a hell of a lot scaried than if all I get is "er, he does this...mostly to make him more scarier."
 

FOTSGreg

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Sometimes it's best to NOT describe your villain (or your protagonist for that matter) as the reader fills in the details in their imaginations anyway.

In addition, description tends to be a dead stop in the story unless it's done really well. The classic version is the "mirror" scene in romance and erotica. While it might work in some case in those genres in horror and sf it just tends to stop the story dead in its tracks.

You can describe the character in bits and pieces scattered throughout a story and not have it stop the story during the description. For example, if there's a scene where it's windy, you might drop in a character trait or action that also adds a little detail about the character such as "she passed a hand through her long black hair" or "she shielded her pale blue eyes against the dust blowing in the wind", etc.

Whenever describing a character of any sort it's generally best to do it with an active character point, having the character doing something that allows you to inobtrusively drop in the descriptive point without stopping the story itself.

In addition, characters are defined more skillfully in what they do, how they think, what their opinions are - ie "active" things that the reader can identify with such as "He locked eyes with the black gaze of Sinister and held his attention fully" or "He let his muscle memory take over swinging his body to the left and chopping at Sinister's neck with the edge of his right hand".
 
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