My bad guy's POV?

hmmmm, to be honest, I think youre the best judge of this. As an outsider who only knows a paragraphs worth of your story, Id feel wrong to tell you what to do.

however, as a general preference, the best villains are the non-evil ones. poeple are human, and rarely think "how can I be EEEEEEVIIILLLLL today!" they think theyre right, and everyone else is evil.

keep that in mind

and also, having the villain come as a shock could be interesting too, as is seeing the world from their perspective. try to balance these things together

im glad i helped, happy writing )))

The option that comes to my mind first is maybe you should try both POVs and see which one works best in the flow of the overall story? Obviously it would be more work but I think it could help give you a better idea of whether or not showing more of your hand than you might want to is worth it.

Write the scene from his POV but keep his thoughts away from whatever subject you don't want to reveal. If you do it well enough, the reader shouldn't feel cheated.

Guess I'm alone in this so far, but I'd be worried about feeling cheated. If you can write it and naturally avoid the information that would reveal that the POV character is the villain, go for it. But don't leave giant gaps in the POV's characters thoughts, or have him refer to things with euphemisms or something, because saying it straight will give him away. I've read way too many pieces where it's obvious that the author is withholding information just for the sake of being all "nah nah nah I know something you don't" and not writing the way the POV character would actually think about/experience the information.

So, just, be careful. It certainly doesn't hurt to try writing it in the villain's POV, though, and offering it up to critiquers to hear their opinions.

In China Mieville's The Scar. The author did this and it worked really well. He didn't reveal anything that it's the main villain, but gave hints who it was. What he did that made it interesting though, "what the hell is planning to do?"

I think you'd be able to do it. You could not refer to him by name while referring to other main characters by name to make a distinction. However, like smellycat said, give him a reason for doing what's he's doing. You could try referring to him as a name that the audience and/or no other characters know him by. Just try not to mix the two names up before "The Big Reveal".

I did something like this in my first WIP. I didn't want to reveal who my antagonist was until the last chapter, but felt his POV could really add depth. So I never addressed him by name or described his appearance, but showed you what he did/thought of my MC. I say go for it!

And there are characters (and people irl) who like being bad, enjoy being bad, and love fooling others into thinking they're really not so bad.

(Am imagining Ted Bundy atm.)

I wrote a bad person who thought he was just helping everyone out, but weird narcissist-he, he was only in it for himself.

The important thing is to write a well-rounded 'bad person,' who has a personality as shiny-real as any of the 'good persons.'