Villains

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Soccer Mom

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A good villain should actually want something, need something. I hate seeing villains that fall into the Pinky and the Brain mode.

Pinky: What do you want to do tonight, Brain?
Brain: The same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world.

The Best thing JK Rowling ever did for the HP series was go back and give us the evolution of Tom Riddle. Voldemort made more sense.

Just because a character is a "villian" doesn't exempt them from the rule that characters should be whole, well-rounded people and not cardboard stand-ups.
 

AdamH

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What makes a good villain or antagonist?

Someone who believes, at all costs, that what he or she is doing is for the greater good despite all opposition.

For example, Voldemort thinks the wizard world would be better without us silly Muggles. An ethnic cleansing of sorts...but he fully believes that he is right and everyone who opposes his view is dead wrong.
 

swvaughn

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Unexpectedly awful actions.

Motivation's good, too. And I really like a good villain redemption -- a story where you know damned well the villain is bad-bad-bad, but you just can't help hoping he'll succeed and that oh-so-righteous hero will burn.

Villains rule. :D

ETA: I also like villains who must grudgingly cooperate with the antagonist protagonist, despite knowing that in the end they will go down anyway.

Crap! Now I'm inspired...
 
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Claudia Gray

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I don't think the antagonist has to want something for the greater good -- their motivations can be selfish -- but I think that in order to be believable, the antagonist must genuinely feel that his motives are justifiable and no worse than those of the protagonist.

For instance, I think one of the great villains is Zenia in The Robber Bride. Zenia is self-serving and manipulative in the extreme, but she believes that everyone else around her is equally selfish; why shouldn't take advantage of their weaknesses? They'd take advantage of hers, if they were only smart enough to do it. The genius of it is that the characters come to terms with their weaknesses only by facing the dark, twisted reflections of themselves that Zenia sees.

So you can have a selfish, even downright nasty antagonist, if you structure the story to make it clear why that person is that way and deal with it thoughtfully. "Ming the Merciless," on the other hand, just doesn't cut it anymore.
 

Azraelsbane

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Someone who believes, at all costs, that what he or she is doing is for the greater good despite all opposition.

I don't necessarily agree with this. While that does make for a good villain, it doesn't have to be so. I think there is a lot of potential in a villain with a decent backstory involving why he is the way he is. He doesn't necessarily have to believe what he's doing is right, in fact, I love conflicted villains. Not conflicted as in "Will I join the other side?" but conflicted as in, sometimes having second thoughts about just how far they want to go wrong morally.

In my opinion, character development is what makes a good villain. The antagonist is often more interesting than the hero, why not show it?
 

Simon Woodhouse

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Not many people do something because they think it's wrong. History's greatest villains did what they did because they thought it was right.

The worst literary villains are the ones who appear to be 'evil' just for the sake of it, whereas the villain with motivation above and beyond being bad is far more readable.
 

swvaughn

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Blowing an innocent bystander's face off for no damned reason. :D

Er, the villain usually is the antagonist.

Uh, whoops! I meant PROtagonist. Not enough sleep today, I'm afraid. Also, my "antagonists" are usually the bad guys... :D

I'm sorry?

LOL I know, weird to be all freaked out about being inspired. It's just that I've already got *counts on fingers* *runs out of fingers* a hojillion novels to write and now I just thought of another one. :D

But that's a good thing! So thank you for the inspiration. :)
 

jodiodi

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I love writing villains and my favorites are absolutely convinced they're right about what they're doing. Some belive they're right because everyone else is wrong, but my favorite ones don't care what anyone else believes. They are right just because they want to be and anyone in their way be damned.

I also love villains with a good, dark sense of humor. They also shouldn't ever show regret. I often root for the villains over the so-noble-I-want-to-puke heroes.
 

Ageless Stranger

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Well my best villain started out as an Anti Villain, doing good to get his way and then turned psychopath and revealed a history and manipulation/murder to my MC. Since then he's been generally kicking butt, turning mass armies on each other and strangely enough, seems to be slowly showing a hidden movtivation for his actions.

I believe that villains should sometimes have motives that never entirely become revealed, only hinted at. You can explore the depth of the character but sometimes a long and winding back story that portrays a bad ass as a sympathetic, once-upon-a-time-average-joe, takes the fun from his havoc.

As for heros being boring, I've only ever had one side hero who was not an anti- hero and so writing about him was not the yawn fest I dreaded.
 

Birol

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LOL I know, weird to be all freaked out about being inspired. It's just that I've already got *counts on fingers* *runs out of fingers* a hojillion novels to write and now I just thought of another one. :D

But that's a good thing! So thank you for the inspiration. :)

Start notebooks. Lots of notebooks. One general one for ideas you don't know what to do with and a different one for each novel. Lots and lots of notebooks. (No. I'm not speaking from experience or anything.)
 
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swvaughn

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Start notebooks. Lots of notebooks. One general one for ideas you don't know what to do with and a different one for each novel. Lots and lots of notebooks. (No. I'm not speaking from experience or anything.)

Ooooh, fabulous idea! I just got one with Captain Jack Sparrow on the cover. It'd be perfect for this new wayward not-yet-a-plot. :D
 

Soccer Mom

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Or you can be really anal (like me) and carry around a fat notebook with color coded sections (short fiction, WIP, goofy ideas I don't know what to do with, stuff I gotta remember to do, etc...) or not.

I agree that you don't have to know the villians entire backstory, but his/her motives must make sense.
 

Rolling Thunder

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I like villains who get *what's coming to them*. Maybe not in the manner that the reader envisions, at first, but there has to be a price for being the antagonist. People seem to get that, and like it.

The intensity of the villian's comeuppance is relative though. Death is always a good choice but even protagonists die. So, it has to be special in a sense, not always flashy. A villain who is close to the hero, under cover of feigned friendship, is my preferred choice. Everyone has betrayal underneath their skin whether they realize it.

I like to poke the reader a bit, leading them to realize they aren't as pure as they like to think they are. :)
 

aruna

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The villain of my now submitted novel is Jim Jones of Jonestown fame. This is the man responsible for the deaths of 900 people, including children.

If you read his story you'll know that he started out as a kind, loving, caring man, a preacher who was one of the very first to allow black people into his churches and who, when he was forbidden to do so by his higher-ups, chose to give up his job and start his own church. And who fought for the rights of blacks, old people, disabled, and had a dream of a better world where everyone was loved and respected.

Even at the end, he was convinced that his "mass revolutionary suicide" would open the eyes of the world to the fact that he was a saviour.

I think making him a good villain involves showing him from all sides - developing some insight into his psyche so the reader can see how the change came about. There was method to his madness, and I wanted to show him as three-dimensional, not just as a paper-cut-out evil monster.
 
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Danger Jane

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I don't necessarily go for the super-sympathetic villains...I also like it when they do something crazy.

I like writing villainous protags. Seems like there's more freedom with them somehow.

Every story needs a different kind of villain. Sometimes a sympathetic one is best. Sometimes a crazy inexplicable one is best. Sometimes one in the middle. Usually.
 

Chasing the Horizon

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I like a villain I can love to hate. Someone so evil that I get excited imagining all the horrible ways the protags might kill them in the end. Then the author had better deliver a long, painful death, or I'm really annoyed. Sympathetic villains just aren't nearly as fun to watch die.

Plus, I both write and enjoy reading anti-heroes, so the villain has to be really bad in order to actually be the villain at all. Else the hero would be the villain.
 

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For me, the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin of Sherwood was an almost perfect villain - constantly thwarted by Robin at every turn, of course, but there was a moment near the end of the series where he had been captured by some wierd wolf cult, and they wanted him to join them or die. The Sheriff said something like "Join you? Don't be ridiculous!", and we felt like cheering for him - so despite being the villain, there was something admirable about him.
 

seun

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Villians doing what their do for real reasons. Give them character, make them interesting and you're on to a winner.

Although there is something scary about a motiveless villan. Someone just out to cause trouble for a laugh is frightening.
 
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