A Guide to Writing a Great Villain
So much of the focus of writing a book goes into crafting the main characters, but what about the villain? They are arguably just as important, if not more so – the other half to the main character’s whole.
But writing a truly powerful villain (pun intended) is about more than just creating an evil character.
So let’s dive in! 4 things to make a truly great villain. And at the end, some of my top villains! For the full video, head here.
Who isn’t a sucker for a great villain? If you had to choose your favorite villain of all time, who would it be? Let me know in the comments. But before we dive into that – as I’m sure we could debate for a WHILE – let’s talk about my four steps to a powerful villain.
Decide what type of villain you need in your story
3 types – the truly evil, the heartbreaker, the redeemable (more for a series, but can be done in a standalone) one who tries to do what is right in the end.
Key to deciding this is partially what is needed for your plot, but also how do you want the readers to end up feeling about the villain. There’s so much focus in the writing community on likeable/relatable or anti-hero heroes, you want to think about that for villains as well.
Outline their goal and motivation
Yes, not just for the main character!
Figuring this out ahead of time can help you solidify the GMC for the rest of your characters, iron out plot points, and go a long way towards the chemistry between the villain and the main character.
How is the villain going to change/evolve
Overlooked. A really great villain should have a character arc as well. The plot affects them too, hopefully in a visceral, personal way since they are so evil, passionate (for better or for worse) about their cause. So how are they changing?
This ties in with an awesome aspect of the villain – they don’t have to stay just one type. One of my favorite things is when, in a trilogy, the villain grows and transitions from truly evil, to the heartbreaker, to the redeemable. Or vice versa!
Now in saying that, you don’t have to do that. You can have villain character growth, and have them stay in their villain type. But you have options – so many options! There are different ways to shape your villain to add great depth to your story.
Early Reveal or A Slow Build?
Will the readers find out early on who the bad guy is? Or will it be a slow build to a reveal in the end? It’s good to iron this out, if you can, early on because it helps a lot with other aspects of plotting
If the first, make sure you have a really strong plot and villain character arc. Not that you don’t want that in general anyway, but if we already know who the villain is, that mystery is gone so what else are we, as the readers, trying to figure out, question, wonder about? And how can you continue to keep the villain dynamic and interesting, changing, even though we know who it is. This happens a lot in second books in a series, and it can be tricky, which is part of why book two in a series can be so difficult.
If the second, part of your plot is obviously figuring out who the villain is. So the key to this is to make sure the villain is involved enough that there are hints as to who it is – so the ending is an “ah ha!” moment versus a “who?!” moment. As well as make sure you have at least one or two viable red herrings. You don’t want it to be too obvious of who it could be. The slow build type is the most common, and the details above probably seem like a no-brainer – of course the villain needs to be in the story and I need other suspects. But you’d be surprised how often this is a focus of my edit letters, because it can be a tricky thing to do. You as the author know who the villain is. You’re so close to the story, so it can be hard to see that fine line between hints and obvious, obscure villain and obvious villain.
So then putting these four steps together and keeping them in mind as you write (or revise) your story and your bad guy, you can create a hard-hitting, epic villain.
Now, as promised, I’m going to go through some of my favorite book villains.
I had to think on how to do this without spoiling it for you if you haven’t read these books. So I’m going to list some of the top books with villains I enjoyed, and why in the most general way possible to avoid spoilers.
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin – unique villain, just a unique book overall. If you haven’t read N.K. Jemisin, I highly recommend you dive in.
Fortune’s Pawn (the Paradox series) by Rachel Aaron – great job of questioning not only who the villain is and what is “right” but having characters switch from good to bad and/or vice versa so you never really know where you’re going to end up. She does this really well with her Legend of Eli Monpress Series as well, if you’re more of a fantasy fan.
Written In Red (the Others Series) by Anne Bishop – multiple layers of bad guys.
Angel’s Blood (Guild Hunter Series) by Nalini Singh – Structured villains over a lengthy series. Evolving bad guys, sort of like Supernatural. She does a great job, phenomenal writer especially with a massive cast of characters.
I could keep going, but I want to hear from you! Let me know in the comments who some of your favorite villains are and why.
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Until next week, keep writing.