Does your villain need more evil?

Is your story good enough?

In fact… you’ve probably been exploring and sweating to make your protagonist more real, more dynamic, and the supporting cast just as compelling as you need. But, could it be that what you aren’t getting the most out of isn’t the good guys, it’s the bad ones?

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

Villains can be frustrating folks to write, with so many of them already out there to make your idea seem unoriginal, if the word itself doesn’t sound cliché to you. Or you might think you’ve got a brilliant villain concept, but wonder if you’re making full use of it.

Well, I know I’m not pushing my villains to the limit, and most other writers aren’t either. But then, I’m not sure villains have a limit.

If “story = conflict,” that can make the opposition a whopping half of the tale’s very nature. The hero’s struggle may be at the center, but the villain is the root of it all, often the one who created the crisis in the first place. Neglect the villain and the hero has more and more moments when he’s struggling against empty air.

[bctt tweet=”A story is no stronger than its hero, or its #villain – whichever is weaker. #writing”]

(And let’s face it, a good villain stays with the reader. Heroes need to not be “boring,” but they’ve usually got a relatable balance of issues they’re sorting out over time. But the villain’s liable to make a choice and then “watch the world burn.”)

—Or your writing could be going for a different kind of conflict than Heath Ledger’s Joker. Still, every moment of human conflict can learn a few things from what we call villains. A protagonist still needs major obstacles, whether they’re “bad” people or well-meaning ones; and whatever’s making those people problems ought to be key parts of the story.

[bctt tweet=”All in all, maximizing a #villain is just: write him more like a human being.”]

(Except for tone, most of the time. We’ll get to that.)

How human? Hold onto your keyboard, it’s going to be a bumpy night:

Coming to the Dark Side

None of us want to write someone who’s “just a villain.”

—Okay, some writers do, and it can be downright liberating. But if you do, keep reading: a bit of the same balance can still strengthen them.

But: have you really given your villain enough of a reason for what he does? Could you push him harder? One good measure is K.M. Weiland’s challenge that “Maybe your bad guy is right.” Myself, I think it all comes down to, based on what the reader learns,

[bctt tweet=”“How much would a person like this just NEED to get in the way?” #Villains”]

Of course, “in the way” might mean anything from blowing up the world to a by-the-books teacher who won’t give a student an inch of slack. But whatever they’re creating that conflict about, what these people need is to make that motivation and its ties to the conflict utterly clear. Remember that marvelous Terminator line:

It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.

If you can give a human antagonist some of that momentum, for human reasons, you magnify everything about the villain. Which magnifies the whole story.

What are those human reasons? You’re probably got your idea there already, so I’ll settle for mentioning my Sith/ Seven Deadly Sins breakdown and my Thunderbolt Ross question as a starting point (is it what he wants to take from the hero, or what he’s afraid the hero will take?).

So what reveals those reasons? It’s usually how well the backstory, the evolving plot, or at least the story’s situation shows this person HAS to do what he’s doing. Possibly the best way is to plot in the way he might be fulfilling his goals without making trouble (bonus points if it’s as a friend of the hero, of course)… and the perfect chance to make that work… and it goes utterly wrong. You also want to choose a balance between the sense of a harsh world that makes that “fall” seem like something that could happen to anyone, and the intensity in this character that shows he’s better than most would be at embracing his fall—if it wasn’t a leap.

Keep asking that question: would this person NEED to get in the way? (The words you’re looking for are “Hell yes!!”)

Darker and Deeper

Once you put the villain on his path… is that enough?

Part of it is “narrowing” that path, finding ways to show that this villain isn’t out to do whatever “bad things” are available, he wants what he wants—meaning, what chances to do damage can he pass up because they aren’t in his interest? The more you show what things he’ll pause for, the less cliché he is and the more you’ve reinforced that the rest is where he will not stop.

(At least, he won’t stop for long. Some of the best villain “falls” happen in the middle of the story, with his missed chances to turn back happening at the height of everything else.)

All this means giving the villain chances to let people live, to clash with his lieutenants, whatever it may be—maybe because it doesn’t fit his plan, or sometimes even because he does have his softer side or other motives as well. It also means surprising the hero (or at least some less villain-savvy friends) with twists where the villain passes up one target to go after another, probably a nastier one. (If you were thinking that The Dark Knight seemed to ignore the last section’s tips about justifying the villain, you’re right. We never learned what made the Joker, but instead the whole movie used this method to demonstrate in detail just what he was.)

To really show things off, try letting the villain do good now and then, maybe allying with the hero if there’s something they both need gone. (“He can’t destroy the world, I need to rule it!” is always fun.) And of course the hero should be spotlighting the villain’s nature too, with every scene where he tries to predict, trick, frighten and generally outwit his enemy. (I’ve analyzed a few ways to do that.)

In fact… could the villain change? Star Wars and many other tales turned out to be about redeeming their villain. Or he could give up his evil world-view for a different and even more vicious one. (In its most overused form, “If I can’t have her…”)

Villains may be implacable at the right moments, but they need a sense of precision and even change as well. Because they aren’t forces of nature, each is something much more terrifying: a human being who’s actively looking for ways to get you.

Note that word, “actively.” That’s the next question for maximizing a villain: are the hero—or you—taking them for granted?

No Evil Autopilots

It’s a simple question: How often does your villain act on the story? That is, what proportion of your scenes are about his attacks, his control, his ability to get and stay “in the way” of your hero?

—Actually, let’s make that a more specific question:

[bctt tweet=”How often does your #villain *change* his plan, or adapt to the hero’s plan? #BattleOfWits”]

It’s a common complaint against even Lord of the Rings: a villain can cast his influence over everything in sight, and drive them all along his sinister scheme. But then… those forces stay driven, pressing closer and closer but always along the same overall plan. Impressive, but it misses the chance to show the villain doing something more.

One of the best tools in a writer’s arsenal is: what readers notice is the story’s changes. Heroes have their character arcs, and you’ve probably given yours those moments when they follow one plan only to find it a red herring or failure, just to show the hero can move on to a better one. Your villain deserves some of the same respect.

After all, a threat that keeps pushing in the same ways might as well be hostile weather; what’s scary (and real-life relevant) about a living enemy is knowing there’s a human mind out there that keeps looking for new ways to get ahead of you, and you always need to keep up. When your hero makes a move, look for ways the villain can counter it or try to come in from a whole new angle. Ask yourself, which is a better epitaph for that doomed first strategy of your hero’s:

“Guess that plan wasn’t good enough.” Or,
“He saw me coming.”

A serious villain forces the hero—and of course us writers—to look harder, hit harder, and never ever let our down our guard. And each separate time either side takes their game up a notch, the story gains another marvelous moment of tightening the tension.

(If you’ve got a less villainous antagonist, your options here are more limited. One rule of thumb is that “evil” is what we call someone with a goal that hurts us deeply, if too much of that motive includes a need to stop reasonable ways to work around him or compromise. We may hate the Scrooge types that don’t give extensions on mortgages, but it’s the ones that are trying to stop us from paying up that move into full villain territory.)

Keeping Score

Does your villain actually win, sometimes? You might ask how much your story develops using either:

Victories, the hero winning part of what he’s after or weakening the villain—“points” for the hero, with the villain on a losing streak that might undermine the story if it goes too long.
Defense, where the villain tries one counterattack or scheme after another and the hero blocks each—looks good for the hero, but the villain gets some credit for his efforts.
Pressure the hero isn’t holding back, but toward a goal of the villain’s that isn’t reached yet—strengthens the villain’s image, but only partway.
Defeats for the hero (or “tragic victories”), where the villain takes or destroys an actual person, place or thing the hero cares about in its own right—the dark moments that might do more than anything else to drive the story.

[bctt tweet=”When does your #hero win, or just stop the #villain? And vice versa? Each changes the tone.”]

Look at your favorite stories, and see how often the major parts of them are marked by a friend of the hero dying, or the hero losing a fair fight and needing a rematch… or failing a test, having an ally hired away, or other less bloody equivalents. There’s a reason these are often the cornerstones of a tale.

Of course, each story has its own balance of these, not only the overall “score” but how much it uses each and in what combination. Lord of the Rings is a classic heroic series of victories and defense, that builds power from a few well-timed defeats (mostly deaths) and the sense that Mordor and the Ring both have an infinite amount of pressure they’ll keep raising until our heroes reach their limit. Its darker descendant A Song of Ice and Fire (or Game of Thrones) is clear that the full defeats will outnumber the victories, partly to remind us it has so few true “heroes” at all.

And, Points for Style

We’ve looked at some of the biggest missed opportunities for villains, in character and plot. But, presentation matters too. How many chances do you have to remind the reader how dangerous the villain is, and also how he’s a specific rather than a cliché?

It might be as simple as a name. Some stories need a villain named Dr. Doom or Randall Flagg, and others really call for a Martin Smith. And that’s the general approach, before you look for particular images and sinister sounds. “Hannibal Lecter” sounds like a brilliant mashup of a ruthless general and a trusted professor, even before you hear what that first name rhymes with.

The first scene matters, when your Vader strides in and seizes the rebel captain’s throat, or your Saruman waits as the wise friend Gandalf comes to for help. Or you can use be moments the villain isn’t even in: Conan Doyle wrote Moriarty a whole page of Holmes himself describing how dangerous he was, and then only one brief but pivotal instant when we actually glimpse him.

Really, every scene of the villain’s ought to be a chance to push him further. We can’t imagine Dr. Lecter missing one moment where he could show off his wit and his sinister stillness. Or take Blue Velvet—its villain isn’t the smartest, but he’s Dennis Hopper at his absolute wildest, with our poor heroes trapped right under his thumb. Some villains radiate evil; others need their “kick the dog” moments as a fast way to hint at how vicious they can be.

Speaking of dogs, it’s all about hitting the right tone. The original One Hundred and One Dalmatians book was full of chapters of the dogs’ life and their struggles on their road, neatly spreading out the scenes with the elegant, sinister Cruella deVil that had more than the dogs wondering if she came by that name literally. The movie made her less like the previous Disney film’s Maleficent (who could have been her role model), and more… you know. –And yet, do you know any other trick to get away with a fast-paced “kids’ movie” about skinning puppies?

(Pause, take deep breaths.)

Whichever way your story’s going, even a hint of the wrong kind of “Disnification” to the villain can drag it down faster than anything. The villain’s providing a huge share of your story’s energy, for either your key moments or almost the whole thing, and he may well be the reason there’s any conflict at all.

But it’s all too easy to set that villain in the foundation of a story and then leave him there. Any time you want more conflict in the story, the answer may be as simple as finding the most dramatic, sinister ways that villain is human.

Quick: right after your villain’s first move, how many scenes does your hero have? Is he sort of trusting that he’ll have a little time to mourn or rest, and letting his guard down?

Now, are you going to let your hero get away with that?

Evil laughter echoes…

On Google+

Everything I know about evil I learned from Thunderbolt Ross

What does a villain want, or what drives character conflict of different kinds? Actually, with so many ways human beings can make trouble, we writers aren’t struggling to come up with a motive as much as choosing the better of many evils. So here’s one basic question I like to ask myself, as a first step to my Sides of the Dark Side questions: Who started it?

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

Yes, we all know one thing that question leads to: how many people bully or attack someone because they think he did something to deserve it first. The trick is, that still has a useful difference from all the other characters who go after people for their own selfish reasons but think it’s the best response to an unfair world–many professional thieves, fanatics with their causes, or for that matter hotheads who make everyone suffer for their tempers.

Which brings us to Thunderbolt Ross.

Thaddeus Ross, in case you don’t remember the comic books and the movies, is the general who’s always led troops in pursuit of the Incredible Hulk, providing a constant supply of tank-smashing action for fans of all ages. He’s also become my favorite example of this point, when I discovered the character’s motives had changed a bit over sixty years:

Recently (such as, in the Avengers-era movies), Ross has been chasing the Hulk in hopes of dissecting him and creating his own kind of Army-green troops. But before that his goal was different: simply that the Hulk looked like a dangerous monster that needed to be destroyed. So that’s the question for writers to ask:

How much does a character see people as worth hurting to get what he wants, and how much is it that he thinks they have or might hurt him?

The one is the simpler motive, and can be as straightforward as “gimme your wallet” or expanded to a character whose goals ought to be harmless but can’t realize he’s putting others at risk. (Ross never seems to understand that Hulk-like creatures really can’t be controlled… but then, Bruce Banner took a few risks himself that led to creating the Hulk.) Or he might regret what he “has to do” and tragically do it anyway.

Those might be the keys to creating tension with these characters:

How aware is he of the damage he’s liable to do?
How much is at stake, both the trouble he’s causing and how close the good he’s trying to do (if there’s any) might come to balancing it? (A straight competition or rivalry might give both sides an equal right to win, though one side might be more deserving or just less nasty.)
For irony’s sake, how connected is the victim to the hero, and to the villain?

(From the last point: the simplest plot is someone who has to protect himself, while it’s more of a stretch to have to protect others, even more so if they’re close to the person at fault. The best mad scientists endanger their own sweethearts, or need to be saved from themselves.)

The other type allows for its own kinds of ironic unfairness: someone accused of what they didn’t do, or who has actual sins but is being chased well out of proportion for them–or even deserves his punishment but he’s been trying to atone on his own, or someone else needs his help first. It might be a combination of these, like the man who has to cover up a murder he didn’t commit for fear it would reveal the lesser crimes he has been part of. Or it might involve shadings of how unfairly other people see him: seeming dangerous, being any kind of unpopular misfit or shaking up society, or just being successful enough to stir up envy. (Strict jealousy, overprotectiveness, is even more obviously part of this than envy.)

Like those “I have to hurt them” enemies, the “You’re hurting us” foes can lead to plots of almost balancing the harm they’ll cause with the good they’re trying to do (in this case, the harm it might prevent or punish). And both have their own ways of escalating beyond the scale they started at: someone who’s willing to do damage can get more determined the further he goes, to be sure it wasn’t all a waste, while of course everything a “troublemaker” does except take his punishment only adds to the trouble he’s in.

So that may be the question, when you’re looking for a villain or other shades of antagonism: How much has the hero or victim done, or seems to be doing, to start the problem? As opposed to, how much could the villain want something himself?

Does he want to break the Hulk’s power, or take it?

On Google+

Can A Villain Want To Be Evil? Case study: LaCroix

Maybe the first rule we hear about writing villains is “No villain believes he’s a villain.” That is, in a story or in real life, even the people who do the most evil believe either that they’re doing right or that “good and evil” simply don’t matter. I’ve always agreed with that, but (this being the Unified Theory and all) I can’t help trying to test it a bit. Say, with one of the most “deliberately evil” villains I know: Forever Knight’s master vampire LaCroix.

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

Forever Knight was a vampire TV series that came out a bit (sorry) before the current crazes, and it focused squarely on its reluctant vampire’s reluctance and guilts that he faced while working as a police detective. Meanwhile the vampire that created Nick Knight, Lucien LaCroix, was…

Well, LaCroix went beyond killing people; he reveled in the idea of killing, and loved to point out human failings and lecture Nick that treating people as prey was the great pleasure of immortality. He’d attack the very notion of love, mercy, justice, anything that was part of Nick’s trying to “repay society for his sins.” –Picture all the melodramatic lines that bad villains use to announce that nobody wrote them a motivation, then strip them down so they actually sound believable, and give them to a completely committed actor. That’s Nigel Bennett as LaCroix.

(Or just consider: this is a vampire who named himself “the cross,” after all. [In fact, the full name is “Light of the Cross,” as Mona’s comment below points out.] And yes, Forever Knight vampires do have a problem with crosses, and no, the “cross” half of it wasn’t from our General Lucius’s birth name. Nasty.)

So does it mean anything that this villain actually likes evil for its own sake, that he doesn’t just “want your __” as the Theory’s analysis of villains covers?

One explanation for LaCroix is that he “doth protest too much” about having no softness in himself, in that he’s been actively crushing it out of his soul over the centuries until it’s become a reflex. After all, a vampire isn’t like a terrorist who believes God needs murders or a serial killer who simply wants to kill. A vampire, unless he makes serious sacrifices like Nick did, needs to kill humans just to stay alive, not to mention playing cat and mouse with them to keep his secret and then watching any humans he may still connect with age away and die. The core of existing as a vampire is dealing with the killing and isolation… and likely LaCroix has been working very hard to keep any regrets in line for a very long time.

That’s a powerful lesson for us writers. Yes, we love to justify villains and less extreme kinds of conflict by crafting situations where someone really would start doing the Troublesome Things the plot needs—especially if we can establish his character to show that he still had a choice to refuse the darkness, and he’s just not someone who would. But it makes him seem even more determined and also more believable (and tragic) if we show that he came to that place through a journey, through making that choice more than once, and how those choices and their effects changed him over time.

Or of course, to start pushing a hero down that same path…

And there’s another point about LaCroix: how exactly he matches his hero’s struggle. We all know the villain has to threaten something the hero cares about, but consider how much we can zero in on that exact point.

Because LaCroix isn’t trying to control a city or running around killing—or rather, the show leaves it as a given that Nick could never stop his feedings if he dared try. And LaCroix’s real goal isn’t exactly to be evil: it’s to keep human weakness from spoiling his eternity, and especially for his favorite creation, Nick, to give up trying to become human. As a motive, it’s not so different from the classic Dracula trying to seduce or carry off a woman into vampirism, or from any tale with a controlling father who refuses to let his son go.

“Every parent wants something in return. Love? loyalty? nothing is free… What did your father promise you? did he promise to take care of you? Did he keep his promise?”

–LaCroix to a crowd (and Nick), “Father’s Day”

In fact, most often LaCroix isn’t sabotaging the pieces of Nick’s human life. Instead he challenges him purely on that moral level, by pointing out all the flaws in human beings and in Nick’s struggle to join them, because he seems to believe our hero needs no more than that to bring him around sooner or later. And by refining just what the villain strikes at, the show prevents “so the hero fights the vampire” from distracting us from the focus it really wants, how each human crime gives Nick another challenge to his determination to be mortal.

Yes, you could argue that LaCroix isn’t actually used as a villain or other true opposition, more a symbol of the temptations the hero faces from whatever the story is. But a story can do great things with a tempter like this if it can capture that the hero really might be drawn into the dark each time, probably by letting him sometimes give in and having to face the consequences. (And okay, LaCroix does mix in episodes where he acts directly to interfere with Nick; a little uncertainty adds tension to those staredowns.) The real point is keeping LaCroix as representing the “shadow self” to Nick, that whether or not he’s the big tangible threat he shows how our hero might become the threat himself.

It’s worth trying, for any writer. Know just what your hero is struggling with, and define some villain or foil to challenge that as specifically as you can. And/ or, find the path that brings the villain (or the hero, or both) right to being willing to do that… even if it’s by way of how times he’s refused to turn back.

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Conflict – or How Many Sides to the Dark Side?

Did The Phantom Menace have it right?

—Yeah, a cheap shot, nodding some less-than-stellar Star Wars. But if the question is what makes a character evil—or rather, what makes him move against other characters, whether it’s “villainy” or driving someone to turn on his friends or even pressure the hero—I always thought the movie’s (one) famous line had a lot to say.

(The Unified Writing Field Theory — searchings and findings on what makes stories work)

Still, this is the Unified Writing Field Theory, where we try to sort out a lot of different ideas to see what our story options are, and where we can take them. So let’s start with the basic definition of conflict:

someone hurts someone.

Call it his hand swinging into our hero’s face, or into his pocket, or him speaking out against the hero’s plans, or anything that interferes with the hero or other sympathetic folk. And the obvious motive is just

he wants his __

but that’s only one type, and worse, “he really really wants it” doesn’t give us a lot of options to build on it in a story. So let’s mix in some other dimensions of evil: the Seven Deadly Sins, the famous Jedi warning, and the Unified Theory’s recent breakdown of plot elements.

The Deadlies include Greed, Lust and Gluttony, all more examples of simply Wanting things. But they also add Sloth (not much of a plot event, but slacker or stressed characters could be goofing off about something important), and Pride and Envy. (I’ll get to the seventh in a moment.) Could we see these as amplifying how much a character wants things?

Envy twists any sense of what he doesn’t have by fixating on what someone else does have, so he tries to drag his “rival” down more than trying to take things for himself. Envy’s nasty stuff if it goes deep, maybe the hardest evil of all to spot because it’s less direct. Think Iago scheming behind Othello’s back.
Pride, though, is about what he does have or thinks he does. And it can create two conflicts: refusing to consider other people’s needs and warnings (like that hero saying he needs to guard the gates), and being protective of things he hates to lose—like anyone from a first son to the angel Lucifer might resent someone new getting attention. They’re protective… as in afraid.

And here we get to Fear (which isn’t in the Deadly Sins) but also to the last of those Seven, Wrath, because of Yoda’s line:

“Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

I think the coolest thing about this line is that it lists its evils *in sequence*, showing that we need some thing to be worried for before we can get fighting mad to keep it. (Like Mom used to say, if you get angry at an insult, it also shows you think it’s a little bit true. Come to think of it, even the future Darth Vader had to start by losing his mother…) Then on the less specific end, hate is simply anger moving to a long-term burn, maybe hating the people who “wronged” him but maybe also being more ready to resent the whole world more the more he loses.

So, a budding antagonist could have desires on one hand, and on the other have things he fears and rages to hang on to, maybe stiffened by past losses’ grudges, or pride, or envies… You could have a whole spiral of how the hero’s noble goal is threatening what he values, and his response makes the hero push harder, until…

–Not a bad plotline, especially once we add how someone could be protecting an intangible thing like “a world where no peasant belongs in college,” or how “fear” might mean he attacks an innocent hero because of what the hero might do. (How many wars start because the nation next door seems too strong and angry not to hit first? Or consider the jealous boyfriend—real “jealousy” is very different from envy, less sneaky but more immediate.)

Or his “fear” could be of doing what he himself used to do. Guilt is a marvelous way to define a character as coming from a whole different viewpoint from what he has now; it really lets a story point out two sides of a tangled problem.

Yes, what he wants and what he won’t lose or do, good. Now let’s check that against this blog’s recent breakdown of plot elements: changing alternative choices that have Reward, Cost, and Difficulty.

Of course Reward and avoiding Cost are what we’ve been talking about, but there’s another side to this: what if what makes the difference is the cost to his victims, that instead of something driving him past restraints he just doesn’t realize he’s hurting people, or doesn’t care? Here we have everyone from sociopaths, to mad scientists who think their creations will help people, to the daily tragedy of seducers that don’t notice whose hearts they break.

And then there’s Difficulty. Plenty of storylines have hinged on people who have all the same goals and fears as the hero, and that becomes the whole problem: they still block him because they doubt he’s got the right plan or just the skills to pull it off.

So… desire (or envy), and fear (even paranoia, or maybe guilt) or anger multiplied by pride or old hate, and maybe ignorance or apathy or just a doubt about strategy.

That’s a lot of problems. And the more a tale explores these conflicts, the clearer it is how much they challenge our heroes—both with how many committed enemies can come out of the woodwork, and how hard it is for a struggling hero to keep his own soul clean.

Sounds like a story to me…

(For more on shades of villainy: Case Study: LaCroix and Everything I know about evil I learned from Thunderbolt Ross.)