Villain's POV, more questions

[kimb68]

UPDATE: I've got a first draft of this chapter done, but I'm a little shy of posting it to the whole forum, especially since it's a middle chapter. I'd love to get some feedback on it from this group though, in light of the comments you all posted. If you're interested, please PM me. It's about 2k words.

Thanks to everyone who participated on my original thread (http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=95054) about writing from the villain's POV.

I'm struggling with this chapter a little -- partly because I'm still nailing down the villain's character, attitude, etc -- but also because I want to make sure I don't write one of those villain chapters that readers just skip over.

If you've ever read any of J.R.Ward's Black Dagger books, you'll know what I'm talking about. I'm reading a book like that now, where the villain is plotting against the good guys but whatever he's planning is pretty obscure, and a lot of the time he's either killing some flunky or innocent tertiary character, or else having demeaning sex with his girlfriend. In other words, the villain scenes aren't really creating tension in the book or advancing the plot, apart from taking me away from the main characters for a few pages.

I'm trying to nail down what I can do with the villain's POV that won't bore or turn off readers. Here's what I've got so far:
1. Flesh him out into a three-dimensional person.
2. Explain his motivations
3. Set up suspense -- e.g., a trap that the main characters are about to walk into
4. Reveal knowledge to the reader that is important to the plot -- e.g., rebellion among his underlings, the fatal flaw that will lead to his downfall

Any others?

[Karen Duvall]

I think the important thing to remember is that the villain is the hero of his own story. Most of the time, the villain doesn't believe what he's doing is wrong. He has his reasons, and to him they're justified. The villain and hero should be evenly matched, so Mr. Villain has some redeeming qualities, too. Remember that awful serial killer in Silence of the Lambs (not Hannibal, the other guy)? He loved his poodle. That's what made him human. So be sure Mr. Villain is authentic in that he has emotions just like the next guy and it's his vulnerability that makes him real.

[dempsey]

I'm reading a book like that now, where the villain is plotting against the good guys but whatever he's planning is pretty obscure, and a lot of the time he's either killing some flunky or innocent tertiary character, or else having demeaning sex with his girlfriend. In other words, the villain scenes aren't really creating tension in the book or advancing the plot, apart from taking me away from the main characters for a few pages.

http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html

I link that in complete seriousness. Avoid everything you possibly can on that list (a few are items you've already mentioned).

I'm trying to nail down what I can do with the villain's POV that won't bore or turn off readers. Here's what I've got so far:
1. Flesh him out into a three-dimensional person.
2. Explain his motivations
3. Set up suspense -- e.g., a trap that the main characters are about to walk into
4. Reveal knowledge to the reader that is important to the plot -- e.g., rebellion among his underlings, the fatal flaw that will lead to his downfall

Any others?

I like the fact that you have 1 and 2 on there. I also love villains.

I think the main thing you have to fight with is making your villain understandable. Not necessarily sympathetic ("Oh, he had a rough childhood, he has daddy issues, etc") but a villain that, in the end, you want to see more of.

The last thing you want, the thing you want to avoid most, is your audience being smarter than your villain. Because if they've sorted out how to get around him, then they may just be frustrated when your hero falls into his trap.

But that could be me.

Make him smart, and make his motives reasonable. Villains are human, too :)

[Sonneillon]

I think the important thing to remember is that the villain is the hero of his own story. Most of the time, the villain doesn't believe what he's doing is wrong. He has his reasons, and to him they're justified. The villain and hero should be evenly matched, so Mr. Villain has some redeeming qualities, too. Remember that awful serial killer in Silence of the Lambs (not Hannibal, the other guy)? He loved his poodle. That's what made him human. So be sure Mr. Villain is authentic in that he has emotions just like the next guy and it's his vulnerability that makes him real.

IMHO, villains who don't believe they're doing wrong are frightening, especially if they're fanatics, but smart villains who DO believe they're doing wrong and love it are scarier. Anyone can be misguided, but true monsters aren't come across often.

I often hear things such as "evil may triumph but it will never find peace" and "evil can never rest" and "people are only evil because they're unhappy" and so on. I think this is naive, inaccurate, and bordering on insulting, because I believe there is a place for evil in the world - it defines goodness, reinforces the value of life and happiness, and besides that, it gives meaning to heroes. I have quite a few characters who are evil and quite joyful and happy that way.

So as you're considering your villain's motivations, you may want to ask yourself WHY he does 'evil', and why it's 'evil' in the first place. A Dark Lord bent on conquering the world may slaughter millions to gain power, but once an area is under his control, he may lower taxes, improve education, sanitation, and the justice system, lessen crime, improve trade conditions by breaking down tariff barriers and building better roads to unite the country, and create millions of new jobs which will revitalize the economy. In fifty years, is anyone going to see him as evil anymore?

[Axelle]

As a reader, I want to read about a villain I can respect in his own way. Someone scary, but that I can link with in some way. So my advice would be not to make him incompetent or hysterical (Voldemort comes off as hysterical at times and that's why he kinda annoys me ; he doesn't even listen to good advice when it's handed to him on a platter. Why bother with advisors if he doesn't listen to them ?)

Thing is, I find it hard to give generic advice about villains (or about any characters, really) because each of them is so different. Well, okay, I'll try.

- Make him act in-character, not because the plot needs him to do something but because it's in his character to do it. For instance, if he has an occasion to kill the good guy for good, I'd expect him to seize it unless he's got a really good reason not to.

- Don't tell the readers too much about his plans, just enough so they get curious. Else they might feel like some of the characters are complete morons not to have figured it out. (Of course that's easy to say when you know about the plot and the MC doesn't).

Also, you might want to work a little on the bad guy's underlings, because how he interacts with them, and how they behave in his presence, will go a long way to show the reader what kind of character he is (as opposed to telling, of course).

You probably already know all that, but that's all I can think of. Your four-points list was pretty good to begin with. Perhaps you could show us an excerpt of the villain's introduction scene and we can try and tell you what we think of the villain based on that.

[HeronW]

Hannibal Lector is an awesome villian--forget his rough childhood, knowing his little sister was eaten, killing enemies as a boy, etc, Hannibal is literate, he's intelligent, he has a code, he works as a legitimate historian of the macabre, he has a soft spot for Clarice, he is never vulgar, he acts in a more or less gentlemanly manner--aside from his misanthropic actions, and he's a helluva chef.

[Wolvel]

Definately flesh out the villain, nothing worse than a flat villain. Make your readers either love or hate him.

Some of the best villains of all time are the ones you love to hate.

In my finished in the editing stage book, my villain starts as a major ally of my hero (he is his father), he transforms into the worse kind of enemy over the course of the book, including murder of one of his own race(werewolf) which is a big no no. He even sells out his race to the enemy.

So you need to flesh them out, make them just as important as the MC.

[Jeremy]

I have to concur with making sure to keep in mind that the villain typically thinks he’s the hero of the story. When you do that, I think you’ll naturally begin to put obstacles that hinder him from reaching his/her goals. He/she has to have their unique plot line, with its own climatic arch. If you’re going with their point of view, it still has to be interesting.

If you’re going to have an all powerful evil person, like Sauron from Lord of the Rings, it’s not going to be very interesting reading from his point of view because he’s just in his Dark Tower ordering around minions. If you’re going to write from your villain’s point of view it needs to be interesting and there needs to be character development of some sort and definitely conflict. If the character isn’t capable of having that, like he/she is a Sauron type baddie, I would lean to not consistently going with his/her perspective. If at all.

[Axelle]

If you’re going to write from your villain’s point of view it needs to be interesting and there needs to be character development of some sort and definitely conflict.

Absolutely ! That's also why I got bored with Voldemort. He never seemed to be doing anything but torture some hapless underling or cackle with glee while mentioning some obscure aspects of his plans. I'd have found his scenes a lot better if JKR had had him think he was doing the right thing and taking whatever measures he had to so as to reach his goal. Instead she gave us some hysterical, obsessed, idiotic villain who keeps being outsmarted by basically everyone.

Don't get me wrong. I love the HP books. But towards the end, Voldie really got on my nerves. I want a villain that makes sense, a villain I can understand.

[dempsey]

I have two things to say.

one

Voldie really got on my nerves.

As of book 4 I was really in love with Voldemort. I saw a kid who grew up as a wizard in Grindelwald's time, and an orphan during World War II. So much potential. And then she dropped the ball by making him a "bad seed."

We had the chance of seeing a character who stared too long into the abyss, and it stared back at him. Instead he was the stereotypical eighties villain, who does evil "Because He Can." This was the major failing of the sixth book. It took a potentially rich villain and ruined it. (Actually, there's a lot of things about Voldemort that don't add up, but I won't go into it. Suffice to say, he failed as a villain.)

All this relates back to: your villain is a person.


two

I'm going to argue against one point made in this thread, that your villain thinks he's doing good.

Not necessarily. I like villains who are evil and know it. I like bad guys who are unapologetically bad. (One reason I liked Snape early is because he was a jerk and stuck to his guns on being a jerk, and I enjoyed that.)

Sometimes people can become so disenchanted with their world, with other people, with the lack of morality they see, and say "Sod it all, what's the point?" When confronted by the hero with tear-drenched questions of why, he can point to the world at large and say "I'm no more a monster than they are. I'm just more thorough about it."

Villains are awesome when they're foils and mirrors for humanity.

IMHO.

[dawinsor]

I like what Dempsey has to say about the pleasures of a villain being thoroughly villainous, but there's an argument on the other side too, which is that the conflict of good vs evil is easier than the conflict of good vs good. I'm not saying all books have to be written one way, but I do think it's worth thinking about.

Having said that, man, I hate Cersie in George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire, and when she Gets What's Coming to Her, I will dance in the street. So Dempsey has a point.

[Sonneillon]

I have two things to say.

one



As of book 4 I was really in love with Voldemort. I saw a kid who grew up as a wizard in Grindelwald's time, and an orphan during World War II. So much potential. And then she dropped the ball by making him a "bad seed."

We had the chance of seeing a character who stared too long into the abyss, and it stared back at him. Instead he was the stereotypical eighties villain, who does evil "Because He Can." This was the major failing of the sixth book. It took a potentially rich villain and ruined it. (Actually, there's a lot of things about Voldemort that don't add up, but I won't go into it. Suffice to say, he failed as a villain.)

All this relates back to: your villain is a person.


two

I'm going to argue against one point made in this thread, that your villain thinks he's doing good.

Not necessarily. I like villains who are evil and know it. I like bad guys who are unapologetically bad. (One reason I liked Snape early is because he was a jerk and stuck to his guns on being a jerk, and I enjoyed that.)

Sometimes people can become so disenchanted with their world, with other people, with the lack of morality they see, and say "Sod it all, what's the point?" When confronted by the hero with tear-drenched questions of why, he can point to the world at large and say "I'm no more a monster than they are. I'm just more thorough about it."

I absolutely could not agree more on all points. I love Snape for the same reasons, and while I never thought he was evil so his motivations came as no surprise, I was glad he never stopped being mean. Actually, I thought he was pretty sexy... there's something about a very, very intelligent man who's also dryly cynical that just gives me shivers. I have a character who's in love with him too. *eyeroll*

I once did a read-through of the Evil Overlord's List and picked out every single rule Voldemort broke, from "when I employ people as my advisers, I will occasionally listen to their advice" to "I will not turn into a snake. It never helps". There were a lot of them which he broke, directly or indirectly. What can we say? Epic Fail.

Villains are awesome when they're foils and mirrors for humanity.

Indeed, that may be one of their higher purposes. "There but for the grace of God go I." Very little is as unsettling to someone who hasn't accepted their potential for evil as to look at something twisted and malign and say "that could have been me".

[Constantine K]

When confronted by the hero with tear-drenched questions of why, he can point to the world at large and say "I'm no more a monster than they are. I'm just more thorough about it."

Reading that gave me chills. That needs to go in somebody's book!

[dempsey]

When confronted by the hero with tear-drenched questions of why, he can point to the world at large and say "I'm no more a monster than they are. I'm just more thorough about it."

Reading that gave me chills. That needs to go in somebody's book!

Dibs :)

[Oasilhael]

The best villains are usually the ones who have a good reason for doing what they do. For instance, one of the villains in a novel that I read (I don't remember the title) was actually a piece of the protagonist's conscience that had been torn off before the story began. This villain was tormented at every waking second because he felt the pain of being seperated from the "mother conscience". And yet, if he tried to unify with the protagonist, a prophecy had dictated that the whole world would face an utter catastrophe. Needless to say, he did try to unify anyway, which made the struggle interesting.

Juicy, huh?

[JeanneTGC]

re: your option 1 -- make the villian three dimensional

I'd suggest that any character that has a name and speaking lines should be three dimensional. Fully formed doesn't mean you need to share every bit of information about this character with the readers. But you should know what makes this character who and what they are. When you know that, it comes through in how you write the characters, and they become more interesting and your writing becomes better, too.

[RJK]

My protagonist is up against a criminal organization. I portray the members like members of any business organization. They have staff meetings, they make decisions, they have objectives to enhance the goals of their organization. The difference is that sometimes the decision is that someone must be killed. The victim may have done nothing more than be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The villians decide he or she must die, to ensure that the goals of the organization are met. They give no more thought to the person they intend to kill than a CEO gives to the pensioners they are about to screw over.
The villian carries out his task because it was assigned to him, just like a middle manager would carry out his duties in a corporation.

[Michael Davis]

In TAINTED HERO, I used a confrontation between the villain (Perry) and his father to expose why he turned the way he need. Up to that point, the reader witnessed the results of his dirty actions, but not the explanation for how a colonel in the Army could have turned so bad. In the end of the exchange, Perry accepts what he is, makes no excuses, but he cuts the cord to the reason for his skulduggery; his father. Its a point where the reader can empathize with why the villain is what he is, yet understand that he is evil and will remain that way.

[Axelle]

I, for one, try very hard to make my villains... well, not exactly villains, they're more like opponents. They're not necessarily evil, they've simply got different objectives than the main character. They try to do what they think is right, for some of them, or they're just true to themselves for others, but they're not just evil. That's an issue I wanted to tackle - that in war, most of the time, it's not about good vs. evil. It's about two (or more) opponents whose objectives don't match. There are decent people and pathetic people and evil people on both sides - that's one of the things that make war so terrible. Not only people die, but quite often people who could have been friends (and sometimes are) kill each other. Perhaps some of you have watched Joyeux Noël, I think it sums it up pretty well.

Just have a look in history. There have been countless wars, but few have been about evil. The most extreme exemple of a war about evil, of course, was WW2 (and I think that's also one of the things that make it fascinating, because it wasn't fiction this time). But most wars aren't like that. And even in the case of WW2 it was not that simple.

Then again, I'm not saying my villains are all nice peope either. Though that might be very interesting to have a villain who's actually a very nice guy. It would require some doing, a good setting and a lot of imagination, but it would probably be worth it...

[kimb68]

Pushing this back up to the top of the list.

[sportacus]

My next project is to make the main character with questionable character and morals become so corrupt and evil so that he becomes the villain.

[Constantine K]

My next project is to make the main character with questionable character and morals become so corrupt and evil so that he becomes the villain.

I like that, and have something similar planned for a future project. Only I want him to start out good . . . dip into questionable behavior (whether "acted" or not, I haven't decided) . . . and untimately redeem himself and realize his true character (while maintaining some of his "villainous" traits).


For some reason, now that I've written it down, the idea seems painfully familiar. Damn the unoriginal ideas!

[Karen Duvall]

Oh, yeah, all hail to the mighty anti-hero! Yes! My sentiments exactly. I, too, have a novel in the works that features an anti-hero with questionable heroic qualities he'd rather ignore. But he can't. Ah, such a conundrum. And I don't feel one bit sorry for him, either.

[Sonneillon]

I like that, and have something similar planned for a future project. Only I want him to start out good . . . dip into questionable behavior (whether "acted" or not, I haven't decided) . . . and untimately redeem himself and realize his true character (while maintaining some of his "villainous" traits).


For some reason, now that I've written it down, the idea seems painfully familiar. Damn the unoriginal ideas!

Take heart, Constantine, you know the drill: there are no new ideas, just new ways of handling the ideas. If you write a compelling character in a compelling situation, you'll be in great shape even if the archetype is familiar. Besides, anti-heroes are in these days. I think it's because Heroes of Shining White make us mere mortals feel guilty about the moral greyness in our own lives. Anti-hero is a standard to which most of us could measure up.

Also, I really like the theme of having a certain amount of naivety and sanctimonious arrogance beaten out of a hero. I did that with a Paladin once. He ended up a much more compassionate person for it.

[Jenan Mac]

So as you're considering your villain's motivations, you may want to ask yourself WHY he does 'evil', and why it's 'evil' in the first place. A Dark Lord bent on conquering the world may slaughter millions to gain power, but once an area is under his control, he may lower taxes, improve education, sanitation, and the justice system, lessen crime, improve trade conditions by breaking down tariff barriers and building better roads to unite the country, and create millions of new jobs which will revitalize the economy. In fifty years, is anyone going to see him as evil anymore?

Depends on if he wins. Mussolini made the trains run on time.

[Sonneillon]

Depends on if he wins. Mussolini made the trains run on time.

The specific Dark Lord to whom I was referring wishes it to be known in regards to Mussolini that his response is:

"Too little, too late, and it takes a uniquely stupid sort of person to actually believe modern Italians would be drawn into such a massive war effort."

[BlueLucario]

I have two things to say.

one



As of book 4 I was really in love with Voldemort. I saw a kid who grew up as a wizard in Grindelwald's time, and an orphan during World War II. So much potential. And then she dropped the ball by making him a "bad seed."

We had the chance of seeing a character who stared too long into the abyss, and it stared back at him. Instead he was the stereotypical eighties villain, who does evil "Because He Can." This was the major failing of the sixth book. It took a potentially rich villain and ruined it. (Actually, there's a lot of things about Voldemort that don't add up, but I won't go into it. Suffice to say, he failed as a villain.)

All this relates back to: your villain is a person.


two

I'm going to argue against one point made in this thread, that your villain thinks he's doing good.

Not necessarily. I like villains who are evil and know it. I like bad guys who are unapologetically bad. (One reason I liked Snape early is because he was a jerk and stuck to his guns on being a jerk, and I enjoyed that.)

Sometimes people can become so disenchanted with their world, with other people, with the lack of morality they see, and say "Sod it all, what's the point?" When confronted by the hero with tear-drenched questions of why, he can point to the world at large and say "I'm no more a monster than they are. I'm just more thorough about it."

Villains are awesome when they're foils and mirrors for humanity.

IMHO.

Yeah, I hated Voldemort now. I could have been sympathetic of him. If he wasn't bad because he wanted to be bad.

Sheesh, if he was bullied as a child or abused or molested(That would not be in a children's book, but oh well.) Then he would be a likable character. I thought he'd be like harry, except darker.


(If not for the audiobooks, I would not be reading the book.)


Voldemort's just cardboard to me. A villain has to be a person too. He can't be bad just for the sake of being bad. He can be likable.


Hey dempsey, I didn't know you were into Harry Potter. :)