The Villain as the Failed Hero: Humanizing Antagonists

So here's the thing: villains are not villains just so they can twirl their mustaches and say, "Ha! See? I'm evil!"

Just like your good guys, your bad guys have a history. Just like your good guys, they have reasons for doing things. The difference is, the reader tends to not see many of those reasons. Sure, they might get the Sparknotes version eventually, but even then it'll be watered-down; most of the roots of the villainry are trapped below the surface.

Which means they're doubly hard to write.

Villains and antagonists don't sit in the dark corners of their bedrooms plotting ways to be evil. In fact, the most convincing and realistic-and thus terrifying-villains are those who believe that they're the ones doing good; if you told your novel from their point of view, they'd be the good guys.

So when you're writing them, imagine they're the good guys.

What are they fighting for? What do they care about? What do they hope their actions will do? Who do they care about most, if anyone? If they're doing bad, and they know that it's bad, then why? What changed? Try writing a few hundred words of the most pivotal moment of their life. How are you looking at them differently, now?

Bad guys are only human (unless your bad guy is literally not of the human species, but still). They have flaws. They also have feelings. When you're writing your novel, make sure that you're doing them the respect they deserve and show them, and you'll be on your way to humanizing them, because every character exists on a blurred line: nothing's ever black or white.

Think of it this way: villains are the heroes who were never saved. While that's only one possible trope for characterizing your villains, antagonists, and overall baddies (of whatever caliber), it's a good place to start.

So I kind of already gave ya'll my own way of getting to know my villains: write something from their point of view. How do ya'll go about getting to know your bad guys?

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Crafting a believable bad guy? Try imagining they're the good guy. Blogger @Rae_Slater talks humanizing antagonists (Click to Tweet)

Antagonists: Make Them Unique

Once again, I was completely at a loss for what to write about today (seriously, please make recommendations about what ya'll would like to see me talk about in regards to writing. It would be beneficial for all of us). Then I woke up this morning, got my coffee and cereal, sat down and started watching the news.

No, this isn't about the news. Once I sat down and turned on the television, I started thinking about IN A HANDFUL OF DUST, by Mindy McGinnis. Also known as: the book I reviewed last Saturday.

What got me thinking were the "villains." I'm using quotes because they aren't really the "villain" of the story, just a variety of antagonists; unfortunately, my mind tends to make certain words synonyms for each other instead of leaving them as related terms. Basically, I'm apologizing right now for jumbling up the two words.

Right here is where I stopped writing this post, stared at the title (which read: "Villains: Make Them Unique") and decided to change it to "Antagonists: Make Them Unique. Definitely makes more sense, now.

Anyway, what got me thinking was the fact that there are a number of antagonists in McGinnis' most recent book (off the top of my head I'm thinking three, but there could most definitely be more). Each one of them was completely different from another.

How's that possible, though? They all want the same thing: food, water, weapons, survival. And, yet, they all manage to have their own personalities, their own wants and fears, and their own methods for getting what they think will suit them best.

Their differences are extremely important when it comes to writing antagonists. Heck, it's important for writing any character in your book (villains, protagonists, side-characters). Consider the fact that they need to stand out; they need to have a shape all their own, and if they start looking/sounding/thinking/acting the same, then what's the point of having more than one? It doesn't matter how many you have (although, really, don't go overboard; like I said, IN A HANDFUL OF DUST had, like, three, and that's basically three groups, with certain people at the head. Those are the antagonists I'm talking about), just remember to treat them all like people.

Look at Harry Potter. Draco Malfoy is an extremely consistent antagonist whose attitude stems from basically being the spoiled little rich body with a superiority complex. He hates being shown up, and he also kind of hates the fact that Harry Potter is a more well-known name than his own. Later in the series, he simply becomes desperate as Voldemort claims a hold over his entire life. His attentions even switch from making Harry's life miserable to struggling with his own demons.

What about Dudley, Uncle Vernon, and Aunt Petunia? Their antagonism comes from their belief that anything that is not human is freakish. Also consider the fact: Petunia's sister got killed by bad magic. She'd already alienated Lily for her freakish tendencies, and then she gets killed by them? Well, by golly, she knew all along there was something wrong and dangerous about magic. Why on earth would you want your nephew following in the same footsteps?

And don't forget the Minister of Magic, who, through the entire fifth book, did everything in his power to make Harry and Dumbledore and anyone associated with them look like crackpot fools. Because he was afraid; nobody wanted to return to the dark days of Voldemort.

Fear really is an excellent motivator for people, don't you think?

Those are just three examples (and I think we all know by now that there are countless antagonists in the Harry Potter series).

To wrap this up, here are just a few things that I feel are good things to look at and think about when drudging up an antagonist:

Setting-more than just the overall world (since that's impacting everyone), look at their individual experience with the world. How have certain events and people influenced them through their life? How has that shaped and molded their outlook?

Background-before they entered the present world of your novel, before they met the protagonist: what was their life like?  Who or what made them the way they are? How did they survive to their current age and mental state, and how did those experiences make them see things differently?

Motivation-extremely key for any kind of character: why are they doing what they're doing? What's in it for them? What's fueling their actions?

Relationship to the Protagonist-here's a big one. See, the antagonist wouldn't be an antagonist unless they were somehow keeping the protagonist from their goal, right? Which means that at some point, in some small or large way, they're going to interact with your main character. What about the protagonist makes them tick? Why are they at odds, what's the conflict between them?

Limits-how far are they willing to go to get what they want/keep the protagonist from getting what they want? What's their limit? How far will they go until they refuse to go further? Will they kill? Will they blackmail? Torture? Subject themselves to someone else's power, sit back and watch another character do dastardly deeds and say nothing?

So, that's not the entire list. By far. But I mean, just some things to think about when thinking about the character(s) that pop up in a bad situation just to make things work.

So I ask you: how do you think up your antagonists?

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How do you make your antagonists stand apart? @Rae_Slater shares her own process for thinking up human obstacles (Click to Tweet)

Things to think about when creating realistic antagonists and adversaries in your novel via @Rae_Slater (Click to Tweet)

Villains Are People, Too

To quote my favorite Broadway musical, "Are people born wicked, or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?"

Every story has a villain. They might be obvious, like President Snow in The Hunger Games, or  (in my opinion) they might be less obvious: a character's own self-destructive nature. Essentially, the villain is the force working against your protagonist.

For the purpose of this post, I'm going to concentrate on the obvious ones: the President Snow's, the Queen Levana's, the wicked step-mothers. In every tale, we tend to see only their bad side: their attempt at gaining and/or keeping power. What the audience rarely sees, however, is the steps in life that led the villains to becoming who they are.

So I ask again: Are people born bad, or is the badness created?

Your villains need a backstory. The catch? You, as the author, are probably the only person to ever know what that backstory is, unless, like Marissa Meyer, you write the villain's story (Fairest, coming out in early 2015).

The trick is to understand that villains aren't bad just for the sake of being bad. There's a reason they are the way they are, and they do the things they do. Looking for their motives will help you understand where they're from, and where they hope to go. It'll help you see why they're bad, or why they want your main character dead.

As already mentioned, a large motivation is power: gaining it, and then keeping it. Your job is to become the psychologist and dig down within their brains and figure out how power became so important to them. Were they orphaned as a child? Maybe they saw their parents killed in front of them. Maybe they loved somebody, once, and then were betrayed. They were wronged in some way, and now they're trying to make up for it.

Figure it out.

Villains are tricky. If you just have a guy with a monocle sitting in a chair petting a fluffy cat, and occasionally laughing maniacally, he's going to come up flat and unbelievable, and more comical than anything. Typically, that's what you want to avoid.

Look at President Snow. Sure, you see him as the guy who wants to keep the districts under his control, and keep the annual Hunger Games happening. This means he needs to kill Katniss, send a message. He's a character who's just a little bit more believable because you, as the reader, understand in book one that there's actually a law that was created about the Hunger Games, which has a base in the conclusion of a civil war that occurred seventy four years earlier. So, now, you understand that in a twisted way, he's only trying to keep the peace.

Most villains tend to believe that they're doing good. They're saving lives, they're creating order. Many dystopian societies revolve around rules and measures that were put into place to ensure the majority's survival. We might think they're far-fetched and too extreme, but to the people leading these societies they're performing a righteous task.

Other villains, in paranormal books, perhaps, might believe themselves to be ridding the world of weakness. Or they have personal vendettas that put one group of people against another in an invisible war that lasts ages. These villains, just like President Snow, believe themselves to be in the right.

I'm not religious, but you can even look at Lucifer (the devil). He was cast out of heaven for challenging his superior, acting on his own pride while believing God to be too prideful in himself. In classic belief of the devil being out to collect souls for hell, he, too, his basically just doing his job.

See, there's four kinds of villains I just explained (I hope?), and the trick is to understand that they, like all of your characters, have histories. Your job is to understand the history of your own villain, and ask yourself why they're the villain, and what happened to make them that way.

Heck, even take Voldemort. He was an orphan who was always picked on by the other kids, so when his magical abilities showed themselves randomly he wasn't sorry. Then, when he found out he was a wizard, he was able to grow and take vengeance against the muggle father that he'd always hated for giving him up. That's a backstory, too.


If it helps, try checking out movies or television shows that chronicle or retell the histories of famous villains. I quotes Wicked at the beginning of this post; that musical is based on the book by Gregory McGuire, which tells the "untold story" of the Wicked Witch of the West. In that tale, the Wicked Witch isn't, well, wicked, only politically misunderstood; she was even best friends with Glinda, the Good Witch. The movie, Malificent, recently came out into theaters, and attempts to explain why the famous Sleeping Beauty villain cast the spell on Aurora in the first place. This fall, Fox is coming out with a new show called Gotham, that follows not a young Bruce Wayne (well, okay, I think it sort  of does, in a small way), but the classic villains he'll fight in the future, including (but not limited to): Catwoman, the Penguin, and the Riddler.

Tapping into entertainment like that described above can help you shape your own villains by studying the way others are portrayed.

Remember, when it comes to villains you're probably the only one to ever know the full story. Understanding them to that extent, though, will help you anticipate the way they'll act, and it'll help you create more three-dimensional antagonists.

Rae