What Makes a Good Villain?
Nothing makes a work of fiction stand out like a memorable, well-written villain. The great ones can be the highlight of the story and their legacy can outlast the tale that spawned them. They come in every conceivable variety, too, depending upon the needs and skill of the writer.
For some writers, their goal is just to provide an obstacle for their protagonist. They don’t delve deeply into the villain because the villain’s personality isn’t important. While writers sometimes slip into this unintentionally, it can be used purposely to great effect when a writer doesn’t want to distract from the rest of the cast, when they’re wanting to tell a simpler tale of good and evil, or when elaborating on the villain may bring up themes that don’t fit the work.
Other writers, however, are more interested in their villains as characters. They want to understand what makes their villains tick, and they want their readers to understand them, as well. Some of the greatest works of fiction have stood out specifically because of the attention paid to the psychology of their antagonists, from Macbeth and Game of Thrones to Star Wars and American Gods. Their villains are believable and human, and this adds a level of depth and realism to the work that makes it stick with you. Even those that treat their villain as nothing but an obstacle for their protagonists may do some behind-the-scenes delving into the minds of their baddies. After all, understanding a character is the key to writing them well, and understanding how a villain’s mind works allows you to make them believable and well-rounded.
But, that’s where we run into a problem. For many, villains seem like ciphers whose motivations and personalities are too “different” to comprehend, or whose motivations are too simplistic to be worth worth real thought. So, writers sometimes fall back on one of two tropes: they make the character outright “evil,” even when it doesn’t fit the story, or they make the villain “sympathetic.” While both tactics have their place, they aren’t the solution to the problem.
Rather, the solution comes from analyzing what turns real people into villains and applying that analysis to the “bad guys” of fiction. This is valuable for writers and people who love a good story, as it can give the former a new writing tool and help the latter understand their favorite antagonists with new depth. While this essay isn’t an exhaustive list of every potential source of villainy, it’ll give you a starting point to better understand the characters in the works you read and write.
For the most part, “villains” fall into one of four categories: those who think they’re in the right, those who think their actions are justified, those that don’t think… and sociopaths. In this article, we’ll be exploring the first three categories, while the next article will close up the discussion by tackling sociopaths (a more complicated subject) and asking what separates a morally ambiguous hero from a villain. And, on the note of heroes and villains…
Type 1: Villains who Think They’re the Hero
How many times have you heard the phrase “everyone believes they’re the good guy?” Overused as it is, it does have an element of truth to it.
The first category of villains we’ll be exploring, here, for one reason or another, genuinely believe that what they’re doing is either right or morally neutral. That mentality, itself, can come in several different forms. At its most chilling, it takes the form of racism and xenophobia, where the victims are blamed or dehumanized to the point that the villain sees them as deserving of whatever is done to them or incapable of objecting.
But, the mindset of such a villain isn’t always so starkly evil. There are also those who view their actions as morally neutral because they distort the effects of their behavior or “normalize” their cruelty. This includes people who steal from the lunchroom fridge and say that no-one will notice what’s missing, or people who bully others into quitting their jobs and say “that’s just the business world, you need to toughen up.” To some degree, this may not even be a “justification:” it could be that this person grew up in a rough environment where that sort of behavior was actually normal.
More interesting and subtle, though, are those villains that believe they’re in the right because of where their moral priorities lay. Remember that morality isn’t a singular continuum; you and a friend could have nigh-overlapping moral opinions but shoot to opposite ends of the spectrum on a particular issue. So, it’s no surprise that an otherwise moral person can have an obsession that leads them to evil.
A great example of this is Jaime Lannister, from the early seasons of Game of Thrones (I’ll be using the show, here, as it’s more widely seen). To Jaime, the most important thing in the world is his family. In particular, his sister-lover. But, Jaime takes this viewpoint to a disturbing extreme: he puts so much moral weight on loyalty to his family that he views killing a child as morally acceptable because it’s in the service of protecting his sister.
These sorts of villains can evolve in very interesting ways over the course of a story. On the one hand, their conviction that they’re “the good guys” makes them extremely dangerous, as it gives them a “righteous” dedication to their cause that other motivations may lack. On the other hand, if the core motivation for them is “doing what’s right,” they can sometimes be convinced to see the light and “flip…” which, coincidentally, was one of the main struggles and character arcs for Jaime over the course of Game of Thrones.
You know, before they butchered that plotline in the last few seasons.
Type 2: Villains who Think Their Actions are Justified
Other villains aren’t under the impression that what they’re doing is “right.” In fact, they may see their actions as “wrong…” but necessary or justified. To them, the only reason they’re acting like villains is because they “don’t have a choice” or because they think some external detail strips their actions of moral culpability.
Like before, this comes in many different forms. For some, they feel they’re making the only choice possible in a hard situation, or that their bad behavior is serving a greater cause. These are the sorts of people who will bomb a group of civilians to take out a criminal hiding amongst them, or escape responsibility for a massacre by claiming that they were just “following orders.”
But, others take a more vengeful approach to their villainy. To them, they’re the victim of some crime or another… even if it’s one that they can’t articulate, or one with no relation to the people they’re harming. In this case, they feel they’re not morally culpable for their actions because someone else “fired the first shot.” All they’re doing is trying to even the scales or get back what they feel was stolen from them. Don’t underestimate how twisted this can become. The initial slight can be completely imaginary, or they can blow their vengeance way out of proportion. If you’d like a great example of how horrific this sort of victim-complex mentality can become, look at Joaquin Phoenix’s rendition of the Arthur Fleck in the 2019 film The Joker.
In any case, these villains view their actions as wrong and may even feel guilt… but it doesn’t stop them. Hell, sometimes it doesn’t even slow them down. There’s a vague recognition of immorality quickly erased by the belief that they did what they believed had to be done. They can make for very dangerous enemies, as they’re often desperate or viciously vengeful. At the same time, the emotional intensity they feel can make them incredibly compelling in a story, even as an anti-hero.
Type 3: Villains who Don’t Think
Less complex and more complicated are baddies who, quite simply, don’t think. They act almost on impulse, without any thought given to the long-term consequences of their actions. They move mindlessly and without regard to the people around them and, in the end, someone gets hurt. Maybe they toss their cigarette onto the side of the road and start a forest fire, or leave a water bottle in the middle of a walkway and cause grandma to break her hip. This also includes bullies who tease other kids to get the attention they aren’t receiving at home, without thinking about how this hurts the other child.
I’ll note that you could argue that the other two forms of villainy, by necessity, have some degree of thoughtlessness involved. Or, that even the most thoughtless villain is partly acting out of a sense of justification or twisted morals. And, in both cases, you’d be right. But, I do think there’s a line between villains who feel they’re justified or “in the right” because they aren’t giving their actions enough thought, and those who act “thoughtlessly.” In the case of the former, there’s at least some thinking going on, just enough to excuse their behavior. But, in the case of the latter, they never reach that point. They act without any concern to the moral status or consequences of what they’re doing, and that’s dangerous in its own way.
These villains are especially dangerous in positions of power where their thoughtless behavior can have huge, long-reaching consequences that they’ll never consider or care about. But what really makes them complicated is their unpredictability. After all, they’re rarely following a plan or aiming for something more than the short term, so it’s hard to know what they’ll do next. On top of that, they’re rarely open to or capable of reasoning with others or “talking things out,” meaning that a hero’s only recourse might be main force.
Villains Who Leave the Best for Later
Fact of the matter is, these three forms of villainy all share something in common: they’re fairly easy to understand, once you start thinking about them. In fact, each of us has been guilty of one of these motivations at some point in our life. Knowing that an exaggerated form of these may be behind the villains of real life and fiction helps us understand the antagonists in our stories on a deeper level that lets us write them as human beings instead of plot points. Hell, maybe it’ll even help us understand the antagonists in our own life and figure out a way to deal with them.
The rest of our discussion on villains, on the other hand, will be taking a much sharper thematic turn. See, sociopathic villains aren’t quite as relatable as the rest, and broaching such a complex topic opens us up to a less clean-cut discussion about what separates flawed heroes from villains, which will take up the bulk of our next article.
Until then, spare some time to think about how these principles apply to your favorite villains, and to sit down with some of your own projects and see how these ideas can help your writing. One good exercise might be to look at the actions of the villains in your story with the same benefit of the doubt you’d give to the heroes, and seek a sensible reason behind their actions. Good luck!
Featured image thanks to Predra!
