The bad guys

[AusGlitterati]

Most stories have some kind of antagonist. So I'm interested! How do you write your villains? Where does the inspiration come from? Do you ever write from the POV of your unsavoury types? Are your villains bad eggs, victims of circumstance or just on the opposite side of the playing field? Do they ever win? Do they see the errors of their ways? 😮Or do they go the way of a Disney villain? 

One of my POV characters in my story Parity is a psychopath and it's draining to get in the headspace of someone so cold and manipulative. Writing his chapters exhausts me and I always feel want to shower and scrub off the malice when I'm done.  If your characters are dark, menacing and "evil," what makes it easier for you write their story? 

[Valkyrie]

12 minutes ago, AusGlitterati said:

Most stories have some kind of antagonist. So I'm interested! How do you write your villains? Where does the inspiration come from? Do you ever write from the POV of your unsavoury types? Are your villains bad eggs, victims of circumstance or just on the opposite side of the playing field? Do they ever win? Do they see the errors of their ways? 😮Or do they go the way of a Disney villain? 

One of my POV characters in my story Parity is a psychopath and it's draining to get in the headspace of someone so cold and manipulative. Writing his chapters exhausts me and I always feel want to shower and scrub off the malice when I'm done.  If your characters are dark, menacing and "evil," what makes it easier for you write their story? 

I've written a few stories that feature some pretty unsavory characters.  I tend to approach stories with 'villains' by exploring a specific question or thought--like is redemption possible for an abuser or someone who participated in a heinous act, like a school shooting.  I wrote a dark fae story to explore the lesser seen side of faery.  As far as what makes it easier to write those kind of stories... well, I suppose that depends on the person.  I can usually distance myself from the vileness, but if I have trouble with that, finding a balance helps.  Write something light after dealing with the dark.  

[Carlos Hazday]

I don't write many villains, but I do write assholes. Those have often been inspired by people I've met. Even a couple of people on GA! LOL

 

The homophobic Christian zealot, the social climber, the biker bully, the uptight ex-military, or the diehard Trump supporter. I've redeemed a couple, but most end up shamed, fired from their jobs, or with bloody noses. I prefer the latter.

 

Most bad characters are dealt with swiftly. I do not have the patience, or the inclination, to keep them around or delve into their psyche. If I see a roach, I stomp it.

[CassieQ]

Interesting replies.  I don't see villains and antagonists as the same thing, though sometimes they are.  I have written very few villains and the ones that I have written have been irredeemably evil, because that is the only way I can write them, it helps to keep a distance.  I would love to write something that has a more complex villian and be able to write from their POV but I don't know if I can.   It's one of my weak points.   

[KD_stories]

Most "villains" or assholes that I have written come from personal experience, and well the world that we live in today.  You can't look at anything without seeing them being praised for something. There have been characters like that, that I have wrote and agree with you 100% it exhausts me to the max I feel drained emotionally especially, after a rough chapter involving the villains.   

[Dodger]

I've only just noticed this and couldn't resist commenting. The 'baddies' as my young nephew calls them, seem to be much easier to define in fiction, TV, and movies than in real life. No one really wants to be thought of as a horrible person, and most horrible people no doubt see their actions as entirely justified. I don't think there are too many thoroughly nasty types out there. Everybody has some good in them and, it's the good points, however inane, which interest me the most. They can allow the character to be redeemed or offer some compensation to the reader for the nasty things he or she has done throughout the story.

 

I've written from the villain's point of view and found it challenging but addictive. Trying to create a character based on the type of person who has always been a natural enemy wasn't easy, but ultimately proved beneficial and even therapeutic. This was an unexpected bonus rather than a deliberate attempt at self-analysis. I'm not that smart. However, it allowed me to understand these people a little better than I did before. I realised I actually had a lot in common with this particular character, which was something I would have vehemently denied beforehand. He was, after all, a homophobic, alcoholic, control freak, with a violent temper and a history of killing people. The type of person I would usually avoid like the plague, but he did have some good points, even if you needed a microscope to see some of them, and it was enough to turn him around.

 

It's unlikely this would have happened in real life but fiction allows you a certain artistic licence, and in this case, I used it to the max. I would recommend occasionally delving into the dark side if only to understand yourself and your adversaries a little better.

 

Wow, that was deep! I gotta cut down on the caffeine.

[Jdonley75]

Hm.... Villains....

 

I try to avoid the idea of there being a villain in a story.  I like to think of them as adversaries that the other characters have to go over/around,/under.  That said, there is evil in the world and the people who do those evil things can be painted with the label "villain" and no one would question it.

 

No one but the villain himself, of course.

 

Most of my experience comes from role-playing games and when I made a "bad guy," I more or less have to play the part for the other players which means I have to get to know him very very well before I can make it convincing.  (It should be noted that most of the people who played in my games years ago feared a lot of my characters, not because of what they did but because of how they made the players feel.)

 

I usually make him with his own purpose and goals.  Sometimes the other characters come in conflict with him, other times maybe not.  The question you have to ask yourself though is why is he there and what does he need to do to accomplish his personal goals?  Does he need to make a Faustian deal which puts him on a collision course with the protagonist(s) or does he have something they want that he's willing to part with in order to secure a favor later.  And does that favor end up putting our hero into a morally gray area?  There doesn't always have to be a fight against the villain for him to be seen as evil.  Just his methods.  And they, of course, never see themselves as evil or villainous in what they're doing.  They see themselves as the hero!  Think Thanos in Avengers or Kingpin in the first season of Daredevil.  Those guys have a purpose and a goal.  They're not some tired old adage of the villain with the sinister plot to destroy the world with his  deadly laser cannon who laughs like a maniac and twirls his mustaches. Those guys are boring.  Make a guy who're interesting.  Give him strengths and weaknesses.  Show the reader that he is capable of feelings beyond selfishness, greed or spite.  Get the readers to identify with him, even if they don't get to really see in his/her head.  Make them question their own feelings about him and draw their own conclusions and then watch the debate rage in the comments section.

 

I'm in the middle of writing a new book and I guess, in a way, there's a villain in it.  We'll see what becomes of it.

 

(just my $.02) 😜

[Laura S. Fox]

Hmm, that's a tough one indeed ... While reading John Gardner's The Art Of Fiction, I did come across something about writing bad characters. I don't seem to find the quote exactly, and I have no idea how to find it, although I have the book on Kindle, but he said something about not being enough to say that a character is evil, and that, as the writer, you have the (not so noble) task of showing him or her committing a crime. The exact quote was more shocking than what I said here, and I know that it did give me pause.

 

I did the exercise recommended in the book by writing a piece of fanfiction in a fandom where the main character is a criminal. I did struggle with him, as I wrote the story in third person, but from this particular character's POV. By the reaction registered in the fandom, it was a success. Apparently, I 'caught' the character's voice convincingly enough. But I'm not sure if I'm going to do a repeat experience too soon. Writing evil is damn hard. 

[Thorn Wilde]

As some others have already said, I don't really write villains in the classical sense. I try and make my antagonists as human as possible. In Storms, I write several of the chapters from the point of view of the 'bad guy'. I think some people were pissed off at finding themselves caring about him when he'd done such awful things, and many others have expressed that they think he's irredeemable. But I don't think any human in irredeemable, and I try to make realistic characters. Of course there will be antagonists you never see as anything other than that. But people do what they do for a reason. That goes for bad guys as well as good ones. And I've had protagonists who do really awful stuff, and antagonists who end up being wonderful people in the end, because the world isn't divided into good guys and monsters.