They are lurking in dark shadows or brazenly stalking bright hallways of modern cities; they inspire fear, awe, and even lust… villains, where would heroes be without them?
I am cutting right to the chase on this one, one-dimensional villains are tripe. Did anyone miss that? One-dimensional villains are tripe! I do not care that the video game industry thrives on stereotypical evil monsters to produce conflict in game. Even comic books grew out of this mindset of the evil mastermind bent on world domination (destruction). If your evil is absolute, at least have the presence of mind as a writer to give reason behind it. The villain is no more a perfect being than his bright and shiny heroic counterpart.
I love working on bad guys. There is so much fun to be had getting into the mind of a character based on all the narcissistic tendencies we, as average humans, suppress. Villains are the authors’ outlet for all the harassments and beatings received in high school. All the wicked little journal entries about how you planned to reap vengeance on all those who dared cross you, well, now they have purpose.
The Villain archetype has a spicy variety pack: Human, Animal, Supra-Human, Monster, Domestic, Nihilist, and Classic. Blake Snyder does a great job of breaking down these villain types in Save the Cat Goes to the Movies. Save the Cat books are great tools.
To touch upon the creature villains, and creatures in general I recently read How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction by: J. N. Williamson. Chapter eight discusses how to create plausible creatures by understanding the type of environment this creature would have to live in.
Villains drive the conflict. “What is the conflict?” can often be answered by “What is my villain’s motivation!” Why is your villain so villainous? The Seven Deadly Sins are a favorite basis for conflict; they are tried and true and universally understood. Wrath drives the warlord, the shunned, wronged seeking vengeance. Greed, gives us crooked CEOs, millionaire eccentrics, or poor sots seeking fast cash. Sloth – okay, to be fair, sloth is a hard one because, really, if your villains are lazy, they are probably not going to drive a story. Lust, isn’t this always the reason the damsel is in distress? Envy and pride are wonderful forces behind evil queens. Gluttony is not always food related is it?
It is difficult to talk Villain without touching upon conflict. The Villain is not always a person (living creature). The Just Write writers discussed the crowd as character before. The basic types of conflict a Hero can encounter most should recall from grade school; man versus man, man versus society, man versus nature, man versus self.
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