Please, Don’t Forget Your Villains

The Protagonist is the most part of a book. Right? This is debatable (Most things in writing are) but for now I’ll say that yes, the main character is almost always the most important part of your story. Plot and a million other things are important too, but I am of the belief that good characters are more important than a good plot. We all put a ton of focus on the main character, the hero, the protagonist. It’s in the title, isn’t it? The main character. That’s where all of the focus should be, right? 

Wrong. That’s where a big chunk of the focus should be. A solid 51%. But you shouldn’t be so focused on your main character that you forget about the other most important part of your story: the villain. 

I’ll take a quick moment to say that some stories don’t have villains. Slice-of-life and contemporary stories often forgo the villain for more practical problems, such as issues in the hero’s life rather than one bad person. If that’s the case for you, ignore me. I’m talking about one (or two or three) people with malicious intent and/or other characteristics that make them the villain of the story. 

I’ve talked about villains before, where I listed my favorites and why they’re unique in the world of villainy. Today, I want to talk about why those villains are special and terrifying. I subscribe to Chris Colfer’s belief that ‘Villains are just victims whose stories haven’t been told.” At least in the world of literature. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read a book with a great plot, great characters, all the things that should make it work… but the book doesn’t work. Without a well-developed villain, all you have is a person who is evil for no particular reason. And that’s one of my pet peeves in fiction. 

Let me tell you, I’ve been there. Unclear motivation, immature writing, just a lack of knowledge of villains. My first villain was a teenage boy who felt entitled to a throne that wasn’t his. *shrug* Honestly, that could work. But I didn’t dive deep enough into it to actually make him a terrifying villain. My next villains were one who wasn’t really a villain, just an illusioned father, and a power-hungry lunatic. Even for me, they weren’t really doing it. Sure, they were evil. But why? I couldn’t tell you.

But now, I have a villain who (In other’s words, not mine, I promise) “has joined the ranks of villains that I’m actually terrified of.”

What changed? What did I do differently to get a villain that scary, that unhinged, that diabolical? 

I made him human. 

And I don’t mean that my villains were aliens before. I mean that here, with this character, The Hunter, I’ve stripped him down to his bones and built the villainy around the humanity. He’s a person first, and a person who terrible things have happened to. Rather than move on from them, he’s decided that he’ll do anything to get back what he’s lost. 

Motivation is key. Greed and revenge are perfectly fine motivations, but also overused. There are so many good ideas out there. The villain wants to be remembered, they have a childhood dream of becoming this, the list goes on and on. The Hunter? He wants to reclaim something that was stolen from him decades ago, and he’s devoted his whole being to getting it back. 

A hero is only as good as their villain, and if we devote all of our attention to creating a well-fleshed out, creative main character and then tack a black cloak and scowl on some random man, we’ve failed the MC. At the very least, we haven’t given them a worthy opponent. At the most, we’ve failed to give our story an actual problem. Evil warlords and broody misunderstood teenage boys are overdone. It’s time for villains we don’t expect. 

I’m ready for the woman who had to watch her love fade away in front of her eyes and will do anything to get him back. I’m ready for the sibling who saw their brother underestimated and villainized for simply being different and decided to become the villain themselves. I’m ready for a villain who’s not the villain. 

I think that it’s time to get creative. Not only with our main characters (enough ignorant 17 year old girls, I beg you) but with our villains. Middle-aged ambitious men have had their moment. 

If we spent as much time on our villains as we did our heroes, I believe it would dramatically change our books. If we gave them even half of the effort and time we gave our main characters, then our stories would be completely different. 

The villains are meant to challenge the heroes, force them to grow, make them think about right and wrong. If the villain is clearly evil, then what does the hero have to think about? But if the villain is doing the wrong thing for the right reasons or the right thing for the wrong reasons? The hero is going to have to do a whole lot of thinking through the book. 

In conclusion, I encourage you to think about your villain. I’m guilty of this too. It’s so easy to plop a greedy king into the book and let them handle the infamous villainy. But when you’re developing your hero, pause and think about your villain? How can they exploit the weaknesses of your hero? Does the main character have a weakness for pride? Great. How can the villain put that problem in front of them every chance they get? How can you humanize your villain and their motivation? Don’t just make them evil –think about why?