Villains (25 Ways to Create Good Villains)
Villains – People with Real Problems
Villains are people too, real people. Unless they are: *** Killer robot dolls, dripping washing machines, mouth dragons, or Youyou.com is a sharp guillotine. As far as Youyou Resource Network is concerned, we have to treat them as human beings.
People with needs, desires, and motivation! People with family, friends, enemies! They are multi-faceted characters! Not one-sided, a big villain who only knows how to curl his beard!
Affecting the role
The role can be compared to a driver. A plot can be likened to a car. The driver drives, the character drives (controls) the plot, but the plot cannot drive (control) the character.
So the villain is not the stone that divides the plot river. He doesn’t exist to affect the plot. He exists to influence the character.
Actively change them, incite them, manipulate them. It is the greater resistance for the protagonist to move forward. Resistance is the point.
Yes, resistance is the point.
Stop the villains. They have conflicting motivations and needs. The protagonist wants to free the slaves and give them freedom. The villain wants to bind the slaves and give himself power.
The protagonist wants to save the hostages, and the villain wants to kill the hostages. The protagonist wants to eat a burrito, but the villain steals the burritos.
Whether direct or indirect. A villain is someone who prevents the protagonist from achieving his goals.
Guo Jing VS Huang
Set off the villain, the protagonist sets off the villain. These two people have opposite personalities. Typically, heroes vs villains. But it would be better if the story goes a little deeper.
For example, the protagonist is a mischievous drunkard, and the villain is a well-behaved model student. The main character is a rationalist, and the villain is a great dictator.
Guo Jing, who advocates integrity, vs. Huang, who ignores etiquette, is like the experimental group and the control group.
The embodiment of conflict
The villain is the carrier of conflict. He creates and embodies conflict. The villain adjusts the plot according to his own preferences, adding trouble and risk to the protagonist. The villain changed the game, making Guan Guan sad.
The villain thinks he is a good person.
The villain is the hero in his own story. In fact, the protagonist of your story is the villain’s villain. Are you afraid? Friends, both good and bad, rationalize their actions.
Hitler, that villain? He thinks he is the savior of mankind. That’s not to say the villain’s motivations should be sacred. “Kill her to save the orphan…”
That’s not the case. Yes, villains will convince themselves that their motives are divine. The villain is self righteous.
Pranking for the sake of pranking = boring.
A villain is just an anime character who does evil for the sake of doing evil. Cobra Commander or something.
Conscript Mom, Attorney Nancy Grace, Talking Limbaugh and the like. In other words, those are boring, unreal, flimsy characters.
The villain has to sleep at night.
The villain must have a compelling motive. The motivation is to convince yourself to use it. Is it right? Racism is not just an act of wanting to see others suffer. Racism is often more entrenched.
It is often covered with a layer of rational frost. Motivation doesn’t have to be kind or healthy. But we have to believe it.
At least we have to believe that the villain believes in his own motives. When writing a story, ask yourself: How does the villain sleep at night?
Grey villain
In the movie, all the “bad guys” are “villains”. But not all villains are “bad guys.”
“Bad guys” exist in certain genres of movies, such as “Chain Saw Massacre”, “Evil Exorcist” and “Indiscriminate Vampire”. However, in real life, there are not necessarily “bad guys”.
In life, villains are gray, not a silly dichotomy. For example, in “One Blood”, Rambo is the protagonist and the sheriff is the villain.
But the sheriff is not a “bad guy”. He just made some bad decisions, but he’s not evil.
Public Enemy Number One
As I said earlier, those who directly block the protagonist, wet the bed, drink beer, and fuck girls. This villain is known as Public Enemy Number One.
Looking for inspiration in pop culture
Who is a good role model villain? You can find inspiration in pop culture. Is Hannibal the Killer an example of a good villain? is it? Darth Vader, Voldemort, Gollum, Joker, etc. is it?
Find inspiration from life experiences
Forget pop culture! Examine your own life and find your villain. These people must be more complex and more sympathetic than the characters in the movie.
When we were teenagers, our parents should be our villains. But they are definitely not at the beginning, and usually not at the end. Dig.
Have you ever been someone else’s villain? there must be. At some point, your parents must have seen you like this. You could be the villain of a teacher; the villain of an old friend; the villain of a sibling.
Bring those experiences into the story and find out the intricacies of the villain.
We don’t have to sympathize with him, but we must agree with him. If we don’t know him, we won’t trust him.
Deep into the enemy’s camp
Write stories from the villain’s perspective on the world. It’s a way of writing. Get into that bad guy’s body.
Wear its skin as clothing. Wear its head like a helmet. No, Suhu? Maybe, but this step is absolutely necessary.
Hold the monster’s hand
We will also sit next to the villain and hold the villain’s hand. The audience doesn’t have to get inside the villain, but at least spend some time getting to know the villain.
Let the audience see what kind of person the villain is when he is alone, and then know what he wants and why he does it. Let the audience spend more time with him.
Too strong = boring
Super strong, can’t lose, knows everything, always one step ahead of the villain, very boring. Just as boring as superheroes, maybe worse. This villain must be weakened.
American slang is a game of cat and mouse. They won’t say it’s Jesus playing with a laser gun and a mouse.
It’s good to watch a movie that comes and goes, is quickly caught, and then escapes.
Too weak = boring
It must be a challenge for the villain. Soft, incompetent, and mentally retarded villains will not work either. If the villain is as strong as the protagonist, great; if the villain is stronger than the protagonist, even better.
Audiences like to worry that the protagonist can’t beat the villain. Because the villain is super strong, super god, super genius.
Because the villain is stronger, smarter, stronger, and more capable. If the villain is too weak, there is no dramatic tension. Don’t write like this.
Follow the rules.
The villain and the protagonist must respect the rules of the world. There is magic in this world, so there is. no, no.
All characters and plots are regulated by the world you create. Villains can distort the facts and break the rules, but they cannot rewrite the rules.
Nonsense
Haha, wife zero, you are trapped by me, in a swimming pool with a group of piranhas at the bottom,
Let me Tell you my whole plan and bore you to death. I’ll share with you my motivations, my weaknesses, and the killing techniques I want to use.
So at the end of the story, you can use these to bite me back. Nonsense villains can die. Stop writing about this bad guy who loves to share “explanatory text”.
Forcing the viewer to connect with the monster and making them afraid.
Forcing the viewer to connect with the monster and making them afraid. The villain in your story is a monster: a man who kicks a cat, a man who beats a baby ***, a man who shuffles a bike in the left lane, a drug addict looking for money in a vending machine.
Try to make the audience resonate with this monster. Make the monster do something, or stick to an idea, just like you.
Or let the audience connect with the monster’s past to help the audience understand why he likes to fuck in public *** and why he likes to chop puppies with knives. Don’t underestimate empathy.
Empathize with the protagonist, and you can identify with his pain. Connecting with a villain, even for a second, identifies him with his evilness.
Big League of Villains
You can have many protagonists, like the Avengers, and you can have many villains.
But it should be noted that the stories of each character should be distributed equally, and how to distribute is a science.
Character arc light
The villain must have an “arc” of “personality change”. The villain doesn’t start at point A, and it ends at point A, if the villain ends up being a crazy woman who wants revenge on the world.
Then openFrom the beginning, the villain will not be a crazy woman who wants to take revenge on the world. She might just be a crying little girl.
Don’t write a static villain, like a tool, it can only create troubles and conflicts for the protagonist.
Thought, system = “inhuman” villain
The villain is not necessarily a person. It can be a concept (racial discrimination) or it can be a system. Zombies can be such a villain, like a typhoon or an epidemic.
This kind of villain needs an overall personality, which may be “not to kill a living”.
Or a character representing their overall consciousness, a cunning business character to brainwash everyone.
The “kick the cat” plot
The author Blake Snyder (Blake Snyder) mentioned in his book that we should give the protagonist a “rescue the cat” plot , so that we can root for the protagonist early in the story.
The villain also needs this kind of plot. Instead, it is a “kicking the cat” section.
Let the villain do some bad things that the audience doesn’t agree with. We need to know why the villain is the villain. Give us a scene to recognize him.
Let the villain win
Let the villain win, not in the end, but in the process. Let him break Batman’s back. Let him kill some hostages.
Or he doesn’t have to kill some hostages, but we think he will. Let’s get a feel for the process, and the threat it poses to the world and the protagonist.
Love to hate, hate to love
A better way to know if a villain novel is successful is if the audience:
(1) Loves to hate them Can’t help but hate them.
(2) Hate to love them and don’t want to love them.
If your story makes me like your villain, then I think you win, mao! If your story makes me despise your villain, then I enjoy the process of despising him, and you win too!