How to Write the Perfect Villain

A hero is only as good as their villain. If your villain is a weak, one-dimensional, cardboard version of the people you hate, you won’t give your hero someone to struggle against and grow from. If your villain is so powerful that your hero can’t even dream of fighting back, your hero becomes a helpless victim. The protagonist can grow and become the person they need to become only when faced with their perfect antagonist. This begs the question of what makes a perfect antagonist?

1. They keep the hero from reaching their goal:

When it comes to the function of a villain in your story, keep in mind a villain’s purpose is to prevent the hero from reaching their goal. If you want to take this a step further, have your villain compete against your hero. This will create the greatest amount of conflict between them.

2. They attack your hero’s flaws:

Your villain doesn’t have to be invincible(although they can’t be weaker than the hero). The power a villain has over a hero revolves around their ability to attack your hero’s flaws. Your hero can be super-strong, super-fast, and invincible, but if their flaw is that they have a soft spot for money, your villain can attack this vulnerability by offering to make them rich at a snap of their fingers. Does this mean the end of the hero? Well . . . the hero will have to either grow and overcome their weaknesses or they won’t be able to achieve their goals.

3. They won’t attack your hero’s strengths:

When writing characters, we can assume that if a character is a great warrior-king, like Othello, their villain should also be a great warrior-king. Having this fight between two warriors could create the most intense conflict in your story, right? Wrong. John Truby, in his book, The Anatomy of a Story, recommends you focus on attacking your hero’s weaknesses more than attacking your hero’s strength. Shakespeare knew that which is why he didn’t have another warrior-king fight Othello but instead created the devious, scheming Iago, who crafts Othello’s downfall.

4. They are human:

This doesn’t mean they have to belong to the human race, they just have to reflect the flaws inherent in the human condition. They should be self-aware of their actions, introspective, sometimes kind, and even regretful (whether or not they’re open about it). Maybe the villains want the best for the world and for your hero. For example, (SPOILERS FOR BREAKING BAD (2008-2013)) in the series Breaking Bad, Walter White, an underpaid, undervalued high school chemistry teacher is diagnosed with lung cancer and he turns to a life of crime producing and distributing crystal meth. At some point of the story, both his wife becomes opponents to his objective. Even though she wishes to stop Walter from reaching his goal, she does so because she wants the best for him and their family. This is to show that a villain may have motives that, according to themselves, would be better for the hero.

However, there are exceptions to every rule. Some villains in the horror or monster genre, for example, are literally monsters. The Xenomorphs in Ridley Scott’s, Aliens, are monsters whose reproductive process involves taking the lives of other living beings.

Other stories that explore themes of good and evil can still have monsters who are villains. For these kinds of monsters to grip your audience, you need to keep from the audience the clear reasons why they became monsters. In The Dark Knight trilogy, a movie series that explored good, evil, and human nature, Heath Ledger’s Joker was a monster who embodied this theme. What fascinates audiences about the Joker is that Christopher Nolan, the director, refused to give their audience a clear reason on why the Joker is how he is. If Christopher Nolan would have revealed that the Joker had a tragic backstory that justified his behavior, the magnitude of the story’s argument would be reduced to, “people become evil because of tragedy,” instead of leaving us wondering for nine years what made him into a monster.

5. They have reasonable values:

Part of the process of building your characters is defining their values. When writing your villain, be sure they don’t hold shallow values like greed, power, or tyranny. Instead of greed, write that they value the fruits of their labor. Have your villain value control to save others from themselves as an alternative to power. Suppose they want to order, and they think the best way of achieving it is tyranny. Be fair with their values.

6. They have good intentions:

A cutthroat villain who kills others in the most deplorable manner to conquer the world is a cliché. A cutthroat villain who kills others in the most deplorable manner to save their daughter, however, can be written in such a way that they become relatable. A great way to create a sensible villain is by giving them a strong yet faulty argument for why they should achieve their goal.

7. They’re like the hero:

Peter Brook (theater director) used to put his actors in an exercise where they play the person they most hate. To each of the actors’ surprise, they discovered they were playing someone who was awfully similar to themselves. Carl Jung (19th-century psychoanalyst) introduced the term, the “Shadow,” to expand on this phenomenon. The Shadow is an unconscious part of our personality, composed of all the things that we don’t like about ourselves. In other words, all those aspects of your personality that you would rather not have are self-suppressed, and they become your Shadow. Just like what happened to the students of Peter Brook, one of the ways we can find our Shadow is by unconsciously transferring all these oppressions onto other people that we don’t like. Here’s an example: If you can’t stand stubborn people and you are constantly in conflict with stubborn people all the time, perhaps you yourself are stubborn.

The same thing happens to our heroes with their villains in their stories. Have your hero see the wrong in their ways by facing their villain. This is one of the ways the hero grows, by having them find their mistakes and flaws in the villain. Here are a few examples:

In the Hunger Games series, Catching Fire, Katniss believes other Tributes cannot be trusted. She insists they might backstab her and Peeta the first chance they get. However, when Katniss enters the arena, she tries to kill the other Tributes and even plots on backstabbing throughout the story.

In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Tony Stark has the moral flaw of being utilitarian (especially in the Civil War installment), which is to say he tends to believe that the end justifies the means. However, in the last installments, he faces the ultimate utilitarian villain: Thanos.

For this to work, your hero and villain must share a moral flaw. A moral flaw is a character flaw that hurts other people besides the character. If your character is shy, that’s a flaw. If your character lies to others to get what they want, that’s a moral flaw. If your hero becomes aware of their moral flaws by seeing how the opponent lies to others to get what they want, they have found themselves the perfect villain.

By understanding what roles a villain plays in your hero’s growth, you will be on your way to writing a villain as good as your hero.