Looming Villains

[Philip Overby]

How do you feel about a villain (a la Sauron) that kind of looms throughout the story but rarely interacts directly with your protagonists? Meaning he or she is a constant threat, but they never really get to fight him or her until the very end of the series. I'm considering this for some different projects, but I kind of prefer to have villains that are more "hands on" so to speak. Meaning we get to see the MC interact directly with the villain in some way or another.

Thoughts?

 

[Feo Takahari]

The biggest problem is characterization. If they don't appear much, you'll have a relatively limited time to show rather than tell why they're no wicked. This works best when a): the villain is more like a force of nature than something you're supposed to hate and b): anything you have to say is concentrated on characters other than the villain.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

We've got a few series antagonists, most of whom come and go, but one definitely looms in the foreground from the very beginning as a threatening presence. Even though the protagonists won't come into direct conflict with her until about halfway through the series, she enjoys manipulating events from an early stage and watching how they turn out - not exactly in a full-blown Evil Overlord mode (yet) but she has her fingers in a lot of pies. She, herself, rarely interacts with the protagonists but she has children who do. Because we work in multiple, deep POV's, we can get around the characterization problem.

So we think the looming antagonist can be lots of fun!

 

[stephenspower]

Or the big bad can be seen through his or her smaller bads, each book leading up to the final confrontration, they way James Bond worked his way through the rest of SPECTRE before getting to Blofeld; LOTR builds through less evils until it gets to Sauron; and Sherlock Holmes says he's been seeing Moriarty's work for years before tackling him.

 

[wordwalker]

"Show don't tell" is the standard wisdom, and we're talking about characters that don't follow that... but it's possible to work with them anyway. Part of it is making full use of the effect they have on the story (not hard for a Big Bad), another is using their history --and hopefully some real surprises in what they do-- to give them some more specific characterization, even at a distance.

Sauron is definitely a force of nature type, with more presence than specifics on the story. Moriarty works the same way even though you wouldn't expect him to (Holmes takes a page or more telling about how dangerous he is and "dies" beating him, but Watson barely gets a moment to lay eyes on him). Blofeld we usually get to meet, both when he's ordering (and punishing) his agents and when Bond catches up with him, so he's only partly about his indirect reach.

I've done villains that hid themselves for a while (sometimes in plain sight), but never tried a full Sauron. It's risky, if only because so many people consider it a cheat because of him.

 

[ThinkerX]

A key part of my world revolves around powerful Lovecraftian monstrosities who usually lurk in the background, and only rarely make direct appearances - though they have minions aplenty, many with goals of their own.

 

[Penpilot]

I think looming villains are fine. I think the trick is to make them felt and present without actually being there. Sometimes it can be like those monster movies where you never see the monster, but you see the aftermath of their passing. I guess that kind of like what Feo said about them being a force of nature, something that can't be reasoned with, something that has no compassion, etc.

And other times it can be like stephen said, you can give the villain a face, but it's just not his true face. It's just his underlings and you can create a sense of being hands on that way by letting the reader know there's something bigger controlling things from far away. You could maybe also do a Dr. Claw thing from the Inspector Gadget cartoon. The reader gets a glimpse of the big-bad handing out orders and planing, but never gets to see their face only the clawed hand.

Another thing, you could make a mystery of who the villain is a part of the story to be solved like in Watchmen. In the movie we see the aftermaths, we get a shadowy glimpse, and we get underlings to be passed through.

 

[stephenspower]

i should add, however long it takes, you have to show the big bad in the end. that's what the readers have been waiting for. (can you tell i'm still bitter at the end of john carpenter's prince of darkness, which just showed a claw coming through a portal? i don't care if the devil looked as weird as it did during that torchwood episode when a giant demon stomped through london or "this is the end" which featured much the same thing. satan must be revealed.)

 

[Penpilot]

^^ ummm... spoilers.

All bets are off on the old-old stuff, but movies like This is the End are pretty recent and not every one has seen them.

 

[ThinkerX]

One twist on this I've been considering for a while is that the 'big unseen bad guy' directing his horde of minions from the background really isn't all that 'big' close up (in terms of personal magical power and authority both) - just somebody who knows how to play the system and exploit weaknesses. So, instead of a 'Dark Lord', you have a sort of 'Dark Undersecretary'.

 

[Feo Takahari]

One twist on this I've been considering for a while is that the 'big unseen bad guy' directing his horde of minions from the background really isn't all that 'big' close up (in terms of personal magical power and authority both) - just somebody who knows how to play the system and exploit weaknesses. So, instead of a 'Dark Lord', you have a sort of 'Dark Undersecretary'.

Relevant.

(Alternately, there's Casey and Andy, in which an alternate version of the devil turns out to be hell's "chief pen-pusher." Evil has many forms . . .)

 

[A. E. Lowan]

I went looking for a YouTube video of the ending to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, "Fear Itself," where the characters finally come face to face with the Demon of Fear - but couldn't find it. I thought that would be relevant... and funny.

 

[Penpilot]

I went looking for a YouTube video of the ending to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, "Fear Itself," where the characters finally come face to face with the Demon of Fear - but couldn't find it. I thought that would be relevant... and funny.

Found this poor quality version of clips from Fear itself. They sound is replaced by some weird music, so best to just watch it without the sound. The link starts the video at the most relevant part, the end.

Buffy-4x04 Fear,itself - YouTube

 

[The Dark One]

I think looming villains are fine. I think the trick is to make them felt

That doesn't sound very scary. What next a calico golem?

 

[Penpilot]

That doesn't sound very scary. What next a calico golem?

No Cotton Djinns

 

[wordwalker]

Is the brand Fruit of the Looming?

(Hey, it was that or "Designer Djiins.")

 

[Noma Galway]

Is the brand Fruit of the Looming?

(Hey, it was that or "Designer Djiins.")

I think I prefer "Designer Djinns, myself.

 

[The Dark One]

Stop looking for hidDEN iMeanings!

 

[Chilari]

I like the idea of looming villains. You can play with your characters' expectations - and your readers' - before introducing the villain. How do they live up to expectations? In what ways do they surprise the characters when the characters have heard or assumed so much about them? Done right, it could be quite powerful.

 

[jasperjheart]

I think the looming villain can be a tad overdone. That being said, I do love a good looming villain, if they are done correctly. These villains were my favorite part of LOTR and The Sword of Shannara. Those epic fantasies with fellowships and wars between races, and the overall common goal of finally getting to destroy the big baddie who has been threatening from the very first act of the novel. I think with those kind of characters, the many generals and minions of the big bad one, the ones who make more appearances throughout the works, really give the looming villain his mysterious and foreboding power. If these baddies, are scared enough of the big baddie to bow down to his every whim, then HE must be really scary. Thus making the readers both nervous and excited to finally meet him/or her later on.

In my own writing, I prefer a forthright villain, someone with a distinct POV and does some nasty stuff to really make the reader's despise and/or fear them. But I'm not one who would put it past myself to include a big bad villain, if I could pull it off with enough finesse that it wouldn't look like a Sauron rip off.