Developing Villians

[Futhark]

I have a question about growing the villain through the story. He is pretty well developed with his origin, he loves his mum, has a soft spot for persecuted witches, is intelligent, powerful, manipulative and an exquisite planner. I think he may actually be the protagonist as he has the goal of overthrowing the local empire that destroyed his ancestor's evil kingdom centuries ago, and the heroes are the obstacles. However, I read recently that the villain should change as much as the hero does when attempting epic fantasy, and at this piont he is quite static throughout the plot. How can I change this?

 

[FifthView]

However, I read recently that the villain should change as much as the hero does when attempting epic fantasy, and at this piont he is quite static throughout the plot. How can I change this?

The villain can change quite a bit, starting out more sympathetic and then through his actions throughout the novel grow utterly irredeemable as he chooses the evil path when confronted by events that happen. If he's the POV main protagonist, this is probably the best route to take, since you'd be revealing so much about what is going on within him throughout.

But if he's not a POV character, you can instead choose to reveal things about him gradually rather than all at once. He may appear sympathetic, conflicted, at first; but as the reader learns more about him, the reader begins to realize just how totally evil he is.

In the first case, the villain crosses rubicons, lines he can't uncross, and truly changes. In the second case, maybe he doesn't actually change but instead the reader's view of him changes as more is revealed about him as the novel progresses.

I suppose you could combine approaches even if your villain is the main POV character. A little trickier. The trick would be to suggest that unexpressed potential for evil is ever-present from the start, but he himself just doesn't know it. Even when he occasionally does bad things early in the novel, they come off as ambiguous for the reader who may feel ambivalent about those things. The villain himself may seem unaware of the potentially vile nature of his actions. As the novel progresses and the villain crosses more and more lines, he still doesn't know that he has crossed those lines, and more aspects of his past and inner personality are revealed to the reader as the novel progresses. These were things already in effect earlier, but the outer situation hadn't presented any occasion for these things to be expressed. The villain may be largely unchanged by the end (beyond being more aggressive, desperate, etc.) but the reader's view of him will have shifted.

There is of course the reverse of all of the above: The villain who starts out vile but undergoes an actual change and becomes good. Or the villain that appears vile from the beginning but grows far more sympathetic as more is revealed about him, even if he doesn't actually change.

 

[Futhark]

Thanks for the feedback, it is certainly helpful. He is a POV character, as he is a loner and much of what he does is behind the scenes at first, and I think it will help build suspense if the reader has some understanding of what forces are about to descend on our heroes. I think the idea of changing how the reader sees him is the most promising at this stage. He has already crossed to the dark side, and at the moment his introductory scene is him confronting and destroying his father, and taking his power, that is, eating his heart. But I can see now, if I do it properly, how to reveal his motivations at piece at a time, and hopefully get the readers to admire his tenacity, determination, and maybe even see a twisted nobility in what he is doing.
Great advice, keep it coming.
Hmm, maybe I could create a character that has a deeper relationship with him, instead of just being a thrall.

 

[skip.knox]

A secondary character for the antagonist is often helpful. For one thing, it lets you write dialog!

That secondary character can be a court fool, one who mocks his master, calls him out, entertains him, helps keep him grounded.

Or it can be an old friend, who questions and consults, who worries over his friend as what seemed to be a good idea at first descends into obsession. You could actually make this sort of character the POV, so we see the antagonist through his/her eyes.

Speaking of which, the secondary can be a lover. Someone who admires him, wants the best for him, and has to make her/his own critical choices as the plot progresses. People do cross into dark regions in the name of love.

There are other possibilities, but now you're on your own.

 

[FifthView]

Follow-up:

I think that, for me, there are two approaches, broadly stated.

A character can actually change or a character can be gradually revealed so that the reader's view of him (and other characters' view of him) changes even if he doesn't actually change much.

If you haven't, you might check out Brandon Sanderson's Three-Pronged Character Development. I've posted about this before: http://mythicscribes.com/forums/wri...racters-reader-cares-about…-5.html#post220848

Basically, there are three sliders for each character. Sympathy, competence, proactivity. Sanderson's ideas about creating engaging characters revolve around using these sliders when thinking about your characters. I think that moving these sliders up and/or down for a character throughout a novel helps to keep readers guessing about the character. Will he improve (in any of these three areas) or not–or not enough? That can help to engage the reader. And sometimes it's not about an actual change in the character but only in what is revealed about a character.

 

[FifthView]

A secondary character for the antagonist is often helpful. For one thing, it lets you write dialog!

That secondary character can be a court fool, one who mocks his master, calls him out, entertains him, helps keep him grounded.

Or it can be an old friend, who questions and consults, who worries over his friend as what seemed to be a good idea at first descends into obsession. You could actually make this sort of character the POV, so we see the antagonist through his/her eyes.

Speaking of which, the secondary can be a lover. Someone who admires him, wants the best for him, and has to make her/his own critical choices as the plot progresses. People do cross into dark regions in the name of love.

There are other possibilities, but now you're on your own.

Yeah, great point. I've done that for the villain in my current WIP. The villain's servant/friend is a POV character but the villain is not. This allows me to simultaneously keep some things hidden about the villain (which would be harder if the villain was a POV character) while revealing things about the villain through that other character's view of him.

 

[Futhark]

I didn't know that three pronged scale. Useful tool. Cheers.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Ooo, I like this topic! I like my complicated villains. Once Upon a Time gave me a taste for them...My WIP's villain is probably my favorite character throughout.

My take on it is that the villains development mirror's the protagonists. Since they oppose each other, their goals are mirror images (well, roughly.) Because of this, you don't treat a villain much different than you'd treat a main character. You explore their motivations, desires and relationships. You follow the things that they go through to reach their goals and how it changes them.

As of right now, I'm enjoying developing my villain. Shaping him from a promising, kind, innocent young boy into a heartless, twisted,
dangerous man. He's sympathetic, but completely worthy of the reader's hatred as well. You get to see the full arc of his descent into darkness and it's a shocking transformation, but you can understand what brought him there. I'm not nice to him. I kill his entire family and basically everyone he loves, destroy everything that gives him meaning. I put him through hell, and he comes out of it completely changed, broken and put back together in twisted ways. Yes, he's completely horrible in the end, and I hope my readers will be honestly terrified of him, but if I do my job right you see how he got there and actually feel sympathy for him.

 

[Telcontar]

Follow-up:
A character can actually change or a character can be gradually revealed so that the reader's view of him (and other characters' view of him) changes even if he doesn't actually change much.

This struck me as interesting. Especially insofar as whether or not it will end up mattering to the reader whether or not the antagonist's character has experienced growth, or only the reader's understanding of the antagonist has grown (and the villain has remained more or less the same).

For me, I think it comes down to how sympathetic you want your antagonist to be in the end, and it sounds like you think/want them to be very sympathetic ("I think he may actually be the protagonist"). In that case, they should absolutely go through a character arc of their own. Epic villains are often relatively static and unrelatable in order to give the protagonist an enormous obstacle to eventually overcome. However, epic villains can also be made if you can really drive home their motivations. Certain readers might eventually come to agree with them. "Yeah, burn it all down buddy, they all deserve it" sort of stuff. This usually requires your antagonist to become more committed to their goals overtime, their acts becoming more extreme and focused.

 

[Malik]

maybe he doesn't actually change but instead the reader's view of him changes as more is revealed about him as the novel progresses.

I went this way with it.

Spoiler: SPOILER

After one of the big crux scenes, the villain's motivation becomes clear and you realize that, yes, he's a prick, but he's in a tight spot and he's taking drastic measures. If you're like me -- and I think that more people are than want to admit it -- you grudgingly applaud him for it.

His country got rolled up into the much larger country next door (he went from being "king" to being "lord," which is a real pisser, I don't care who you are), and they're taxing the hell out of him and taking his stuff. They made him Lord High Sorcerer, giving him a seat on their War Council, at which point he engineers an entire war between that country and another one, overstretching their military so there's not a damned thing they can do about it when he secedes and throws them the finger, declaring his nation sovereign again. Frankly, I would have done the same thing. But then, I'm an asshole, too.

The MC is brought in to fight for the country facing the country that he wants to secede from.

When I started this series, my current villain was originally the protagonist; a young stage magician here on Earth who learns that he's actually the son of a great sorcerer and a lost prince to boot, and ends up winning back his father's throne and fulfilling a prophecy. Yawn. (I still have that manuscript, and will eventually release it as a prequel once I make it suck a lot less.)

When this all seemed too easy and I needed a worthy adversary, I brought in a drunken, violent, down-on-his-luck stuntman from Earth to kill him. When I added his backstory as a fallen-from-grace Olympic fencer and developed a fictional world of illegal underground dueling, the whole thing rolled over on its ear and I realized that the real story was about the drunken swordsman's personal struggle for redemption instead of the magician's "coming of age" in a magical world. Because holy shit, yawn.

So, yeah. You can grow your villain or you can grow your readers around him. Or both.

 

[Futhark]

The article I read about identifying your protagonist was from narrativefirst.com, titled
Protagonist and Antagonist: Beyond Hero and Villain (April 7, 2012). It talks about viewing the story objectively, and differentiates between the main character, which character has the proactive goals and which one is in opposition. This is why I referred to my villian as the protagonist, as he is the one attempting to upset the status quo. Well, that's my two cents anyway. I liked Telcontar's comment "burn it all down buddy, they all deserve it". I think this may be my villain's companion's attitude. He's not a stagnant swamp anymore, he's a bubbling hot-spring. Thanks people!

 

[Guy]

Having the villain develop along with the hero is good, but I don't think it's required. I've read plenty of good, entertaining stories in which the villain was a sadistic psychotic SOB from the get go and stayed that way. No trauma or tragic back story. Some people are just naturally a-holes.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Having the villain develop along with the hero is good, but I don't think it's required. I've read plenty of good, entertaining stories in which the villain was a sadistic psychotic SOB from the get go and stayed that way. No trauma or tragic back story. Some people are just naturally a-holes.

Giving a villain depth doesn't necessarily mean they must have a "good" or sympathetic side, or have a tragic backstory that's shown to us. They do have to have dimension. They have to have goals, motivations, quirks and unique traits like any character. I have read books where the villain is a "sadistic psychotic SOB" as you say and been bored to death by said villain because that was their only trait. A villain whose only trait is being evil is a one-dimensional caricature.

In my opinion, perfect evil is just as painfully boring as perfect good. I at least want to see the villain's human side. This doesn't *necessarily* make them sympathetic (though at least understanding what made them the way they are DOES add depth). But, I'm bored by villains who are just "PURE EVIL" for no reason other than "just cuz."

I would disagree that some people are naturally a-holes...but that's a whole other discussion...

We all want different things out of books though...personally I like my complicated villains. I like villains that make me passionately hate and fear them, but also feel sympathetic or even sorry towards them. I like villains full of conflict and pain.

One-dimensional evil might work for a minor character, but for a main villain, no.

 

[FifthView]

Sometimes a story's focus is really more on the hero or antihero characters, and the villain is something like an impersonal antagonistic force without great depth of personality. Sauron comes to mind. I love multidimensional villains, but I don't believe every story must have one.

Of course, even with that type of villain, you can show multidimensionality and slowly reveal things. For instance, new and surprising types of attacks–the villain does something neither the heroes nor the reader expected; and then, does another surprising thing.

Plus, when thinking of those character sliders I mentioned before, it's not as if one must include 1-10 on the slider. A villain could start out at a "3" on the sympathy slider and slowly ratchet down to a "1." OR, if sympathy is not the area of his change, he could start out at a "6" on competency and slowly ratchet up to "10." Perhaps if the heroes are improving their competency, the villain's competency would ratchet down from "9" to around "5" by the end of the book–he'd grow far more desperate and proactive as a response, flailing about. (All that without having to alter the sympathy, or evil/good nature, one whit.)

 

[JaniceKersh]

the villain should change as much as the hero does when attempting epic fantasy, and at this piont he is quite static throughout the plot. How can I change this?

I agree that you can't really develop the villain without throwing them into some action. So you can do either of these: - make him respond to a hero's action, but make that response in the way that will develop the villain; - create a situation where the villain has to face some kind of disaster; make the villain do the first step in the hero-villain interaction (since you reckon he'll be the protagonist)