Tag: antagonists

Categories
Mystery/Thriller/Suspense

Excuse me, Mr. Bad Guy. Why?

mystery suspense thriller

There’s nothing better than a creepy villain.

A deranged killer on the loose terrorizing your hero and heroine.

A madman who won’t back off.

A serial killer stalking his next victim.

Take your pick. The bad guy (or girl) can make or break a story. The antagonist isn’t a prop but a main character whose development is often overlooked.

Villains are fun to write. Yet, as writers, we tend to focus on the protagonists, creating elaborate backstories for our beloved couple. However, by doing so, we miss an important detail while we think up new ways to threaten our hero or heroine. We painstakingly figure out the goal, motivation, and conflict, or maybe the wound, lie, and fear of our main characters, but we miss the ever so important reason why our villain does what he or she does.

Does your villain have a backstory explaining the reason he or she has become a killer? We cannot forget to focus on the why.

The serial killer was neglected by his mother, and now he hunts and kills women he perceives to neglect their children. He transfers his feelings to these women to exact revenge on his mother.

Or the arsonist’s business partner finds out he’s dealing drugs through their company. He kills his partner and sets fire to cover up the crime and destroy the body. The hero or heroine unknowingly sees the bad guy, causing the arsonist to eliminate the witness.

Maybe the stalker was rejected by his high school sweetheart, and he is determined to exert power over any woman that reminds him of his first love.

Don’t shortchange your villain. Give him or her a solid backstory. And in the process of discovering the why, don’t forget to create weaknesses or vulnerabilities in the villain. By doing so, we can make the bad guy or girl human in the reader’s eye. This allows your reader to connect with your killer in a love/hate relationship or to feel sorry for the poor chump who’s out to wreak havoc on your hero and heroine.

So, go ahead, interview your bad guy. Discover your villain’s secret from his or her past? Find out what makes him tick. Make him or her human.

Remember, villains, are important people too.

What method do you use to create a villain that your readers love to hate?

Sami Abrams grew up hating to read. It wasn’t until her 30’s that she found authors that captured her attention. Now, most evenings you can find her engrossed in a Romantic Suspense. In her opinion, a crime and a little romance is the recipe for a great story.

Sami has finaled 15 times in writing contests, including receiving first place in American Christian Fiction Writer’s Genesis Contest in 2019 and Faith Hope and Love’s Touched By Love Awards in 2018. She lives in Northern California, but she will always be a Kansas girl at heart. She has a love of sports, family, and travel. However, a cabin at Lake Tahoe writing her next story is definitely at the top of her list.

Visit Sami at:

Categories
Mystery/Thriller/Suspense

Creating Believeable Villains

mystery suspense thriller

What are the trademarks of a villain?

Do they have dark, piercing eyes, a snarly grin, crooked-yellowed teeth, knobby fingers, an evil laugh? Or is there more to it than that? The antagonist can be the hardest character to write but also the most fun. How can we be successful at it? Here are some tips I’ve learned along the way.

Make them appear human – nobody likes a pure evil villain. They need to be likable or they fall flat. Give them a redeeming quality. Maybe we even want to cheer for them. Think Hannibal Lector or the Blacklist’s Raymond Reddington. Yes, they are evil but still have amiable qualities. We find ourselves applauding them.

Give them a clear motivation for their actions – we need to know why they’re doing their evil deeds. Their motives need to feel fair and just in their minds. Start with the basic reasons for their crime. Passion, greed, jealousy, but give it an added kick. Let’s place ourselves in their shoes. What makes them tick? Why do they think the way the do? In one of my stories the antagonist has a daughter who needs constant medical care for her deadly condition, so he justifies his actions to get the money to provide her with the necessary attention. This gives the reader empathy for the antagonist.

Give them flaws – we can’t make the villain’s life too easy. They need to work hard at being bad. Keep them in constant conflict, making things more difficult for them as the plot unfolds. Maybe they’re OCD and that keeps them from getting their hands dirty at a crime scene. Perhaps they’re disabled and struggle with getting around. Whatever the flaw, make it realistic.

Hide them in plain sight – don’t make the villain a klutzy moron. That robs the reader and makes them angry. We want to keep them guessing and surprised at the end of the story. Also, we can’t make the antagonist a minor character. This is cheating and doesn’t satisfy the plot. Give subtle clues as to who the criminal is, but make them the boy next door or the female everyone likes. This will give our stories plausibility.

Give your villain backstory – I like to do a full character sketch on the antagonist just like I do for my protagonist. Don’t cheat them in the development stage of your story. Get to know them. Sit down with them for coffee and ask some poignant questions. What are their dislikes? Loves? What is their deepest fear? What were they doing at the age of fifteen? We need to know them inside and out in order to make them come alive.

Fit their behavior appropriately – plant seeds along the way so when they commit a crime it doesn’t come out in left field. For example, if your villain is about to strangle someone give him big hands. Perhaps he works out to pump up his muscles. Or if he’s building a bomb, give him a military background or one in science. Remember, it needs to be realistic.

Creating villains can be fun. Study your favorite and then design yours to be believable and one that will keep your reader turning the pages!

 

Darlene L. Turner writes romantic suspense and won the 2017 Genesis award in the Romantic suspense category and was a 2018 finalist. She was a finalist in the 2017 Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense contest and won in 2016 (Inspirational Unpublished). She’s represented by Tamela Hancock Murray of the Steve Laube Agency.

Visit Darlene at:

Website: www.darlenelturner.com where she believes there’s suspense beyond borders

Facebook: Darlene L. Turner

Categories
Fantasy-Sci-Fi

Why Your Villain Demands Empathy

Hitler didn’t wake up one day and decide to become one of the most infamous murderers in history. He didn’t get dressed deciding to slaughter Jews. He didn’t eat breakfast one day as a soldier without education or career prospects and the next day become a dictator.

Like any historical enemy, Adolf Hitler experienced a journey in becoming the Hitler history remembers.

Recently a friend and I went to the theater. At the beginning of the movie I was subconsciously rooting for the hero. He’d been presented as the hero after all. We learned his backstory. We empathized.

But then the villain came onscreen. For two hours we watched a grown man devote his entire career to earning his mother’s love. Character-building, engaging stories of the hero interspersed these scenes and drove the plot.

By the time the hero and villain met at the climax my friend and I didn’t know who to root for. Both had strong, heart-wrenching backstories. Both were fighting for their families.

When We Write an Empathetic Villain, We Understand the Hero

Heroes are the crux of a story. They hold the plot together and tie the beginning to the end. The better the hero is written the more engaged the reader will be. As writers, it’s our goal to keep the reader turning pages. The better they understand the villain the hero is fighting, the better they will understand the hero and root for him.

If we want readers to engage at a heart level, we must write villains with hearts the reader can at least understand. With understanding comes further curiosity, and when readers are curious, they turn pages.

Empathetic Villains Put A Spotlight on The Hero

We’ve probably all heard of round versus flat characters. Round characters have a history. A future. A present we care about. When our hero is round, but our villain is flat it makes our hero look weak.

No one cares about a hero who’s fighting a shadow of a person. Readers want a hero who must use every fiber in them to come out victorious. Empathetic villains demand we write heroes worth the title.

Empathetic Villains Help Us Remember the Hero’s Sacrifice

The heroes I remember most are the ones who sacrificed most. The ones who risked everything because of the slim hope they could defeat their villain. When we understand the villain, we understand the cost it took for the hero to defeat him.

That’s a hero worth remembering. That’s a book worth reading again.

I walked away from the theater realizing that for a villain to lead the tension in a story he demands empathy on multiple levels. If readers are to truly engage with the hero, they must empathize with the villain he fights.

As a writer it’s my job to create lasting heroes.

If we can write empathetic villains, we can write truly heroic heroes.

Happy writing!

Sarah Rexford is a Marketing Content Writer, working with brands to grow their audience reach. She studied Strategic Communications at Cornerstone University and focused on writing during her time there, completing two full-length manuscripts while a full-time student. Currently she trains under best-selling author Jerry Jenkins in his Your Novel Blueprint course and is actively seeking publication for two books.

Instagram: @sarahjrexford
Twitter: @sarahjrexford
Web: itssarahrexford.com

Categories
Talking Character

Creating Villains

In order to really show his stuff, a protagonist needs challenges to overcome. The tougher the opposition, the more our heroes can shine.

In other words, to have awesome heroes, we need formidable villains.

Like any other important character, villains need to be constructed with care. Even if they aren’t given much screen time, they deserve a multi-layered personality and backstory that explains how they got to be so nasty.

Five keys for constructing villains

  1. Give the villain a face. Sometimes our hero is fighting a corrupt government, a corporation, or an epidemic. However, a vague, shadowy them will not make a satisfying antagonist. Create a single person that represents the larger entity, such as ambitious executive driven by greed, or a character whose own agenda is at cross purposes with those trying to control the spread of a disease.
  2. Make the villain hard to beat. Better yet, make the villain seem impossible to beat. The stronger and smarter the antagonist, the more satisfying the story. Nobody will be impressed if the hero outshines the villain in strength, resources, and smarts—because there was never any doubt the hero would win. But if the villain outclasses the hero, the result of their struggle is far from certain, and the reader must read to the end to find out how the hero manages to win despite the odds. Then you have a story!
  3. Don’t let them steal the show. (Because they’ll be happy to, given a chance—cads that they are). Be careful not to create a villain who is so eccentric and flashy that they are more interesting than the upright, do-gooder hero. Also, by the end of the story it should be clear to the reader that the villain’s motivations are flawed and that the protagonist’s choice is the better way.
  4. Remember, all humans are redeemable. Your villain may not budge from his twisted evil ways, but deep inside he must have a small piece of his character that is redeemable. All humans are made in the image of God, therefore no human can be pure evil. This may not be true for otherworldy characters such as demons or space aliens, however. Pure evil works in certain cases, but for most stories a villain who retains some aspects of humanity is the more believable choice.
  5. Make the villain believable. All well-developed characters have reasons they act the way they do. Your villain’s thinking may be twisted, but deep down she must believe she is doing what is right, even if everyone else thinks her actions are wrong. The more readers understand why the villain acts the way she does, the more they can relate. Be warned, however, not to create too much sympathy for the villain’s misery. You don’t want readers to identify with the villain’s pain or the justice of her cause to the point they root for her instead of the hero.

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