In Today’s Blogpost and Video, we’ll dive into Part 6: How to Brainstorm Your Villain. Tips on Writing Vivid Details about Your Antagonist’s Backstory and Goals.

As writers we want to geta vivid picture of who this bad guy, gal or opposing force is(including backstory), who tries to stop the Hero from reaching their goals. At the end of your story, the Villain must face off with the Hero and lose.

Just a little aside here: The ideas I share in this video seres are brainstorming techniques that have helped me to write my own novels. But it’s important to remember that all writers are unique in their own way and what works for you … might not be what has worked for me. I want to encourage you to experiment with different methods for brainstorming your own story ideas — and come up with a way that works best for you.

But that being said, lets dive into who the villain is and why it’s important to write down details about the antagonist in your story…

 

Just who is your villain?

This is the opposing force(either a person or could be a larger community or could be a thing or even nature, etc), that is trying to stop your hero from reaching their goals.

Some authors use another word to describe the opposing force. James Scott Bell prefers to call the antagonist the opposition character.

He says it’s because the opponent does not have to be a villain, just someone with an agenda opposed to the Lead Character. He gives the example of Deputy US Marshall Sam Gerard in movie, The Fugitive.

In that case you have a good opposition character — it’s pretty clear in this example that the opponent has more power (physical; psychological or positional) — than your Hero.

If your villain or opposition character does not have more power than your Hero or Heroine, than readers will not worry about the fate or outcome of your Main Character.

And to keep readers turning the pages… we definitely want them to worry about what will happen to the Main Character.

So how do you give your Villain or opposition character more power?

A great way to give your villain more power is to give her or him a team. As in the example with the US Marshall — Sam has a team of investigators working for him and the resources of the Department of Justice at his disposal.

How do you create a compelling and memorable villain or opposition character for your Hero?

Popular Novelist Dean Koontz writes: “The best villains are those that evoke pity and sometimes even genuine sympathy as well as terror.”

In other words, the best villains are never only “pure evil”. They are complex and sometimes charming and able to manipulate.

What details do you need to create a memorable villain or opposition character?

1.It helps if you can show the reasons that your villain feels justified in what he or she is doing to oppose the Hero or Heroine.

If in your writing — you can create the Villain in such a way that the reader feels empathy towards the bad guy or gal — then you will have amazing cross currents of emotion that really compel readers to keep reading.

A great way to understand how your villain thinks — is to imagine that he or she is placed on trial and now the villain has one chance to justify his whole life and must appeal to the reader’s hearts, minds and emotions.

2.Your main opposition character or villain needs a backstory.

James Scott Bell encourages writers to make your villain a victim of his or her own choices.

So as you are brainstorming your villain’s backstory, do a deep dive into the first choice(and 2nd or 3rd) your villain made that began her laundry-list of corruption or criminal activities?

Write down the emotion of it — because it will help you when you begin to write those scenes in your story.

3.The best villains are enticing and have some parts of themselves that are compelling.

For instance — some villains are very smart – like Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs; Some villains have lots of worldly power like Le Chiffre played by Mads Mikkelsen in the James Bond movie Casino Royale.

Sometimes the best villains are so charming… that they end up being attractive to the readers… and when they do evil things — the readers are taken off guard by their actions.

In really compelling thrillers or mystery, it’s the details and power of the villain that makes it into a great novel or movie.

When your reader feels like the opposition character or villain has a lot of strength — power or intellect or something else — and you’re also able to make readers empathize with your villain in some way, you will draw your readers in and will create a page-turning story.

In Alexandra Sokoloff’s book “Screenwriting Tips for Authors” she says that Villains have a lot to do with your story’s theme. That they are an entire half of a story’s theme.

A story is very often a thematic argument between a hero or heroine and an antagonist. At its most basic level the Hero/Heroine represents one vision of how to live and the villain represents the other way to live.

Often, the antagonist shows a dark vision of what your hero or heroine COULD become — or perhaps is on the way to becoming — and it’s through battle with the antagonist that the Hero or Heroine is able to change.

For instance, in the original Star Wars trilogy — the hero — is in danger of becoming his opponent — Darth Vader — and Luke has to overcome the opponent within himself.

There are other kinds of forces of opposition that we see in movies:

• Man vs. Nature like we see in “Jaws.”
• Man against Machine — like we see in “The Terminator.”
• Man against Monster — like we see in “Alien.”
• Man against The System — like we see in “The Net.”

Also there are multiple levels of antagonists in stories.

For instance – in the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” George Bailey (the Hero) is not only fighting Mr. Potter, but a whole way of life that destroys community and individuality.

Another example is the movie; “Raiders of the Lost Ark” — Indiana Jones has to face many antagonists like: Belloq; Major Toht; and Colonel Dietrich as individual opponents — but he also has to face the Nazi army in general. So there is opposition on multiple fronts.

There are also non-human villains:

Like an antagonist that is larger than a human.

For instance in “The Hunger Games” the villains are Cato or President Snow — however the whole dystopian society is really the big antagonist which Katniss and the rebellion are up against.

Since I’ve mostly written villains in romance novels, I’ll give you a little of that perspective.

Some romance novels that have more mystery or suspense elements,
Can have a more obvious external villain.

For instance in the movie The Proposal with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds — the INS agent is a great external villain who seems to enjoy giving them all sorts of dire warnings for the penalties of faking a marriage just so the Heroine can stay in the country and not be sent back.

With a softer type of romance like sweet or clean or a romantic comedy — you might not have a forceful external villain.

Instead perhaps the Hero and Heroine’s INTERNAL opposition are a big part of what’s getting in the way of the romance… which will be a KEY to the BIG question for romance writers which is: What is keeping the Hero and Heroine apart?

In my first clean billionaire romance under a pen name, the Hero is asks his childhood friend if she would agree to a fake marriage. He would receive his inheritance from his great-grandfather — and the heroine would get the money she needs to pay the bank so her late father’s ranch doesn’t go under.

However, in this story it’s the INTERNAL opposition that keeps getting in the way. The Hero refuses to fall in love — because he was engaged once before to a woman who cheated on him — and she doesn’t want to fall in love because she still blames the Hero for failing to save her father’s life in the truck accident when she was a child.

So the Hero is afraid of commitment and has trouble trusting — and the Heroine is afraid to trust the Hero… so she has her walls up — which of course by the end of the novel, the walls come down and she begins to trust him enough to fall in love.

So the internal Opposition is a type of villain in romance novels also.

Here are some tips that might help you create a great villain or opposition character.

Write a list of your top 3 favourite novels — and who the villain is in each one. Write down details on what you learn about those villains and how those storytellers have handled the problem.

Write the backstory of your villain and different situations or pain/abuse that might have led up to the reasons the Villain is the evil guy or gal they are in this story.

Write down your villain’s special skills or talents: Is he extremely intelligent like Hannibal Lector? Or is she very powerful?
Describe details about your opposition character.

Write down real flaws and wounds and fears from the villain’s backstory.

Decide if your bad guy is subtle with how they carry out their evil plans or is your bad guy more blatant with the way they hinder your Hero’s progress?

By the end of your story — the climax — your bad guy must be stopped by the Hero(if you’re writing commercial fiction).

After you’ve done that, you will be ready for the next video in this series. The next video – Part 7 — is coming up next.

In the next video, we’ll talk about how to Brainstorm and write down your story’s main foundational elements.

1)Inciting Incident; 2)Crossing the Threshold; 3)Midpoint(revelation) 4)All is Lost; 5)Act 3 “Aha Moment” for the Hero.

I’ll share how to brainstorm details of these five story beats in the next blogpost and video.

Thanks for joining me today and I’m excited for you as begin your journey to write amazing stories.

Happy Writing! 🙂