How to Write a Complex Villain

How to write a complex villain — one who's believable, worthy of your hero, and keep readers turning pages.
This video discusses:
[1:02] Villain vs. Antivillain
[2:30] Writing a Strong Villain
[3:50] 4 Types of Complex Villains
[3:56] 1. Noble
[4:23] 2. Pitiable
[4:58] 3. Well-Meaning
[5:28] 4. Villain in Name Only
[6:07] 5 Tips to Creating an Effective Villain
[6:24] 1. Have a realistic and sympathetic backstory
[6:58] 2. Have strong motivations
[7:43] 3. Exhibit power
[8:13] 4. Force your protagonist to make difficult decisions
[8:53] 5. Cause the protagonist to grow
[9:19] Start Writing Better Villains

Click here for related videos and resources:
How to Create a Powerful Character Arc
How to Write A Novel: My Proven 12 Step Process
15 Characteristics of a Strong Villain (checklist)
What is an Antihero? How to Write an Unconventional Protagonist

🎉 Ready to Take Your Writing to the Next Level? Explore These Free Resources!

[IntergaIactico]

I was honestly looking for this, scary that you made it. Thanks Jerry.

[odojang]

Every person is the hero of his or her own story. That applies most of all to bad persons in real life; thus, the key to beleivable antagonists in fiction.

That's what I get from your insightful analysis. Thanks. This will improve my writing a lot.

[CivilDefenseEngineer]

I recently discovered that you're not done crafting your villain until you can switch and tell your story from the villain's perspective and have the protag be the villain. (But then switch back because the villain really is the bad guy)

[DanpaRojo]

Gracias por tu visión! Me sentía atrapado pero con tu frase "haz un villano con el que te gustaría ser amigo" se resolvió todo

[urspecialme]

A good teacher makes their students think. A great teacher inspires others to apply the teaching. You have done both my friend! I so appreciate you! As you spoke I created a villain for my protagonist. Thank you!

[b.a.norman]

Well-explained, Jerry. As I think back to my first book, my villain was basically a cardboard cut-out with a "Hello my name is 'bad guy'" label on his chest. As I revise for the next edition, I will add a background story to make my villain more relatable and his actions understandable.

[ronaldcruickshank]

Jerry - your insights are helpful to me.I had given my villian a backstory so readers will understand his motivations but hadn't made him likeable enough... doing the re-write starting today. Thank you.

[MrWayout]

I thank God I found you on YouTube, every time I watch a new video. I'm writing my first CC Killer"

[djcooper]

I went in search of one video and have watched a number of yours. This made my mind wander into books and shows where the villain was gripping and made me ask why, which you answered here. This is some of the best videos on the craft of writing I've seen yet. Thank you so much for them.

[dianea]

Thank you so much for this video. It has helped me organize a complex villan in a complex story. I will have to rewatch this video again, and may be third time. It is a great help because of your insight into why the complex villan works so well. Thank you again.

[CyberBeep_kenshi]

My complex 'villian', which is my player character in a dungeon and dragons campaign is my magnum opus. i spent ages designing and playing him. Real goals and motivation (at its core he wants to keep existing, so very relatable), but he became so powerful that the bar keeps getting higher and higher. he's basically locked into a burning desire to become a god, in a world where gods are not possible.

character sheet is about a 150 pages lol.

my favourite 'baddy' from series or movies is Scorpius from Farscape.

[davidholmgren]

A villain with personality and brains, , no matter how twisted and tormented. LOVE IT! Great video.

[atheistapostate]

I’m loving these videos.

I’m a seat of my pants writer starting off. I enjoy the by the seat of your pants approach because once I write what I want to do, I can go back and fill in blanks that could be better and add more to the story

[joycreations]

Your tips are such powerful that when I listen to them, i automatically inherited a villain arc in me 😭🦇💓

[slipton]

As you were speaking, it came to mind that the character Mitch Leary played by John Malkovich was a very complex villain. Thanks for your generous sharing!

[personx]

Villains don't always need redemptive qualties. Sauron and Emperor Palpatine are two of the most iconic characters. Neither of them have a single redeeming quality. Both of them are pure evil.

[PureMagma]

You are always spot-on with your advice and explanations. Thank you for reaching out to motivate and elevate other writers! 🔥🎉💞

[HOLDENPOPE]

I would like to add to this that complex doesn't really exclude pure evil.

The most obvious way this can manifest is obviously a variant of the noble antagonist. A paragon who believes they are in the right while committing absolutely horrible atrocities. This might seem like bad writing, but frankly, it's realistic. Think about how many groups there are, past and present, who believed themselves to be in the absolute right while utterly destroying other people's lives. There is no questioning that these people are villains, even if they categorically do not see themselves this way. A good fictional example is Quilge Opie from Bleach. He is so utterly devoted to the deaths of Hollows and percieved glory of the Quincies that he effectly starts trying to start a Hollow genocide under the guise of recruitment. He's pretty clearly pure evil, but he views himself as a hero and as one of Yhwach's angels. And while an argument could be made that he's a charicature...he's based off Heinrich Himmler, so...

A better example is probably characters who don't really believe in morality. They don't necessarily see themselves as a villain, but they also don't see themselves as a hero, and are motivated by more amoral goals. Scientific curiosity, some variants of nihilism, and so on. Examples here are Kimblee from Fullmetal Alchemist, Askin Nakk Le Vaar from Bleach, and nearly any mad scientist out there. They might have more evil traits, like sadism and such, or more admirable traits, like limiting collateral damage, but their core motive is still amoral.


Then...there's the card-carrying villains. The mustache-twirlers. This might seem like an oxymoron, since these villains do acknowledge that they're villains and thus are presumably at least in part doing what they do because they're the bad guy, but...there are actual psychological reasons, in real life, that someone could be like this. If someone is both a psychopath and a sadist, then they will crave stimulation and actively choose to get that stimulation by ruining other people's lives or even killing them.
Note that a psychopath is a real mental illness, not something fiction made up, and it's usually defined as someone being born unable to feel normal emotions or empathy. A person like that categorically CANNOT have a 'noble' motivation, if 'noble' is defined as 'selfless'. They either fall more into the amoral camp, ignoring morality entirely and just doing whatever, or they actively lean into the idea that psychopaths are inherently evil and roll with it. They aren't inherently serial killers. Psychopathy by itself does not to my knowledge include a 'must kill anyone I see' mentality. Regardless, these kinds of people DO and HAVE existed, so to say that it's unrealistic for a villain to do bad things for bad reason is disingenuous at best. Psychopathy is a real thing, and you don't need to combine it with much to get your classic serial killers or mustache twirlers.
For instance, in real life, there was the Zodiac Killer. He told the police that he killed people because he wanted to have slaves in the afterlife. I seriously doubt anyone with that goal and motivation would see themselves as the hero. Let's also not forget that most evil empires usually seem to be based off the N*zis, and even though some, if not possibly most N*zis did see themselves as heroes, there is absolutely no arguing that what they did makes almost all of them disgusting human beings (Save for those who apparently fought against the system in various ways, though those seem to be few and far between). While it's easy to say that the Zodiac Killer was just being cartoonishly evil to troll the police, we have to acknowledge that this 'cartoonish' level of evil came from somewhere. 'Deranged serial killer who murders people for fun' is not a character archetype that appears out of nowhere, and again, there really don't need to be that many overlapping mental illnesses for it to be a reality.

This isn't to say I categorically hate sympathetic villains though, which is moreso what this video seems to discuss, I actually have plenty who are genuinely sympathetic and plenty more who are to some level complex. Very few are just 'bad guy who does bad thing because they are bad guy' and even fewer are genuinely one-dimensional, since I tend to add a personality as a dimension. I might list my villains in a later comment or reply at some point.

[interviewsbykathleen]

This was great. I've been trying to figure out how to add more dimension to a villian, without slapping the reading in the face with what smuck he is. Thank you.

[reinettevisser]

The advice you give is so golden, I feel I should be paying for it. Thank you!