25 Tips For Writing BETTER Villains

Two Professional Writers give 25 Villain Writing Tips.

[thatonepersonyouknowtheone]

tip number 0: if your story doesn't need or benefit from a villain, you don't need to include one, or at least not a traditional one. Alternatively you can make the conflict be driven by the "way of the world", happenstance, the hero's own actions, or any of millions of other options, some generic and done before, some creative and original as heck, go wild

[zmroyhe]

Tip #26: Give your villain a top hat, monocle, a swirly mustache and a black cloak. Those never get old and always make your villain more better than not having it.

[lancerguy]

'Villain at rest' is one of my favorite tropes ever. Some of the most memorable moments in fiction for me have been side chapters where we see how the antagonistic faction behaves when not... being the antagonistic faction. As a wise musical once said:

"When a felon's not engaged in his employment,
or maturing his felonious little plans,
his capacity for innocent enjoyment
is just the same as any honest man's."

[curlamus]

Twist villains tips. From my experience, there are a few common gripes with twist villains, so I’ll try to compile the biggest issues here.
1. The “bigger fish” villain. The heroes think they’ve finally won, but alas, the big bad had an even badder boss behind them! Make sure this bigger bad gets enough screen time to be as intimidating and compelling as your old one. Also, make sure they’re actually badder beyond just “I’m this guy’s boss.” If the big bad blows up a building, the bigger bad blows up a city. They need to have more of an impact on the world and characters so the audience isn’t just left wondering why we needed to get rid of the old villain.
2. The “evil all along” villain. Contrary to what people might tell you, no, foreshadowing isn’t the only way to do this trope right. Some foreshadowing is good, but it’s not everything. It has to be in line with the villain’s character. You can change the villain’s personality a bit post-twist, but if they are completely and utterly unrecognizable with no good reason, the audience will wonder how this is the same character. If you need a twist villain with a completely different personality with no explanation... just make a new character. If Mr Nicey McNicePants suddenly starts kicking puppies because MWAHAHA IM EVIL, that’s not really clever, that’s just ruining a perfectly good character.
3. The “change of heart” villain. Similar to Evil All Along, but they actually started out on the main character’s side. There’s 2 ways to go about this. The change of heart can be sudden, because of a new piece of information or a really compelling argument by the villain, or it can be steadily built up. The first one can be risky, but it pays off if done well. The biggest thing to remember when doing the first one is that it has to be reasonable for the character. Example: A character spends all story hunting down a man who killed his lover. This is his sole motivation for traveling with the main character and he thinks that the main villain is the man he’s looking for. At last, he confronts the villain, ready to take revenge, when the villain presents undeniable proof that the one who murdered his lover was actually the main character. In a fit of rage and betrayal, the man turns on the main character and attacks. This works because it’s consistent with the man’s character so far. He wants to find his lover’s killer, so naturally when he discovers the one he’s been traveling with all along I the one he’s hurting for, he’s gonna be pissed. For the second type, it’s easier, but it can still be screwed up. Example: All story long, a friend of the main character wants to win a war by launching a full asset on an enemy city. They have the men and weapons needed, but the main character insists that it would risk the lives of too many innocent civilians. As the story progresses, the main character’s army suffers heavy losses, and a friend of the main character is killed, but he still refuses to launch an attack on the city, for it would make them just as horrible as the ones attacking them. Eventually, the friend goes rogue, and bombs the enemy city. Countless lives are lost, but the enemy is forced to retreat, the friend is proud of what he’s done, but the main character goes off on him for killing so many. The friend is furious, they have the upper hand, they’ve conquered a major enemy city, why isn’t the main character happier? The friend turns into a chaotic force of destruction who is entirely unconcerned with who he needs to kill in order to win.

Naturally, like with all tips, there are exceptions, but as a writer and a reader, these are the general guidelines to not make your fanbase hate you.

[MyArchive]

A villain doesn't have to be enemies with the hero. The villain could easily be a rivaling sibling or perhaps a close friend who is going down a dark path.

[FirithPanda]

A tip that I will say that can work: a villain can just be a villian. sometimes a villain doesn't need a backstory or much, just a goal, ideal, or action that'll come into conflict with others.

[IsaacMayerCreativeWorks]

corollary to tip 10: Don’t feel obligated to include a redemption arc! It’s entirely fine for a villain to continue to be a villain until the end. If you do feel like a redemption arc is in the best interest of your story, try to make it feel earned. If a real-life horrible person went though the same events, would you feel like they deserved reappraisal? This is, of course, not a law of writing or some nonsense like that, just a decent rule of thumb

[VulpesHilarianus]

Another tip:

A good compelling villain doesn't just affect the protagonist and/or the deuteragonist. They affect the entire world around them. Note that the world does not include the entire planet or universe, but simply the visible places, people, and communities you choose to focus on in the story. If they don't have this area of effect they might be better off as a rival.

[thedogfromraditude]

I love how these tips are more than just “thing good, thing bad” like a lot of what you cover in the reaction videos. These are all great, but tip #18 especially is something I’ll definitely do before writing a villain character in the future.

[bloodlily]

Tip 18 reminds me of a piece of trivia about the writing of Leverage. Apparently people complained that the villains of the week were too cartoonishly evil, but the writers actually based the villains off of real people, and in some cases the writers had to tone the villains down.

A tip I personally recommend is "Basing things off of real life or trying to go for realism is fine, but always consider why and how something is 'realistic', and whether it benefits the story to be realistic in this instance." This applies to fantastical works too (especially fantasy works).

[koshavinka]

2:20
Tbh what I find even more interesting than the Villain having the opposite of the Hero's belief,
Is the Villain having the same belief as the Hero, but blown out of proportion till it becomes extremistic and immoral.
Like the Hero being a Freedom Fighter while the Villain is an Anarchist Terrorìst.

[_mmm_juice_]

Bill Cipher might just be one of my favourite villains of all time. He only shows up for a handful of episodes, but he makes his presence known and is built up over the series to make him a genuine threat. Not to mention the mystery surrounding him, a unique design and voice that sets him aside from every other character in the show while also making him hilarious. Every episode he's in, especially the finale, are some of the best episodes in the entire show. I know I'm super generic by saying this but why not lol

[yourlocalnerd]

Dictators are such a great source of inspiration for villians. Especially because some of them make some really weird laws or just do weird stuff just because they can. I forget which dictator did this but I believe one of them outlawed golden teeth for example.

[skalliedA]

Something worth considering maybe: not every story requires a villain. sometimes an antagonist is enough, and an antagonist doesn't even need to be a person. Not every laconic summary needs to amount to: good guy punch bad guy until he stops.

this is probably poorly worded. It's late :D

[rainyrouge]

I honestly hate writing tips like "The villain should be the protagonist of their own story" or "the villain should be sympathetic" or "the villain should be morally gray". In general, "do it this way because doing it this way is bad" aren't very helpful. All of those can be great ways to write villains, but there should be no "should". Writing a complex, sympathetic, morally gray, altruistic villain may be great for some stories, but it won't work in others.

[ThatGreenMachne]

Tip No. 13, 12 and 11 are my favorite so far. When I think about scenes featuring my villain OC Gideon, my favorite scenes are ones where he spends time with his wife and is extremely affectionate with her, or is taking care of a friend. Gideon is a character who is extremely loyal to the point of being possessive, so if he sees anyone who is a threat to his family (his wife, children, and brother) don't expect that person to be alive after he's done with them.

[ScientistSalarian]

I'm writing a story from a villain's point of view, he's kind of like Magneto in the fact that in his world, mutated people are an oppressed people group and he wants to overthrow the system that tramples on them. Basically he manipulates a mutant heroine to side with him to kick-start a civil war where the people who want to purge mutants will be cleansed, he doesn't want to RULE the world, just rebuild it in a way that lets people like him live in semi-normality and in a way where he can live in peace on his grandfather's old estate with his loved one (the heroine he manipulated originally, but the fake affection actually becomes genuine over the course of the story!)

[envysart]

You know who is a great example of a lot of these actually? Stain from My Hero Academia. Stain conflicts completely with the villain Shigaraki because despite both despising hero society, they have completely opposite ideas about what to do about it. Stain is a pro-hero society reformist and wants to use force and intimidation to threaten heroes into reforming themselves, and cutting out the angles of money and popularity which cheapen the profession. Shigaraki views the entire edifice of hero society as a failure, and only seeks to destroy it.

Villain on villain conflict like this can be a great chance to bring out the unique traits of each villain and their own motivations.

[kiki.]

I'm writing stuff rn and y'all have genuinely helped so much

[lucasjeffery]

I've always loved Barbossa in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. His first scene with Elizabeth at the beginning of the movie is a damn near perfect set up: he surrounds himself with finery and signs of opulence with the dinner he serves, and compared to the rest of the crew he dresses well. Despite this, he looks as dirty and unkempt as the rest of the vagabonds he surrounds himself with, his hair greasy and his fingernails dirty. In a way he's his own tragic protagonist: he's been without the taste of food, the warmth of woman by his side, or the comforts of a mortal existence and he would go to the ends of the earth to remove the curse placed on him and his crew to taste something as simple to us as an apple again. However it's his violent actions and hostility to everyone else in the cast that makes him the villain: the sacking of Port Royal, kidnapping Elizabeth, planning to murder Will. He works wonders as a dark mirror to Jack Sparrow: the man Sparrow could be but was never ruthless enough to become. Jack Sparrow has some lines he won't cross. Barbossa seemingly doesn't have any. Even still the script manages to come back to that moment of genuine anguish inside the character with his final line of dialogue, as he opens his shirt and reveals the blood pooling down his chest, mortal again. "I feel... cold." Barbossa makes Pirates of the Caribbean worth watching for me, on top of so much other great things about that movie. He's my gold standard villain and he's who I think of when I think of a great villain. Also, Geoffrey Rush is having the time of his life in this movie and he's the creamy, rich frosting on that movie's cake.