10 WORST Tips for Writing Villains

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With Halloween right around the corner, we’re talking about everyone’s favorite characters: villains! Villains are the baddies of our novels; they’re there to thwart the hero’s plan and basically mess sh*t up. A while back, I broke down the ten best tips for writing villains, and today I’m breaking down the ten WORST tips for writing villains. Get out the notepad, because I’m covering all the issues with giving every villain a tragic backstory, thinking all villains are mentally ill, subscribing to the theory that every villain thinks they’re the good guy, and more. If you want to learn more about how to write compelling villains in fiction, how to make sure your villains are convincing (without being problematic), how to write realistic characters, or how to avoid writing flat characters, this video’s got ya covered! Be sure to stick around, too, ‘cause Number 9 might earn me a scowl or two...or a thousand. 😠 What do you think makes a villain compelling?

–Straight from my cold, dark heart,
Your Cyborg Queen
#JennaMoreci #CyborgQueen #CyborgArmy

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[Alias_Anybody]

It should be less "all villains think they are good" and more "all villains tell themselves they are justified". Bonus points, leave the "justified" part open for interpretation.

[tariqthomas]

“‘But Jenna, villains are just more fun to write than main characters.’ *Then maybe your main character f***ing sucks!* ”

YES!

[thundertaps]

Jenna: "what if I told you that female villains can have the same motivations as male villains"
Me: "a dead wife!"

[arrow_of_ravenclaw]

My thoughts on the sympathetic villain if its to excuse their terrible actions are best summoned up by Veronica Sawyer

“Blame your childhood. Blame your dad. Blame the life you never had. But hurting people that’s your choice my friend.”

[megalopath]

For the "tragic backstory" point, I thought that funny as my dual villains are basically "villain A had a fairly decent life but the traumatic backstory for villain B was they knew villain A".

[issyparker]

Not every villian has to be relatable, reedemable or sympathic! One of my favourite villians is Light Yagami because of how unrelatable, unreedemable and unsympathic he is(plus, who would WANT to relate, sympathise with him or reedem him?). I really don't think every villian needs to be an everyman or tragic for me to care or like! They just need to be well written and compelling like Shadowweaver from She-Ra or entertaining and charasimatic like Hades from Disney's Hercules.

[gregjayonnaise]

Tip: your villain can be sympathetic and still be a bad person. Just because you understand why a villain does certain things and feel pity for them doesn’t mean that they are A. Redeemable or B. Above criticism.

Making a villain sympathetic is merely a means to make them more compelling, not to sweep their bad actions under the rug because they’ve had it rough. If you are going to redeem a villain, you need to make them active in their own redemption.

Zuko from ATLA is the most obvious example of a good redemption arc. He does bad things, but once he’s realized how he can choose for himself, he works on being a better person ACTIVELY. No one forced him, and while he got help from his uncle and friends, it was all his own actions and choices that led to it.

[milestrombley]

Villain: "I'll just leave you alone without making sure you will die inside my death trap."

[guicaldo]

"Sometimes the villain needs to commit genocide, and there's no coming back from that."

Half the cast of Fullmetal Alchemist would like to have a word with you.

[erikrinard]

Tip 9 all the way. It's frustrating how fixated certain fandoms have become on justifying why certain villains are redeemable, why they should have been redeemed, etc. I honestly think it's because people don't want to admit they like morally compromised characters, but whatever the reason I'd like them to just chill out.

[tododeku]

this honestly came just in time, i’m trying to figure out how to build my villain. also love being greeted by the squid game doll💀

[peyton]

This may be way deeper than necessary, but I think that female villains’ common motive for villainy being youth and beauty says a lot about our society.

People have been saying it forever, but the fact that it’s so commonly written as a motive for villainous behavior says a lot about how women (who are taught at a young age that beauty adds worth) are viewed.

From someone who’s always been told that being beautiful gets you places, it’s important and makes you worthy of love, attention, and loads of other bullshit, they begin to view beauty as something ugly and evil.

From another perspective, women are seen as vain and shallow; that the one thing women will do anything for is beauty and youth even if it destroys everything around them. It’s kind of a twisted cycle because it’s impressed upon women frequently but people often view it in a negative light.

[thecakegarden]

#9 "Villains must be redeemable" *Looks at my list of completely irredeemable monsters and then at my morally grey, redeemable ones* I think i'm good on that front :D

[goldenapplesaga]

I think one of the best writing advice actually comes from Obi-wan
"Only a Sith deals in absolutes"
There's no such thing as a "have to" in storywriting. It's one of the reasons I love it so much

[haleylampley]

I find the all villains must be redeemable pretty annoying. Sometimes I just don't want to forgive them, especially when they do drastic shit that they shouldn't be forgiven for. Also, sometimes I just want my villains to be totally unrepentant in their actions.

[WilyGryphon]

7 made me think of Yzma from Emperor's New Groove, who, in the initial draft of the story, wanted eternal youth and beauty and was willing to summon a dark god to destroy the sun to get it. In the movie that was ultimately made, she wants to kill Kuzco and rule the Incan Empire. And also one of the differences between the villains of Tangled the movie and the series: Mother Gothel wants to be young and beautiful forever (although the vanity may actually be secondary to immortality since she goes for stretches of actually aging between Sundrop doses), while Zhan Tiri wants to become a physical god and kill everything because she's a freaking psychopath.
If Gothel's primary concern is interpreted as immortality, that does give her a similar motivation to many male villains, such as Voldemort, David Xanatos, and others.

[courtneybartlett]

"Sometimes the villain commits genocide, and there's no coming back from that."

Vegeta would like a word with you.

[gonegirlboss]

In regards to villains with tragic backstories, I think Dexter handled this so well. Season four follows the trinity killer, who is inadvertently responsible for his sister’s death, which in turn leads him to feeling responsible for his father and mother’s death as well, so he kills people in the same cycle in which his own family died while also hiding under the guise of a deacon at a church. the backstory is tragic, but it doesn’t make what he does redeemable, it just offers an explanation for his behavior rather than trying to make you feel sorry for him.

[aurthurpendragon]

The reason I feel villains tend to be more inherently interesting than the main character is because of the intrigue that villains inherently bring. Nobody ever questions why the hero does what he does, it's just kind of taken as a given. Of course more interesting stories can definitely give heroes interesting motivations, but that's not something that's on a reader's mind right off the bat. However, villains, by their nature, no matter what kind of villain that they are, go against what we were taught to believe is right and moral, and that instantly makes us more interested in them from the very beginning.

[theminisimmer]

I'd also like to add on to the part about villains having only tragic back stories. Some villains are villains because the behaviour that causes them to be a villain is ingrained in their society. Take a character from the Empire in Star Wars for example, perhaps they were raised that way all their life and believe that peace can only come from an iron fist, and that leads them to do terrible things.