Writing Villains #3 - Motivation

Character motivation is critical to writing villains. Without it, your villains can seem cartoony or uninspired. In this video I discuss the four levels of character depth for helping you write a great antagonist.

***LINKS***

Ellen Brock's article "CREATING DEEP REALISTIC CHARACTERS":

Creating Character Arcs by K.M. Weiland:

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CHECK OUT MY OTHER VIDEOS:

5 Fatal Mistakes that New Writers Make

5 Time-Saving Tips for Writers (And Readers!)

How to Write a Book Pitch

Writing Villains #1 - Start with Your Hero

Writing Villains #2 - Goals

Writing Villains #4 - When to Introduce Your Villain

Writing Villains #5 - Plot Points for Villains

Writing Villains #6 - Impacting the Hero

The Anatomy of Story REVIEW:

Save the Cat Writes a Novel REVIEW:
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Brandon McNulty on Social Media:

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Credit to SkyDilen for my video intro.

[lennysmileyface]

Sauron is definitely my favourite.

His goal is to attain power and rule Middle-Earth
His motivation is that he believes that he can make a better world.
His dark belief would probably be that power and force are the best tools for attaining domination. (why he made the rings)
The origin would be his initial form was created to value order and perfection which would ultimately end up causing him to be tempted and corrupted by Morgoth, becoming his greatest general. Sauron used to be a well regarded Maiar and smith known as Mairon (meaning "the Admirable") and became known as Sauron (meaning "the Abhorred") after his corruption was revealed..

[avivastudios]

Your breakdowns are really good.

Did you make 13 videos on villains on purpose? That's a good number.

[matityaloran]

Ironically Big Jack Horner, a literal cartoon villain hits all four levels of character depth

1) His goal is to gain exclusive control of all magic
2) His motivation is envy of magical creatures
3) His deep dark belief is that only magic can make him happy
4) His origin is that his fifteen minutes of fame as Little Jack Horner ended when Pinocchio showed up.

[WriterBrandonMcNulty]

QotD: Who's your favorite villain, and what are their four levels of character depth?

[NaDa-kwfu]

Favorite villain of all time is the invisible monster, coming from the subconscious mind of 'Morbius' in the 1956 movie Forbidden Planet.
Morbius himself was not a villain in the real context, but his inner most thoughts betrayed his real desire.
The movie is very aged now but had some really ground breaking stuff at the time including the first fully electronic soundtrack.
It's a bit left field but it still has a lot of power.

[ajarofpickles]

Joker more specifically Heath Ledgers joker, idk something about him is both horrifying and compelling all at the same time

[calebstone]

My favorite villain is Thanos. His goal is to reduce the universe’s population. His motivation is the want for survival. His deep dark belief is that without control over the universe it cannot sustain itself. The event that catalyzed his belief was the extinction of his race.

[LexiCooksStuff]

Thanks for the advice! I've been struggling to figure out my villian's character as a whole, and I'm hoping by fleshing these 4 things out, I'll get some gold :)

[MyWorld-eboz]

Joker
Goal: Corrupting Batman
Motivation: Proving everyone is corruptible.
Deep Dark Belief: He's not crazy, he's advanced beyond society, which can become as evil as him.
Origin of Dark Belief: He lost his mind from society's corruption.

[PuppetMaster-Blade]

My favorite Villian is probably Queen Myrrah from the Gears of War video games. Myrrah is the Queen of the locust race who created an entire civilization underground throughout many years and she later sends her hordes of locust to land to destroy the human race, but as the games continue we learn there is a bit more at play.

Mild Spoilers for GoW series.

For most of the games she portrays herself as this all evil character who wants to destroy the human race, but later we find out that her people are actually being killed and raided from their homes by a disease, which is the main reason she attacks the humans. The disease was caused by Imulsion(the worlds form of gasoline) and made her locust grow sick and start attacking her underground civilizations. Myrrah now is setting a war among the human race, not because she wants too, but because she is forced to do so.

In all I love her character because she starts off as an evil Villian, but ends up turning into a person who just wants to keep her race safe as well, but does it by force to the humans just like how her people were driven out by force. Really interesting take and one of my favorite Video Game franchises ever.

[HarishAgastya]

Whenever I have doubt in writing I watch your videos writing tips are excellent....thank you 🙏🙏🙏..

[calliethewolfcat]

Thanks! This gave me some great insight!

[MyWorld-eboz]

This doesn't have anything to do with my favorite villain, but it's about my novel's villain. Here are his four motivation points.
His Goal: Murdering the main character, Chris. He also wants to have the ultimate power to torture people as much as he wants.
His Motivation: He knows Chris better than anyone. He loves tormenting humanity.
His Deep Dark Belief: He favorites killing people he knows best. Tormenting, and murdering living things is fun.
Origin of His Belief: He was a clone of, cloned by Chris, and they share a large quantity of their memory, and the full portion of their brains, and with this protagonist being his creator, that makes him the one who the villain knows better than anyone.

[adamsworld]

Im glad I found this, because I have developed kinda a rogues gallery of Villains for different story brands, but I realized that I haven't really given them a motivation and just made them pure evil buttholes. I sometimes tell myself "A Villain with No Motivation is forever bad." So thanks for making this video.

[randomfandoms]

Ok told myself i would put the villain process in the comments on here so heres this one


Goal: control

Motivation: to have stability and be able to control their life and go far in life

Deep dark belief: you have to act a certain way or say certain things or just be lucky or look good to go far in life and succeed and one screw up can ruin it all

Origin of belief: when they were young they had a very unsupportive family and very few, if any, friends for a support system. Their family was kinda emotionally abusive and they kinda give gifted kid burnout vibes. They quickly learned what to say and when and how to say it. Being themself got them hurt so they’ll be someone else


Let me know if it sounds good or if there are any questions or ideas or just criticism in general

[TheArthurAbbott]

The Flash speedster villains always had a lot of depth.

[ВеселыйЛимон-ыс]

My character wants to win a championship, his motivation is to prove one special man that he can do it. His dark belief is that only perfect person deserves the best. The origin of his belief is in his childhood and demanding parents.