Halloween is a season for bad actors. I started out a career in acting as Snidely Sneersome in the melodrama The Perils of Chastity, and nothing was more delicious than being booed amid a hail of thrown popcorn. I always imagined I was the driving character in that play, and I wasn’t wrong. Villains make trouble and cause pain. Here are some tips on what to do if you’re revealing a villain in nonfiction, or using one in fiction.
Show us their dimensions. That’s plural; it’s deadly to have a one-dimensional villain. We love to see stories of a person who sees their worst attribute as their strength. I like to say that even Hitler was a baby on a woman’s knee once.
Make them smart. Intelligence gets a character in motion. It can also get them into trouble. You can always write a villain as stupid on purpose, much like Elmore Leonard creates the dumbest and funniest bad guys in his crime fiction. Smart can lead you to scary, and fear is always a reliable way to grab a reader’s attention.
Make your villain appear all the way. In Viral Times, Jennifer Nation shows up by the third chapter and stays in the story. She’s with us until the last 14 pages of my 266-page novel. She’s busy at the start, like a lot of villains, but even busier in the end. Your villain drives the action of the book, and you don’t want to uncouple this locomotive until the very last chance.
Make your antagonist pay. Something takes place in a satisfying story that gives us hope or insights. Denying the villain what they want is one way to make them lose, but it’s even better if they pay. World Series tickets revoked: that was pretty bad for a New York fan who tried to pry a baseball out of a Dodger outfielder’s glove. Considering how the Series finale turned out for that fan, maybe not all that bad, coughing up a five-run lead in the deciding game. Villain Fan probably thinks he got away with something.
That misunderstanding is a nice third rail for a villain. They don’t comprehend themselves the same way their enemies do. It lets our heroes take action to defeat them.
