Hi writer. Welcome back to another episode of the Write It Scared podcast. I'm so happy you're here. Today is a solo show.
In the last episode, episode six, I interviewed Sam Skal, an author and book coach for the mystery thriller and suspense genres.
And we discussed what a writer needs to consider when writing in the mystery thriller and suspense genres. And one thing we touched on pretty heavily was how to think about your villain. But today, I wanted to dive in a little deeper and talk about an antagonist versus a villain and touch on specific questions that you can ask to help you craft your villain's backstory and really create a credible villain that is going to be believable.
So, what's an antagonist versus what's a villain?
The terms villain and antagonist are often used interchangeably, but that isn't correct, and it leads to confusion when writers are shaping their story's conflicts.
An antagonist is any force that opposes the protagonist's efforts to achieve their desire. The antagonist is responsible for creating the story's central conflict and the ultimate story question. The antagonist can be a person, situation, or event, or it can be an internal trait that gets in your main character's way. Now, this is where a villain is different. A villain is an antagonistic force, but they intend to harm the protagonist, and usually in the worst way possible.
They are malicious and ruthless. As archetypes, they often embody something sinister about humanity. So here's an example. Voldemort is clearly a villain. He wants to kill Harry. However, Severus Snape is an antagonist, a character who seems to oppose Harry's goal of getting on. Well at Hogwarts. So, you could say that all villains are antagonistic forces. But not all antagonistic characters are villains. That is true.
90% of the time, unless your protagonist is the actual villain. So, in this case, you think, think of Dexter or Walter White in Breaking Bad, but we're going to leave those fellows off the table for now.
So, does your story need a villain?
Maybe. Most likely, you're going to instinctively know the answer to this question. But if not, look at your genre. If you're writing an action-adventure. Horror, mystery suspense, a romantic suspense, or thriller than most likely.
Yes.
So, how do we use our villains to create conflict and interesting plots? Well, by knowing our villains as well as our protagonists, we can create intense conflict and interesting plots. That's a price. The reader. So we want to make sure that we're asking these questions about our villains. What do they ultimately want? Why do they ultimately want it?
Why are they willing to do terrible things for it? And how do they justify their actions? What do they value? And are there any lines that they absolutely won't cross? Why not? How are they linked to the protagonist? Why do they have something personal against the protagonist? And how did this develop? Now crafting villains is not an easy thing.
Sometimes it's really hard to wrap our head around a villain's motivation. I mean, I'm not a murderer. I doubt you are either. And I mean, I get Hans Gruber and diehard, you know, the money, the greed, and I think his life was at stake if he didn't deliver. But. You stepping into the shoes of a psychopath is not exactly natural. But it helps me if I remember that villains are people, they are terrible and deeply flawed, but people just the same.
They had parents of some sort. Probably. They had childhoods first kisses loves dates, sex, pets, and jobs, all of that. Or maybe they missed out and they knew they shouldn't have. My point is they weren't just born evil. They lived a whole, and maybe miserable life before they put a target on the protagonists back. It's a life that shaped them into the merciless tyrant that we're going to meet in the pages.
To me, villains are people who hold a grudge. They often feel like they've been treated unfairly by the protagonist by society or someone close to them. And as a result, they're determined to write this perceived wrong. They believe their actions are justified or at least they are doing something bad for a good reason. And that is what makes them scary.
Their moral compass has been lost somewhere along the way in their past.
So when you're creating a billon, you want to look at their entire life story. Who were they as a child? How were they treated? What pain did they suffer and how did they cope? What beliefs do they have about themselves and the world because of their lived experience. What do they believe they need to feel fulfilled? When did they lose touch with humanity? Finding the answers to those questions will make your villains credible. They won't just be doing evil deeds for the fun of it, because that's boring.
When villains take action for a justified reason, they create believable problems for your protagonist. They will have a plan to get what they want and your hero. Might throw a wrench into those plans or the villain may have waited in the shadows for a long time for the protagonist to come across some exposure threshold.
And now it's time to go after them. The conflict in the story will always come back to the logic behind the villains actions. Their motivations and their justifications.
If this feels backward to how we normally frame a narrative because we're always talking about the importance of character agency and character-driven stories. I get it. Of course, our protagonist must have agency.
They have to make decisions about something important to them and take action on that. But remember, the story is a dance between two opposing forces, and the main character and the protagonist isn’t the only one driving the story bus here Without the antagonistic force to create the first bit of conflict, the inciting incident. The protagonist would bump along unchanged.
And that means there would be no story. We need both sides of the equation because it takes two to tango.
So, as you're writing your novel, remember that your villain has a story of their own. Sure. They may be on the dark side of morality, but their actions lie in layers of hurt anger and maybe even a hint of twisted logic.
So make sure you know what motivates them, how they came to be the person who is willing to do horrible things, and what they are risking by doing it. So dive into their past, unravel their motivations, and let their character arc challenge your protagonist's journey.
If you would like a quick PDF download of the questions that I asked in this episode to help you create a credible villain by looking at their backstory and digging into their desires and motivations, go to https://www.writeitscared.co/villains. I will also post a link to that resource in the show notes.
Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope this episode was helpful. If you have any questions, you can reach out to me at my email address. stacy@rightatscared.co. And I will see you next week.