Building the Perfect Beast:

Creating Believable Villains

Here's a good one for Halloween.

I was asked this question by a writer at one of the many forums I visit. He's working on a horror novel, which he built using a plot–first structure. He's now ready to populate his fictional realm with characters.

His question: How do I create a good villain?

Horror often produces outrageous, fun, memorable, and entertaining bad guys. All of my published work is horror, so I've managed this trick a few times in my travels. Still, mine are relatively anonymous.

The ones that work on a large scale, spawning franchises lucrative enough to make fast food restaurants green with envy, succeed in large part because they are exceptional. They fire on all cylinders, push buttons, create controversy – they get everything right.

Quick quiz: pick the first five scary bad guys you can think of and jot them down. They can come from either books or movies. Don't think too much about it. Just write them down as fast as you can.

Done? Okay. Here are my five:

1. The Wicked Witch of the West (The Wizard of Oz)
2. Darth Vader (Star Wars)
3. Freddy Krueger (Nightmare on Elm Street)
4. Michael Myers (Halloween)
5. Hannibal Lecter (Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, Hannibal Rising)

These are not listed in any particular order; like my favorite writing books, I'm more fond of Darth on some days and less fond of Hannibal on others, but they all rate. And I'm not going to enter into a debate here on who could outscare who. It's relative.

Of the five I've listed, probably the least well known in contemporary pop culture is the Wicked Witch of the West. Children from my generation know her - and her equally wicked squadron of creepy flying monkeys - very well indeed. In the old pre-cable days, The Wizard of Oz was broadcast on CBS every summer.

But Margaret Hamilton's green-faced, hook-nosed bad witch archetype has lost some of its power now, replaced by newer, more socially significant creatures.

Some may grieve her loss, but this is as it should be - because one hallmark of great villains is that they are relevant to their time. They may be timeless (Darth Vader, Hannibal) or locked into a particular cultural referent (Freddy Krueger), but they must speak to their generation.

Bad guys in movies and fiction are a symbol of the social condition. Who would have thought they were so important, right? They are, in my opinion, more important than the hero. They are a response to something in society – something Stephen King has called “phobic pressure points.”

King has certainly been responsible for the creation of enough fictional evildoers to be considered an expert. And he is great at creating villains who are drawn from their times.

One of my favorites, the insane political manipulator Greg Stillson from The Dead Zone, is a reflection of mid 1970's political paranoia in the midst of the Carter administration – itself a reaction to Watergate and the Kennedy assassination.

If you want your villain to last, ask yourself: who are people afraid of now? The answer, while sad, will supply you with enough phobic pressure to populate a hundred horror novels.

The irony is that the answer now is very similar to the answer you would have gotten asking the same question in the 1950's. Who are we afraid of now? The outsider. The stranger. The man with the dusky complexion and the black mustache who might have a bomb hidden in his coat.

I'm not saying your contemporary villain has to be a terrorist. But he – or she – needs to capture the flavor of today's fears. The renegade agent. The rogue state with nuclear capability. The faceless mega-corporation.

Jonathan Demme's 2004 re-take on The Manchurian Candidate is an example. The original, directed by John Frakenheimer (Rollerball), is political satire. The remake takes its inspiration from the role of big business in government manipulation.

Want a challenge? Create a better villain than Meryl Streep's throughly despicable yet utterly believable Eleanor Shaw. Any woman who would do what she does to her own son is inarguably evil as the day is long – yet she champions her own cause reasonably, with conviction, and sees long-term good for the entire nation in her choices.

Good villains are three-dimensional. They're real people. They have mothers, fathers, friends, wives, lovers. They have pasts that helped mold and shape them. Ming the Merciless, Snidely Whiplash, cardboard cutout evil-for-the-sake-of-evil characters are not going to cut it these days.

Even the most evil of real-life villains had a plausible argument for what they did, a belief system that supported it. Most don't even think they're doing wrong – and if, like Serenity's villain (known only as The Operative), they are aware that they are monsters, they justify their actions by pointing to an outcome promising greater good.

A good technique for building interesting villains is to build your protagonist first, then create your villain as a mirror of your hero – someone from a similar background, similar circumstances, who evolved with values in opposition to those of your protagonist. Part of your story can then involve an exploration of how people who come from such similar circumstances can become so different.

Luke Skywalker and his father, Anakin, came from very similar backgrounds. What's the difference between them? Simply that Luke didn't allow himself to become bitter. He wasn't seduced by the promise of personal power. He didn't give in to the dark side.

Good villains can change. As they have pasts that helped mold and shape them, they have futures with the potential to further that molding and shaping. Which means they will have an arc in your story, just like your protagonist. An arc that either parallels or opposes your protagonist's arc is a great way to add depth and resonance to your story.

In Raiders of the Lost Ark, the similarities between Indy and his arch rival, Rene Belloq, are eloquently summarized in one of the movie's few static sequences. “I am a shadowy reflection of you,” Belloq tells Indy. “It would take only a nudge to make you like me – to push you out of the light.” The close relationship between the personalities - and the very fine line separating them – makes for compelling fiction.

Both hero and villain must be fully-formed, fleshed out creations. It won't do to skimp on either one – and skimping on the villain is the kiss of death for your story.

Happy Halloween!

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