The Ultimate Guide for Creating a Villain

[Brian G Turner]

A fun and concise piece about making villains more interesting overall:

The Ultimate Guide To Creating An Authentic Villain - Writer's Edit

 

[night_wrtr]

A useful technique for choosing an antagonist is to examine the protagonist. What sort of character would challenge their strengths and bring out their weaknesses?

I liked the above quote as something to think about in depth for creating a great counterpart to the protagonist. I am thinking about adding a few viewpoint chapters from the antagonist in my wip, so this was very helpful.

 

[Luiglin]

Good article. My current WiP doesn't have an obvious villain. There is one but he won't really be revealed until the end and even at that point he's only doining what he thinks is good. This will not be done to cheat the reader more that the stpry feels like it should be told this way.

 

[Toby Frost]

I once read a very interesting article by Ramsey Campbell that, in his favourite novels, the bad things that happened to the heroes couldn't have happened in that way to anyone else, no matter how blameless the heroes were. Although the villains weren't a simple inversion of the heroes, they were very much a reflection of them.