That's not to say you need an embodied villian. But if you have one, they must be a full character, not just a one dimensional evil. You have to have them be actually motivated to continue to be evil, not just evil for the sake of it. Greed works well as motivation. An overactive sense of Revenge too. (Some girl said no to me so now all girls must die...)

Ideally we must almost but not quite sympathize with the evil at some point, but be careful not to make us like the bad guy better than the protagonist.

Think of Helen's lover Paris, the noble Trojan and you'll find a deeply likable man who was drawn to his doom by his love for another man's wife.

Other grand villains were King Saul, who succumbed to jealousy and lost both his kingdom and his life and Brutus who loved Caeser but could not save him.

Since we are at Hatrack I submit Ender's Game as a good study in constructing good antagonists:

Peter: here is an antagonist that helps define the protagonist. the protag even wants this antag to love him. since we only see him through Ender's eyes we see him as a villain at first--but to him his reasons for being spiteful toward Ender and Valentine make sense. And in later books I even started to like Peter.

The Formics: This is the protag that the antag is trying to understand. in coming to understand them, ender is able to defeat them, but also comes to love them. And we find out they weren't even planning a third invasion, they only engaged humans in further battle in an attempt to keep us from their homeworld.

Stilson and Bonzo: Really they are just bullies, scared little boys. Ender doesn't want a fight with either of them, but when he is forced into a corner defeats them completely. They are antags that can't be reasoned with.

The military leaders and battleschool teachers: Graff,Anderson, Dap: To me they are the closest thing to a true villain in this book. They are using the antag in order to carry out their plans. But even then, their motivations excuse their actions. They are saving the world after all.

All that said, there is probably a book somewhere that talks about the different kind of antagonists.

Here are some other interesting antagonists to think about, fictional and historical, and some truly villainous, but even then their goals made sense to them:

Darth Vader, Judas, Hitler, Voldemort, and Oberon (Magic Street). I'm sure you can think of some more.

Also, antag doesn't even have to be human or even sentient. 'Old Man and the Sea' and 'Moby Dick' come to mind.

Not all villians are necessarily like this, but when they are, it always stands out to me as an exceptional example of evil.

I found all of these hysterical.

quote:

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a good villian has some traits that are going to be shared with a lot of readers,

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So true! It also helps if the hero has some annoying traits which make you mildly and subconsciously dislike them.

Think of Elsa at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. She wasn't pure evil, but she couldn't let it go.

To me a villain is one who is reasonable and logical in their actions but their actions are terrible and terrifying. We can see why they act the way they do, we can see the logic, we can understand if we try, but we are afraid to try. It causes the visceral response: I don't want to understand him; he's a monster and if I understand him maybe I'm a monster too!

Seduction/Repulsion.

BTW I have real trouble being afraid of a character who, in the final analysis is mentally ill. To me there is no real terror in it. There has to be intent.

PS: All so, I don't all ways spell all right correctly either. Sometimes I all together forget, I think I have all ready made that mistake too many times. But then, so did James Joyce and Flannery O'Connor, so I'm not too worried about the 'alright police' and their reactionary truncheons.

Don't know what that means.

I think that I look for the same characteristic in a "villian" that we all look for in villians, and all our other important characters. It's about believability.

So, that usually implies things like semi-rational motives, and a certain amount of charm/intelligence/virtuce necessary to get into the position the villian occupies to carry out the plot villany. If you look at real-life "villians", sometimes they seem totally lacking in believability.

quote:

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I tell people I'm evil all the time, a lot of them don't agree too readily. I find it much easier to get people to say that I'm good.

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Survivor, this strikes a chord. Have you read Castaneda's description of Don Juan's character self analysis as Don Juan compared himself to Don Genero? He said that he hated humanity so much that he could afford to be kind to people but Don Genero loved humanity so much that to protect himself he had to be cruel, cold and aloof. (Or do I have that backwards? If so my excuse is that it was about 20 years since I read it.)

Don Genero was a really great villain, more so even than La Catalina, because he really wanted to be kind but was paralyzed by his love.

In my opinion that's lazy and boring and not worth reading. Maybe if there was genuine effort in designing a syndrome or condition, it may be interesting, playing around with the notion of accountability and intent.

I do think that whether the villain is fat or skinny or tall or short or greek or inuit or whether they lit fires, tortured small animals and wet the bed as a child can have a significant bearing on their nature but none of those sort of factors of itself is enough. I reckon that the evil-doer must choose evil. They may have perfectly logical reasons in their own mind but must know what they are doing.The villain chooses evil because it suits their desires. They don't try to choose the 'right' thing. Right and wrong doesn't come into the equation. If the 'right' thing suits their purpose then they will do it. If it doesn't, they wont. Someone who perpetrates evil as a result of being deluded or misguided is weak and boring.

Think of the movie Frailty

• The initial villain (Dad, Bill Paxton) was mentally ill = boring.
• The real villain turned out to be the son (Matthew McConaughey) who was a sheriff in full control of his faculties=interesting.
• Turns out the villain has deep seated psychological trauma from witnessing murder and the religious delusions of his dad=boring again.
  

The movie was a bit of a dog, but it makes my point.

Which brings me back to the theory that a really good villain might be one who is motivated by kindness and goodness and love of humanity. These traits would make them exquisitely vulnerable to a catastrophic failure or worse a catastrophic success.

Consider two men in history. Both loved humanity and loved their countries. They were dedicated soldiers in the highest tradition of chivalry, and both were ethical, moral and devoutly religious.

Choose one as the villain and the other as the hero depending on your own whim. It doesn't matter which because they slaughtered their own troops like sheep with stupid blunders and slaughtered the other's troops with brilliant successes. Of course I'm talking here about Grant and Lee, the two Janus faces of war.

Anyway, that is what I mean. For a villain to be a real villain they must choose evil. How they justify the choice may be interesting. Did either Grant or Lee or both choose to do evil? If so, how did they justify it?

I remember a story about a POW camp in nazi germany and some of the horrific crimes the guards perpetrated -- especially the brutal murders of children. I could not understand how someone could bring themselves to do those things. What factors combine in order for them to be able to justify their acts? Is it the possession of absolute power without accountability?

Like choosing to 'torture under appropriate circumstances'. Appropriate torture! How can someone conceive and believe such a notion?
Ouch! that one was a bit hot.

Make your villains strong enough to know that they are choosing evil and choose it anyway then justify, justify justify.

The choice is evil, the justification is interesting.

However, Lee would only be a villain if, while leading the battle at Antietam (my history is awful, hope I'm getting at least some of the details right) he reveled in the deaths of every soldier there, because each death was one step closer to a free south, or somesuch. Even villains, depraved as they are, need a motive for their actions. They become villains because they do not care what atrocities they have to perform to achieve their goals.

In this way, an antagonist (or, even, the protagonist) can become a villain, if the slip into poor judgement occurs in a realistic way (as HSO's commentary on another thread, the people against consumption of milk (or whatever)).

My $0.02.

This genre has so very many flawed characters who are not evil, who have a true depth to their personalities. Who is actually evil in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Maggie or Brick? Is Cool Hand Luke really evil or just insanely stubborn? Mark Childress' character Aunt Lucille in Crazy in Alabama was both traumatized and insane, but she wasn't evil.

There are some real exceptions to this assertion, including some of my least favorite books, but I'll just skip them.

[This message has been edited by keldon02 (edited December 23, 2005).]

Villain and antagonist are not the same thing.

In my opinion and experience, a villain is someone who works within a framework of good and evil, whereas an antagonist is simply a character at odds with the protagonist.

What makes a good villain for me is, a sense of humor, a complete lack of recognition that his actions are on the whole completely reprehensible and he must be completely unapologetic.

Hmm. Maybe I'm dense, but I didn't notice any "big reveal" of any true villain. The bad guys behind the bad guy were the same bad guys all along, weren't they? Or did I miss something? (And if you were referring to the reveal about the totally nasty guys, that wasn't all that surprising. Made sense.)

As far as Serenity, I think the main reason the movie didn't do well was that it was burried in the September and early October release period. This period is one of the lowest attendance times for movie goers who are burned out after summer and too involved with school and other things that are just starting, like football season.

Serenity was a difficult sell from the beginning, and it never had a lot of support, so it got made, but also not given much chance due to its release timing. That added to its limited marketing doomed it to low numbers at the box office. I don't think it had anything to do with the movie, because I talked to people who knew nothing about Serenity the series and liked it just fine. It's really a shame because it was probably the best movie I'd seen since May.

Best,

On villians, a good villian always has motivation. One of the worst things I see authors do is have the evil guy who's just evil.

In many Eastwood films he performs "villainous" acts even though he is the hero, hence there needs to be a very distinct line drawn between Villain/Antagonist.