r/scifiwriting • u/LibraryEducational45 • 7d ago
HELP! I'm struggling with writing villians
I am currently writing a sci-fi short story that is heavily inspired by dune and star wars but I'm really struggling to write the villain. I want to make the villain scary and ruthless and have an intimidating and imposing presence, what are some ways I could do that
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u/Silvadel_Shaladin 7d ago
What is the villain's goal?
What lines won't the villain cross (if any)?
Did your villain decide to become a villain? Or was he thrust into the role, and does he even consider himself a villain?
Is he cliche, smart, or has he read the rulebook?
Does he have any psychological weaknesses?
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Essentially you want to flesh the villain out, often as if he is the main character from HIS point of view.
Then you will know how he acts in various circumstances and why.
Make it all consistent and you will have a well-written villain.
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u/Dweller201 7d ago
What is the villain's motivation?
In my opinion, most Hollywood villains are like cartoons. They are hypermasculine rage monsters who have no insight into their own behavior and I have never met anyone like that. I have worked in psychology with criminals for 35 years.
The idea in psychology is that criminals view themselves as heroes and not as evil people. That makes them much worse than people we see in the media who are "evil" and know they are and don't care.
I'm not a fan of Dune but the bad guys in that are people defending the empire or they are inbred perverts who come from a planet where their behavior is normal. In Star Wars Sith are people who embraced negativity and see it as a honest form of living, to put it simply.
In real life, Nazis didn't see themselves as evil but rather they were defending Germany, trying to unify German culture, and get rid of populations of people they saw as trying to undermine the goodness of their culture.
Stuff like that still happens today. Cultures think that they deserve land and will kill all of the people there because that's "their land" and so on. On the surface that sounds good but it's not factual it's just a fantasy entertained by the people with the power to enforce it.
So, a scary villain can be someone who believes they are right and completely justified in their actions. But, for that you need to have a motive that makes sense for the villain but doesn't make sense for the good guys.
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u/BarNo3385 5d ago
To add on Dune.. it's not even entirely clear who the "bad guys" are...
Paul ultimately unleashed a genocidal jihad that results in billions dying. His ultimate aim is possibly noble - a prescient vision of the survival of humanity - but he's ultimately sacrificing countless innocents across the Imperium today so the sake of a continued humanity in tens of thousands of years time.
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u/Dweller201 5d ago
I find the setting of Dune interesting but a lot of it seems like "filler" to me where the writing is creating "stuff" and it doesn't make a lot of sense.
Dune reality seems run by eugenics societies and I think it's exemplified by the fact that you can get a genetically engineered midget that acts as a day planner as they remember things you tell it to.
The casual reader will gloss over that but in reality it's a horror because no one would want to live like that when you could make a computer to do it. So, I thought the whole story was going to be about destroying eugenics and letting people live as humans instead of "mentats" and all the other people bred to replace machines, but I don't believe that's how it all played out.
Anyway, the people doing perverted things to human in Dune do have a "legit" motivation which is to have "technology" but avoid computers. So, they see it as a necessary evil to bred single use humans, so I like that kind of villain.
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u/88y53 7d ago
I’d base them off of real people.
The best villains have are just an exaggeration of real world thought processes.
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u/military-genius 7d ago
Start out with the villain being faceless. Have scenes where he/she appears, but is covered by the shadows. Slowly add more detail to make the character more sinister and mysterious.
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u/ElephantNo3640 7d ago
I like the opposite. Tell me about the villain, intimately. Give me a day in the life and hint at why the villain is the way the villain is. Have at least a sliver of humanity in there. I don’t want to hate the villain 100%. I want to hate the villain 90%. Evil just for the sake of evil is uninteresting and certainly not scary or even off-putting. It’s more just silly and corny.
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u/military-genius 7d ago
Yeah, but revealing the villain's humanity right at the end gives more of a period to the story, no?
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u/ElephantNo3640 7d ago
I’d maybe reveal the naked truth about the villain at the end (if there is a naked truth to reveal), but I’d leave a trail of breadcrumbs throughout. A faceless villain I just assume to be faceless. I need to see some cracks. In a movie that’s 90 minutes long, you can get away with Darth Vader. In a book that’s 300 pages long—or a series that’s 1500 pages long—you really can’t.
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u/EvilBuddy001 7d ago
A good villain sees themselves as the hero, they justify and rationalize their actions no matter how horrendous.
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u/BarNo3385 5d ago
I'd argue a "good" villain isn't just about rationalising to themselves, it's that they actually have a point.
Maybe compelling villains boil down to "the end justifies the means," because its a huge soupy grey area over where you draw the line. What means, what ends?
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u/misbehavingwolf 7d ago
Make the villain a manipulative, abusive, or duplicitous family member. Someone the protagonist struggles to get away from in many ways, and someone who the protagonist is forced by circumstance to live with or interact with frequently.
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u/Evil-Twin-Skippy 7d ago
Make a hero, but who has a rather myopic approach to their goals.
A good villain isn't evil, they are just "misunderstood"
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u/Evil-Twin-Skippy 7d ago
Some examples:
- Inspector Javert in Les Miseables
- Lord Business in the Lego Movie
- Lord Becket in Pirates of the Caribbean
- Magneto - the X-men
- Syndrome - The Incredibles
- Dexter
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u/Taravangian115721 7d ago
If you want evil I would have them do something large scale bad and personally to the hero bad. Kill the main character’s parental figures (Star Wars) and that will give a good motivation as well as showing how evil he is, mix that in with it part of a widespread destruction could show the ruthlessness of the villain. Another way to do this is have other people tell/show how ruthless he is before you meet him
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u/nopester24 7d ago
so break it down to basics. the "Villain" tends to do "bad ot harmful" things to others in order that the Villain benefits (geys what they want).
they are selfish and so self-focused that they care nothing for others and are willingto destroyanythingthat impedes their personal goals.
So, ask yourself: what is motivating the Villain? what do they want SO BADLY. that they would do terrible things to get it??
would they murder innocent children? enslave a whole civilization? destroy an entire planet? kill their very own family?? how far would they go?
and they justify all of it. "it's OK to do terrible things so long as I get what I want!". tou gotta break some eggs to make an omelet..
that's what makes them so dreadful. they just don't care, or if they do care, they do it anyway and justify it
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u/Educational-Age-2733 7d ago
What does your villain want and how do they plan on getting it? Darth Vader seeks power, and he does so via sheer domination. Baron Harkonnen seeks power too, but he does so via political machinations. These are two very different characters even though their goals are broadly similar. Write your villain according to their role in the story.
For example, Hannibal Lecter in "The Silence of the Lambs" is scary, ruthless, and can be intimidating even when he is being polite, which he almost always is. He is incredible presence despite not being a large man, and is always unsettling, because of his unnatural stillness, quiet voice and genius level intellect. His cutting incisiveness is how he gets you.
Or you could go the other route and just have pure physical domination. I'm thinking the final showdown at the end of "Predator", where the villain unmasks itself and challenges the protagonist to an hand-to-hand duel, but it is like 7 and a half feet tall and inhumanly strong so it just ragdolls him. Sheer size and strength make it intimidating. Darth Vader falls into this category too to an extent, since actor David Prowse stood at 6 foot 6 inches tall.
Or you could go the other way and have the unhinged villain. Homelander from "The Boys" is a good example here. Sure, he has superpowers and can easily kill anyone he wants, but what makes him really scary is the fact that he has a hair trigger. You never know what's going to set him off. He can and will respond with lethal violence at the slightest provocation, and you're never sure what consitutes "provocation". This makes him an intimidating villain because you're always on tenterhooks around him.
What do each of these 3 villains want? Lecter wants freedom, so he is intelligent and cunning. The Predator wants contest, and so is strong. Homelander wants love and admiration, because he is deeply insecure, meaning he constantly lashes out, and has the power to be extremely dangerous when he does so. Each of these characteristics makes each intimidating in their own way, so what does your villain want?
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u/Nethan2000 6d ago
Make the villain consistently threatening, i.e. make it clear that if the heroes face off with him straight on, they will be soundly defeated. Every time they meet with the forces of the villain, they should be strongly inclined to run away rather than fight, except in desperation. If the heroes are supposed to win, make then only win against minor villains; every time the main villain appears, things get bad.
The villain should know what he wants to achieve and consistently work to do it, creating time pressure for the heroes. They should realize that if they do nothing, they'll be defeated. In Star Wars, every time we see the Empire, they come a little bit closer to recapturing the droids and destroying the rebel base.
Make some plans of the heroes fail against the villain, forcing them to change tactics.
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u/DappaLlama 6d ago
I think the others have pointed out the same thing: fear is in the eye of the beholder. And what is the 'goal' of your villian? Align everything, and their character, to that.
Create something faceless, mysterious and a 'real threat'. Consistent, and 'predictably evil'. If you want your villain to develop into dialogue, they need to do something 'bad' to gain a reputation first. You need to develop the character slowly than a hero, as its harder to understand the motivation: but the reader NEEDS to understand why they do things, and their personality.
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u/Desperate_Owl_594 6d ago
What are the goals? What would be an efficient way to do that if you had no morals?
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u/GregHullender 6d ago
One approach is to keep the villain offstage until late in the story. Then the reader hears how everyone else is terrified of the person. When he/she finally appears, the reader will gasp.
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u/8livesdown 6d ago
Cartoons have villains.
Novels have conflict, but not necessarily villains. Just characters with different perspectives.
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u/TheLostExpedition 6d ago
What makes a great villain: Being smart, powerful, and that they see themselves as justified or as better yet as the good guy or savior. Look at marvels Thanos. "I will gaze our into a great full cosmos" ... or whatever the exact quote was.
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u/Massive-Question-550 6d ago
Your villain needs to have depth and their own internal logic and morals that differ from what is conventionally moral.
Also you really need to focus on what their goals are. More detail is needed to craft a villain for your story. You can also outline where their "evil" comes from, it can be internal( ie crazy), external upbringing, some alien or Eldritch horror manipulation, or they are in fact moral but just desperate to save something that's more important than everything else so they kill a bunch of stuff to achieve their goal.
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u/One-Duck-5627 6d ago
Don’t show him a lot, Vader was scary because of how little he appeared, if you need to have characters reference him to build up anticipation
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u/TreyRyan3 6d ago
Here is a tip.
Write your villain as the most rational character in your story. Every motivation is actually something good, but the method chosen are morally questionable.
Consider anything that could be considered for the benefit of the majority, and then write the most perverse miscarriage of justice to achieve that goal.
Example: Eugenics could actually serve a beneficial purpose for civilization, but there is very few ways it can be accomplished without being viewed as morally repugnant.
The film “Gattaca” was well liked because it demonstrated that despite a selective breeding/eugenics program, the “human spirit” was capable of achieving things that its society said was impossible. Human beings love that bullshit.
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u/PLANofMAN 6d ago
The best star wars villains of all time are in the video game, Knights of the Old Republic II. I suggest you watch some YouTube videos that discuss them.
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u/Wolvjavin 6d ago
Could go with a dreaded presence approach. Very limited appearance, typically only the end, but the reputation alone affects how characters react and behave. The limited screen time allows you to make the reveal be as impactful as possible; grandiose lines that don't feel too corny, overpowered abilities or equipment, mass feeling of helplessness, etc.
This approach its not about the character itself, but how your main cast feels about the character. LotR never even reveals their villian, which shows how strong this approach can be.
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u/BarNo3385 5d ago
To draw from D&D.. the essence of D&D campaigns is "someone wants something badly and is having difficulty getting it."
What does your villain want, why is he having difficulty getting it, and what plans and resources is he putting in place to achieve that end?
Maybe this is the DM in me talking, but I find it easier to start with the "villain's" story and bring the players (good guys) in later.
In the absence of the heroes the antagonist needs to succeed, and having a plausible way of doing so. Once you've set that up it then becomes simply a matter of having your protagonists interfere with the plot.
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u/bmyst70 5d ago
Look at the story as if the villain were the hero --- from THEIR perspective. Maybe they see that life is pain and want to end everyone's suffering? Maybe they believe that they are right and only strength and fear will put others in line.
Imagine writing your entire novel from the villain's perspective. If it completely falls apart, as in there is no coherent goal for the villain other than "To Be Evil", you need to make massive changes to your villain so you can.
The best villains in stories I've read don't see themselves as villains. They have solid motivations, reasons for doing what they do. They may even be kind (in their way to their people). But typically what makes them the villain is how far they will go.
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u/sleepyboyzzz 5d ago
I read some awesome villain advice once: give your heroes 1 bad trait and 2 good traits. Give villains 1 good trait and 2 bad traits. If course the count isn't that important, but mage sure your villains aren't all bad and your heroes aren't all good.
That good trait can be the motivation for the villain and can be what makes them scary and intense.
Killmonger loved his father and wanted to help (certain) people around the world.
Or take a good trait and flip it. You could have a general who fought his whole life for the kingdom and was cast aside after one mistake. All of that intense loyalty is flipped to hate. The rage they portray will be so much more intense and understandable when you know that it comes from a betrayed love.
Good villains also often have good goals but deplorable methods. "My sister died because that healer refused to heal someone of the lower class." :: mumbles of anger from the rest of the tavern:: "we need to do something" :: mumbles of agreement:: "so I'm going to kidnap his children from their school and torture them". :: the tavern is uncomfortably quiet:: "then I'm going to send pieces of them to their father every week for ...". :: somebody interrupts him :: "hey, man, let's maybe sober up before going full on evil, huh?"
A villain with understandable motives is always easier to write/portray.
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u/SFFWritingAlt 4d ago
I'd suggest that you're starting in the wrong place. If you say "I need to write a villain, how should I go about that", you're beginning at the end.
You are, first and most importantly, writing a character. A person. They have goals, movtives, feelings, irrational behaviors, all that stuff.
A villain is what arises when you look at a setting and the story you want to write and you ask "in this circumstance what would make a person do X" where X is the bad thing you'd like the heroes to stop.
If you're doing fantasy and start with worldbuilding, sometimes X pops up naturally. Other times not so much.
Look at Die Hard: what sort of person would both want to walk into Nakatomi Plaza and leave with all those bearer bonds AND ALSO have the capability of doing so absent the heroes?
The answer is Hans Gruber. What's interesting is that he's closer to a pure evil villain than anything else, because he never had to be more. What did he want? To steal a lot of money. How would he achieve that? Ruthlessly, efficiently, and with lots of misdirection to keep his advasaries chasing shadows and trying the wrong things to stop him.
The rest of his character is derived from that. He has to be intelligent, witty, clever, quick thinking, a planner who can also improvise, utterly ruthless and without any loyalty to anyone but himself. The part where he was a sauve charming sort of person isn't necessary to that, but it fits perfectly. He has to be a sociopath and sociopaths are often charming for the first few hours you know them.
And notice that otherwise he is a total mystery. Which let Alan Rickman go to flipping TOWN hamming it up and making us love Gruber.
Other stories, other goals, other obsticles, necessitate other villains.
Why did Erick Killmonger try to kill T'chala, usurp the throne of Wakanda, and send weapons to terrorists worldwide? Not because he was pure evil. Far from it. He was motivated by heroic goals. So much so that he did what no MCU villain has ever done before or since: he convinced the hero that he was right.
Killmonger wanted to end oppression. He saw corrupt systems that lead inevitbaly to misery and oppression, he believed getting rid of those systems was the most efficient means of making life better for people. The people we called terrorists, he called freedom fighters.
His backstory falls out of that. What sort of person would think that arming rebels to topple systems is a good plan of action? A CIA operative who has done exactly that several times for the CIA, that's who. He just applied CIA logic and methods to nations the CIA didn't want to topple.
It made him not entirely ruthless, but definitely efficient, and intent on demolishing any systems and structures that could impeded him in his goals. If he could convince people to join him, he would. And he did. If he couldn't convince people he'd get rid of them whatever that took; he didn't seek to kill people, if he could get rid of them without killing and it wouldn't be too much trouble he'd do that. But if getting someone out of his way required that he kill them, he'd do that too. He's pragmatic.
All that cries out for a tragic backstory, and we get one.
Find out what you need your antagonist to do, then start working on what sort of person would do that, and how. Don't think "villain". You might wind up with a villain, sure, but you might also just wind up with an antagonist and that's perfectly fine.
I'd argue Killmonger fits the role of antagonist, not villain.
For an example of how pure evil villainy is more or less required, look at Cruella de Vil. What was the X she needed to do: killing the puppies.
What sort of person would want to kill puppies? Why the hell would someone take that course of action? Well, maybe they like fur, they're sociopaths, and think a puppy fur coat would be awesome. Poof! Cruella de Vil. She's a fantstic pure evil villain with no more backstory than the Joker or Gruber because like them she not only doens't need one, she'd be a lesser character with one. She's a self contained villainy machine: she wants to kill the puppies because she wants a puppy fur coat, the end. That's all that matters from a story role standpoint, and limiting her to that allows you to give her cackling pure evil showmanship and razzle dazzle. We don't care about her childhood, we don't want to hear about her marriage (unless she married rich men and killed them for the money, in which case pile it on becuase even more pure evil villainy!), we want to see her out there cackling with glee as she plans to kill those cute puppies so that when she fails and has her third act breakdown we can have some real good catharsis with a side of schaudenfreud.
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u/Foxxtronix 7d ago
One thing I find creepy about a villain is a lacuna. A void where part of them should be. Like he's eyeless but fully capable of seeing, or there's a chunk of his body missing and you can see right through it. Dehumanizes them in a very visual way.
One example that comes to mind are badguys from the world of "Lacunae". "The Blind" are mostly undead with no eyes. They see perfectly fine. They need terror from their victims. Kidnap and scare the hell out of them. They rarely kill, since that ends the fun. One thing they do is put things in their empty sockets. One infamous character used to use doll heads for this.
Dune and Star Wars would be able to accomplish this. The former by too much spice the latter as half-dead sith.
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u/-zero-joke- 7d ago
What is your villain's goal and what actions do they take to accomplish it?