When I think back to the stories of my childhood, the
cartoons and a lot of the books aimed at kids and teenagers, I realize that as
much as I enjoyed them, and have fond memories of them, they weren’t very well
written. They didn’t have to be, because their target demographic was kids who
could pester parents to buy action figures. They weren’t required to be sophisticated; they just had to wow us
with cool imagery. The villains of these
stories didn’t have particularly clear motivations, usually something as basic
as “taking over the world”. Why do you want to take over the world Megatron
/Mumra/Cobra commander? Because I’m evil that’s why!?! Why are you evil?
Because I’m trying to take over the world. Enough of these insolent questions.
Decepticons Attack!
As a
writer you may have heard the expression, “No one is a Villain in their own
minds.” Or similarly, “there are two
sides to every story.” The question is,
how do these concepts manifest themselves in your writing? If you were writing the story from the villain’s
side of things what does he believe in? What motivates him to get out of bed at
the crack of dawn to practice evil martial arts? What keeps him up late at
night tinkering with his Doom Ray, when he’d really rather be making a run at
Grandmaster on the Korean Starcraft server?
It’s not enough to say your villain is a bad guy because he’s simply
evil natured, or sadistic. There’s no meat on that bone. Cruelty or savagery is more of a how than a
why. One might say Cersei Lannister from
Game of Thrones is evil. Her actions
directly harm innocents. She arranges multiple murders and betrayals. You could say the way she carries out her
actions is selfish, and arrogant, and even somewhat sadistic. She does take
pleasure in meeting out humiliations over and above simply beating those she
sees as enemies. Her motivation though
is to keep her family secure and in power, and if innocents suffer, better them
than us. Her actions would be considered
evil, and her way of carrying out those actions callous and cruel. You could
contrast that with the Machines from The Matrix. From our perspective they are evil. The
enslaved all mankind. Used us as
batteries. Wiped out the free ones
periodically. From their perspective, it
was simply a logical way to survive. It
wasn’t about anger or revenge. It was simple necessity that did not allow for
compassion or compromise.
So why
is it important to know what drives your bad guy? What makes him seek out power
to oppose your hero? What turned him from a presumably innocent child into the
monster he is today? Because when two people who believe absolutely
in incompatible things face off against each other, the stakes are much higher.
It’s more than revenge, or justice, or
saving the princess. It’s a clash of ideologies
as fought by champions who will determine which will rule the world of the
story. It is Voldemorte’s “Power is its own
justification” versus Harry Potters “You don’t bully the weak” Losing doesn’t
just mean you failed. It means what the other guy believes in prevails. Maybe that means Space Nazi’s rule the Universe in your story
or maybe all it means is douchey fratboy instructers at the ski school get the girl instead of the lovable
goofballs therefore it is better to be a douchey fratboy. In any case there should always be more to your villain than “Because I’m Evil”
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