Villains

I've noticed an alarming trend in fantasy and science fiction over the last few years.  Though authors have improved somewhat in avoiding the Mary Sue syndrome when constructing their heroes, they've left their villains flat and unsubstantial.


I must admit that it didn't hit me until a few months ago when I was watching a Veggie Tales movie with my oldest son.

The villain's opening scene in which he sang this song:


"I love taking candy from children.
I laugh when they blubber and cry.
My heart leaps with joy
When I break their new toy!
I'm just an ordinary super villain kind of guy."

Clean and clear; the villain is established.  No child in his right mind would have any sympathy for him any longer.  The gourd was evil through and through.

That works for kids' shows, but more and more adult and YA novels are going this route now, too.  You want to eliminate all doubt about who your villain is?  Have him rape a woman or a group of women, kill children, disembowel the elderly, and laugh while he's doing it.  Clean and clear; the villain is established.

Except...it's not that interesting.  It's predictable and practically every other villain portrayed in literature in the 20th and 21st century has done the same (especially in fantasy).  Too many authors don't want their readers to have a chance at sympathizing with the villain, and that's a shame.  A truly scary villain is one who has a conscience.  Someone who believes beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is the hero in the tale.  You create a villain like that and you have someone who's unpredictable and truly dangerous--unstoppable.

For myself, I like creating a little doubt in my WIPs.  Sometimes, I'll string the reader along, let them think they know who the villain is and change it up on them at the end.  The clues will all be there, but they won't know until it's too late.  I've done this with a few of my short stories.  In one of them, the MC himself turned out to be the villain (though he, of course, would swear he was the hero).

It's possible and better to do this because no human being is ever just pure evil and just pure good.  Without getting into a whole theological argument, for the matter of this discussion I refer to a human's standard of good and evil.

Let's take Hitler for example.  As far as I am aware (and if I'm wrong, please forgive me), he never murdered a single human being, raped a woman, or even cheated on his taxes.  He was a hero to millions and loved by many.  He was monogamous and even a pet lover.  According to today's standard--a pretty good guy.

And yet, he has become the standard for everything evil today.  Why?  Though he may have never personally dirtied his hands, millions of people died because of him.  But still, he thought he was right in doing it.  He thought he was saving his country.  He was more deadly and terrifying because he thought he was the hero.  Those under him carried out his gruesome orders because they, too, thought he was the hero.  I don't know if Hitler necessarily enjoyed hearing about the deaths of his victims, but we can be sure he thought it was his solemn duty to make sure it was done.

A victim of the holocaust (I don't know his name) attended the trial of one his guards years after WWII.  He went there prepared to see justice done upon a horrible man.  When he saw the guard, he started weeping and said later it was because he realized the man who had done such horrible things to him and the other prisoners was just a human--not the monster he had imagined.

Human beings are never just one thing.  The hero is not always good, chivalrous, and honorable, and the villain is not always despicable, loathsome, and terrible.  Both of them are usually somewhere in between and quite often closer to one another than they'd ever imagine.  It's all about perception.

One does not have to rape and/or murder someone to be evil.  They just have to go about getting their goals accomplished in a slightly different way than the hero.

What do you look for in a villain?  Do you like his evil personality to be clear cut, or do you like a little variety and depth?  How do you usually depict your villains?

~Emily White