Being a Better Writer: Delivering a Villain and Making Them Truly Scary · 10:30pm Apr 18th, 2022
Hello readers, and welcome to another installment of Being a Better Writer. Today’s installment is one that I’ve been waiting on for a while, as it’s been near the very bottom of Topic List #19. In fact, it is the second to last post from this list! There’s only one more to go after this, and then Topic List #20.
Which is why if you’ve got a writing topic you want to see a future BaBW discuss, now is your chance to get it on the list! Hit up the Topic Call post and leave your suggestion in the comments there to get your interest covered by a future Being a Better Writer!
As for other news … I don’t believe there’s anything that I didn’t already post about in last week’s news update, so we can dive right into today’s post!
So this one has been on my mind for a while. Months, actually, since it was put on the list. I usually leave a little space for last-minute additions, and this was one of them that I grabbed after seeing a writing thread where a bunch of readers were discussing how the villains of a piece had fallen flat.
Now, as a quick aside, I do want to remind us all that there is a difference between an antagonist and a villain. Just as there is a difference between a hero and a protagonist. Someone that is acting in opposition to a protagonist is not automatically a villain. They are an antagonist. Merely being opposed to a primary character is not an automatic trait of villainy. In fact, even the definitions of these two terms note the difference. An antagonist is one who opposes the protagonist of a story and acts as an obstacle, but that is the limit. A villain on the other hand, is a character who’s evil motivations are integral to the plot.
And yes, the definition does include the term “evil” there. A villain may have ambiguous reasons (for example, Thanos), but there is no doubt that what they are doing is wrong in some awful fashion, and their aims are more than just being an obstacle to the protagonist.
In other words, it’s like the old logic puzzle or play we all encountered in grade-school: Some antagonists are villains, and some villains are antagonists, but not all antagonists are villains, and not all villains are antagonists.
If that was a little confusing, just look at it this way: A villain can exist in a story and not be an antagonist (in fact, there are plenty of stories where a villain exists, but doesn’t play against a protagonist, or may even assist them temporarily), and an antagonist can exist but not be a villain. The two terms are independent of one another.
Now, if we want to talk about antagonists and how to use them, perhaps we can put that on a future list. But now that we’ve noted the difference between the two, lets get back to our core focus today with villains, and how we make them scary. Hit the jump!
I read your full post, I'm just gonna drop my thoughts here for ease of responding (if needed). I've relatively recently watched a playthrough of "Final Fantasy 6" that brought to mind kind of another way to play up a villain's threat AND still hit the audience with a surprise fake out. Throughout the whole story, even from the second of his introduction, Kefka is played up as a real nasty piece of work. Whenever he gets involved the audience gets to see just how twisted and psychotic he really is. However he is also always played as a joke character. He's vicious, nasty, and downright insane, but he's always second fiddle to the "Real Big Bad" of the story. He's also not really shown as all that much of a threat to a powerful group of well trained fighters, with your battles with him ending with him running away acting like the over the top fool he is written to be. He's really only ever a threat to the weak and helpless who cannot fight back against him, or he's able to get someone else to do the heavy lifting for him. These plot points lead to the thought that he is going to be nothing but a joke to the plot. A villainous comic relief if you will. But then the middle of the game hits, and the "Oh Sh*t!" moment happens. The second that Kefka gets accidentally knocked into the nexus of power that the original Big Bad was looking for is when the audience gets the horrifying realization of what just happened. A psychopath who has been shown as not only completely unhinged, but loves torturing those weaker than him has just gained the power of the gods of that world. Suddenly he is free to inflict whatever destruction he wants with absolutely no consequences. That thought alone would have conveyed just how much of a threat he is now, but they take it yet another step by having the last scene before switching disks be him literally reshaping the continents of their world. For fun. Had I not heard of the game, and already known of the threat Kefka posed, that sudden reveal would have been a major shock.
Just wanted to make a comment here, heh
I'm writing a fic where a Villain is the protagonist.
So I wonder if it's even feasible to continue writing them as the Villain despite their constant presence to the audience?
Will I have to set up events that slowly ramp up, to show the readers and remind them of the protag's villiany?
Or do I go off of the Clout of the protag's actions? (ie One of the First things they do, is allow or order a public and grisly execution. After this scene do I shift focus away from the protag? or just continue with their POV until the next ramp up in villainous action?
5651717 A villain as a protagonist? Just remember the most important rule:
A good villain is a shaded villain instead of stark black and white. Are there lines they will not cross? Code of honor? Are they being evil for a good reason like looking for their condition's cure (A lot of the Batman villains have this in common, like Cheetah, Mr. Freeze, Killer Croc, Clayface) Is their power uncontrolled? Are they lashing out against some injustice done against them? Are they ambiguously evil or mentally controlled? What do they WANT, the thing which they desire beyond all else, and are willing to crush anyone in their way to get? Or maybe what they really want is to be stopped. The real monster is inside, where most people don't look, after all.
5651717
To add to Georg's answer, also consider empathy alongside the motivation. A good villain protagonist doesn't need to have the audience's empathy--you can get by purely on the catharsis of shock value--but a nuanced, complex villain who the audience understands, even if they disagree with what they are doing? That resonates.
You're in luck: There's a Being a Better Writer post about that!
Sympathetic Villains
Sympathetic Villains Follow Up (Don't skip this)
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I was thinking along similar lines. Maybe it's just because I've been playing the game recently, but this post immediately reminded me of Kefka. When I was a kid I didn't fully gasp just how scary this guy is. I always recalled his very first appearance in the game being when he complained about there being sand on his boots... while walking through a desert. Funny, right?
Now I realize that his actual first appearance in the game was when he mind controlled a scared teenage girl and made her slaughter fifty soldiers for fun. That's a telling start for a guy who goes on to become as close to a literal god of death as one can get. Poisoning the civilian population of a small nation, fooling the heroes into doubting their faith in one another, the slaughter of the espers near the halfway point of the game, to say nothing for fooling with the very forces of creation to bring about the gradual, methodical end of the world.
Kefka exemplifies everything this post is talking about. When he showed up onscreen, the player knew something bad was about to go down.
My one disagreement with your comment is that Kefka's real threat came well before the World of Ruin. He had a lot of heinous moments in the early game. True, he was a pansy to fight up until Narshe (i.e. the first time he appears as a proper "Boss"), but even then we could see him evolving into what he would become, consistently growing stronger and making more deranged decisions.
Recall what Viking mentioned: when the villain appears, the characters should lose something. There is only one time in the entire game that Kefka appeared and something bad didn't follow shortly afterwards, and that was only when he was in waiting to enact a much bigger scheme.
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I guess it didn't quite come through, but my original point was that Kefka wasn't being played up as the main villain. Not that he isn't portrayed as a villain. His portrayal in the World of Balance portion seemed to be hinting that he was going to end up being basically a mid-boss in the endgame. Albeit one who would be very satisfying to finally put down due to just how vicious and deranged he had become. Up until Kefka gets the power of the Warring Triade Emperor Gestahl is the one being pushed as the final "Big Bad" of the series. Kefka was being built up to him being the deranged, bumbling, scheming, but still very dangerous second in command. Kind of like a completely mad Starscream to the Emperor's Megatron. He's a threat, but still small potatoes compared to the guy holding his leash. Right up until the second that leash is destroyed by the accidental introduction of the power of the Triade into Kefka, suddenly allowing a character with the same type of mentality as The Joker to run wild with all the power of three gods. That is the moment it becomes clear that the emperor had been nothing but a feint to make the reveal of the true final villain even more shocking.
Edit: After walking away from this for a few minutes, I've had an epiphany about why Kefka's World of Balance portrayal screams "secondary villain" to me. It was originally being played as the old "Genteel corrupt politician villain has a psychopath minion to give him plausible deniability" trope. You know, the main Big Bad has this nasty killer on his team for the sole purpose of doing the all of the vile stuff that his plans require, but he can pretend the known violent loose cannon was acting on his own if he's confronted with his minion's actions. Heck we see that happen to Kefka in one scene. In the sequence where the Emperor was pretending to want peace with the heroes, Kefka gets thrown under the bus as a lone wolf scapegoat. At least until he shows up for the big betrayal later on to try and dispose of the heroes after they inadvertently help the Emperor out in his plans.