No One Knows What It’s Like to Be the Bad Man

Antagonists or straight-out villains can be a real problem to write. Even authors I love often have difficulty with fleshing out antagonists and making them sufficiently believable. There are manifold reasons for this, and sometimes an author has more than one reason in effect which causes them to trip while trying to create a believable antagonist.

One of the reasons, and one that has affected some of my own writing, is that if there are groups of antagonists, the protagonist may tend to see them as a single evil entity rather than people of different mortalities acting in concert. One does not see an invading army as a collection of individuals, but a monolithic wall of terror; likewise, when there is a country of antagonists, it is hard for the protagonists to see them as individuals led by those who have competing interests, and makes it much easier for the protagonists to see them as a country of evil people. That’s not entirely unrealistic – it happens in the real world as well – but if a writer wants to show complexity in antagonists, it keeps that complexity from gelling in the readers’ minds. I’m still not sure of how to navigate this issue fully myself; it’s in human nature to see groups as a unified whole, and when the encounters between the protagonist and a group of antagonists are one-sided, it can lead to the perception that all of the antagonists are flat and one-dimensional.

Which leads into my next point. It is also difficult to show a reader complexity in an antagonist when all the encounters between them and the protagonists are negative. Since the reader filters their perceptions of the story primarily through the protagonists’ minds, they may very well not see the complexity in an antagonist’s character, even when the author intends there to be some. And while it is possible to add elements of complexity that the narrator carefully tucks into the story, it’s quite a tricky challenge.

So how does one give the reader information the protagonist does not have? It is possible to put objective information into the narration that either jars with the protagonist’s preconceptions (causing the reader to notice it) or highlights something the protagonist does not notice, but which is intended for the reader to seize on and to develop an opinion of the situation or characters involved which is not part of the protagonist’s viewpoint. If one is using multiple viewpoints, that is somewhat easier, as each character is going to have a different perspective. If one is using a single viewpoint, it takes a much defter touch to insert subtext unseen by the character, but clear to the reader.

Another problem I often see with antagonists is the tendency to create villains as if they truly did have only one dimension; to make them caricatures, rather than true people. This may work in a story with broad lines, one in which the characters are representative rather than true people, but it does not work in a story intended to have complex characters and character interactions. The fact is that true people aren’t pure evil; they have loves, passions, impulses, behaviors that are neither good nor evil, and generally as many tangles of emotions and motives as the rest of us. Providing a villain a reason to be villainous can be very helpful to the writer, even if that reason never makes it to the eyes of the reader. As a writer, understanding the motives your character is working from can help to flesh out the character, to make them rounded rather than flat characters. Sure, they can still be awful people if you want! Just remember that everyone works out of multiple, conflicting motives and multiple, conflicting impulses.

Say I, writer of fantasy. Yes, there is a place in the fantasy genre for evil characters that are nothing but evil. But in that case, it’s important to clarify that this is the inherent nature of a villain – that they cannot refuse to be villainous any more than they can refuse to be tall or blond-haired, or to have wings.

The fact is that it’s not always possible to show these kinds of things to the reader – there are just some cases where the antagonist is not present enough to show their complexities or motivations. Still, if you, as writer, know what these are, their actions will be more consistent than if you ignore the issue. There is always more going on in the background of a story than shows on the pages.

An author whose work I love has another problem with antagonists. This author writes complex protagonists and fascinating minor characters, but her antagonists leave a great deal to be desired. It’s a subtle problem, and at first I could not quite pin down what was bothering me, but after having read a number of her books, I see a pattern. She gives her villains backstories, gives them motivations, gives them interests and complexities, and still I have a problem with them. I finally realized that her antagonists are almost too quirky, to the point of a comic, practically cartoonish degree. They are interesting, but they are not real.

Lastly, lack of learning and change can cause an antagonist to read as less than true. This can usually be done only when the antagonist actually has enough presence in the story to give them the ability to learn. Learning and change can follow different patterns; the antagonist might learn that their behavior is unacceptable, and change to amend this; alternatively, they may learn that the approach they are taking to hinder the protagonists is not working, and change their behavior to amend that. This makes for a more dynamic and interesting antagonist, and will end up enriching your story.

Remember: The more realistic your story strikes the reader, the more they will fall into its orbit and end up becoming a part of it. And in the end, isn’t that what a writer wants?