Crafting a Story - Creating Bad Guys
Almost every story needs a bad guy or girl. In some stories,
it is an entity such as a large corporation; in other stories, it is an
individual who opposes the good guys in their effort to resolve whatever
problem or crisis the story has handed them. These bad people can be just slightly
mean or purely evil. Which they are depends on what the story calls for. There
are certainly places for both, but is there a place for an evil villain who is
evil just for the sake of being evil?
Have you ever read a story where the villain loves to see
another person in pain, loves the torture, the destruction? It just seems to be
a part of who and what they are. Evil. I have no real problem with a character
being sadistic; there are certainly such people in the world. But do we, as
readers, want a villain who is totally malicious, but for no apparent reason? As
mentioned, there are certainly evil people in this world, but generally they
were not born that way. Something happened along the way: some traumatic event,
some defining moment when they were pushed toward the darkness. A line from a favorite
movie tells us: he was not born a monster; he was made one through years of systematic
abuse. Which brings up the primary question here: Do fictional bad guys need a
reason to be bad?
As a reader, I would like to know what happened in the
villain's life that pushed them so far into the darkness. If you are writing a
longer novel, there should be plenty of space and opportunity to give us a
reasonable backstory, a reason they hate people, perhaps even hate themselves.
Was it the rejection of a parent? A lover? The betrayal of a partner or close
friend? Whatever the reason for the maliciousness, it needs to match the level
of evil. A romantic breakup in high school should not create a serial killer. Years
of abuse, isolation and degradation from a parent might. How sinister your bad guy
is needs to be proportional to the trauma they were forced to endure.
While a villain is a narrative necessity, and most are not
nice people, I get frustrated when a writer presents a character who is so
evil, so sinister, that they love to watch others in pain, love to torture and
kill for recreation, but offer no backstory. A part of me always wants to know
why. Why are they so bad? True, they are bad because your story needs them to
be that way, which is fine. Just shed a little light on what happened to make
them that way. Pull the curtain back just a bit and let us see the trauma they
endured. It just might make the bad guys a little more sympathetic, a little
more understandable. As a reader, you still want them to fail; you still want
to see them get the comeuppance they so richly deserve, but I find it far more
entertaining if I know their motivation. You have surely told us your hero’s
motivation, shown us why he fights so hard for what he believes. Now show us
why the villain is so set in their efforts to make the hero fail.
I once heard an instructor tell his students to allow the
bad guy to occasionally stop and smell the roses. He was telling his students
to let their bad guy be human, be relatable to the reader. People take action
or react to situations based on their life experiences. We are all formed by
the decisions we make, the environment we inhabit, and our interactions with
others. Use these to give your villain a reason for being bad. No one is born a monster. They decide to
embrace the darkness for a reason. You will almost certainly tell us why your
hero is so valiant; now go the extra step and tell us what made the bad guy bad.
We will still hate him, but maybe we will have just a hint of sympathy for his
plight, and that can add drama, emotion, and perhaps even a moment of
reflection. Not bad things to have in a story.
