I think we can all agree that the reason most readers love stories is because we want to feel something.
We want the good guy to win and the bad guy to lose or if the bad guy wins we want to feel for the good people and hurt with them or experience their emotional hurt.
We want to be able to experience those good and bad emotional feelings without real-life fallout or consequences.
In other words, we want to make sure as good writers that we are tugging heartstrings.
How are we tugging heartstrings?
We create emotional connection and attachment for readers by setting it up from the start.
# 1 How to write a Story that is tugging Heartstrings: We make a character that we want the audience to love or hate.
The last thing we want to do is create a character that is likable, but forgettable.
No, in order to be tugging heartstrings there must be emotional consequences at risk.
We want our readers to feel mad, upset, or unfair about the character we have made them hate getting away with injustice.
We want them to feel sad at the loss of our character that they love is experiencing.
Disney does this SOOO well at this skill in many of their stories. They create a character that we love and then they KILL them or kill someone they love! (Bambi, Lion King, Good Dinosaur, Frozen, Guardians 2, just to name a few…) You can look at tons of their stories and you will find beloved characters’ dead bodies strewn all over the battlefield of story and cinema.
Even if we create a character that they hate this is also good because they will still be emotionally invested to find out if that hated character gets away with “it” or not.
This is called tugging heartstrings.
We make people feel something by getting them attached to characters in our stories by the feelings of love and hate.
We naturally love ourselves and our own stories so we psychologically as humans hate when bad things happen to us (lose money, get cut off on the road, are late, get punished, loss of a loved one), but love when good things happen to us (get promoted, catch every green light, make a new friend, receive a gift, win the lottery.)
Taking it a step further, we hate when bad things happen to others that we love and we love when good things happen to them.
In this same way if we are going to be tugging heartstrings we MUST create characters that are either loved or hated, nothing in between.
Indifference about your character is the enemy of good storytelling.
If your reader feels indifference about your Character that is BAD.
# 2 How to write a Story that is tugging Heartstrings: If we are going to be tugging heartstrings, our readers must care about the relationships we build for our characters.
Not nearly as important point #1 but to be taken into account is that our relationships must be interesting to our readers.
# 1 plays into this though.
If we do a good job creating characters that are loved or hated then readers are more than likely going to care more about the relationships they are caught up in, and we don’t just mean romantic relationships.
They are to be emotionally invested in their relationships with their parents, friends, enemies, sidekicks, romances, pets, any relationship you can think up.
A good way to make any relationship interesting is to bring good times into it and bad times into it.
We are always interested to see how a fight between two friends or lovers will turn out.
Will they be together after? Or will they part ways? Will it end peacefully or ugly? Will there be theft or even murder involved?
All of these ideas make for interesting relationships between characters.
Tips How to Write Villains that Play Mind Games with Their Victims
Not everyone likes the idea of a villain that steps into the bank with an eyepatch, a cigar hanging out of their mouth, and an uzi in their hand.
Some writers like to write methodical villains. Some writers like to write villains that use their minds to dispense their evil deeds upon their victims.
If you are one of those writers than this post is for you.
# 1 Villains that methodically play mind games with their victims are often JEALOUS
Unrestrained jealousy can grow into some pretty evil thoughts and actions. A jealous person can let all kinds of things occur to themselves and especially unchecked jealousy. A jealous villain might plot out how to TAKE the thing they are jealous of and in the midst of taking it they may put their victim through terrible pain while taking it.
In the TV show Longmire, the antagonist wants to take the hero’s land. He not only tries to take his land, but he takes him to court and being a lawyer he drags the hero’s character through the mud with lies and tortures him along the way in the process and you can tell he enjoys every moment of it.
The villain was jealous of his land so he took time to develop a plan to take Longmire to court and create nasty stories about him to make it legally possible to sue him for his land.
# 2 Mentally Abusive Villains are Full of Relentless Incomprehensible Hate
Hate that seems so ridiculous that it is hard to understand why the person is that hateful is hard for us as humans to understand. I mean have you ever met someone so uncharacteristically hateful and you find yourself perplexed almost thinking out loud, “why are you so mean and hateful?”
This happens to poor Peeta in The Hunger Games.
His mother happens to be a hateful villain that hates her own circumstances in life so she takes it out on her son in cruel ways. And none of it is his fault or because anything he’s done. His Mother beats him for small things like burning bread or giving it to someone starving instead of the pigs.
And being ultimately mentally abusive she hopes that Katniss wins over Peeta implying that if he died in the Hunger Games she would be happier than if he came back alive.
# 3 How to Write Villains that Like to Play Mind Games: Creates Division Amongst Allies
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10 Tips How to Write Villains that Play Mind Games with Their Victims
A master manipulative villain that enjoys playing mind games will enjoy creating division among those against his goals.
The villain will enjoy watching allies tear each other apart all while getting away with their ultimate goals.
# 4 How to Write Villains that Like to Play Mind Games: Often Times They Were Abused
Villains that abuse others were often abused themselves at some point in their life.
People assume this means it has to be that their parents abused them or that they were abused as a child, but this doesn’t always have to be the case.
They could have been abused by a sibling, family friend, an uncle, or spouse.
They could have been taken advantage of by a co-worker or boss, or by many people along their journey, and this could have to lead them to an emotional breakdown, or seeing all people as bad because they have never met a good person in their life.
Whatever the case may be for your character, having them be abused as a part of their origin story is a good way to help readers understand why they are acting the way they are.
# 5 How to Write Villains that Like to Play Mind Games: They Target the People the Hero Loves
IF you are a hero that has a mom, girlfriend, or any loved one watch them closely.
Villains love to beat up the hero emotionally by inflicting as much pain as possible on those they love.
If you’re going to make your villain stab your hero through the heart you will find ways for them to hurt and torment those that your hero loves.
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# 6 How to Write Villains that Like to Play Mind Games: Mind Game Villains Know How to Use the Heros words against them.
The villain will look for opportunities to use the hero’s own words against them.
If they can twist their words they will.
# 7 How to Write Villains that Like to Play Mind Games: Mind Game Villains Know How to Use the Heros Beliefs against them.
A true Villain will make fun of the Hero and make jest of their core beliefs.
If it ever appears that the Hero is about to lose and the villain wins, the Emoaiotnally abusive villain will take pleasure in reminding the hero of how ridiculous their beliefs are and how inferior that makes the hero compared to them.
# 8 How to Write Villains that Like to Play Mind Games: Mind Game Villains Know How to Use whatever you love against you.
A truly manipulative villain will use whatever advantage they have against the hero to ensure victory.
They might even call it collateral damage.
The true villain isn’t afraid to kill or hurt someone the hero loves to use them against the hero to make sure they accomplish whatever their goal is.
In the movie “Angel Has Fallen” the main antagonist sends his men to take the hero’s wife and daughter as “insurance” to make sure that he has the advantage over the hero.
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As a Writer, Should you Have a Fountain Pen and A Writer’s Notebook?
Not everyone should go out and get a writer’s notebook.
The amount of free technology in laptops and phones, to be frank, makes notebooks almost obsolete.
That being said if you are someone that still enjoys the feel of the page. The feel of a good pen gliding across the page, then you MUST absolutely get a writer’s notebook pronto, especially if you are not currently using one.
And if you are the type of person that loves the manual art and act of writing in a notebook, then you MUST must must look into getting a fountain pen for your writer’s notebook.
The List goes on. If you are the type of person that is very creative and is always coming up with new and inventive ideas, then you would really enjoy a writer’s notebook.
Why get a fountain pen?
Regular pens are fine, but I haven’t enjoyed any pens I’ve owned more than my fountain pens.
For a creative like me, my fountains pens are a part of the creative process.
The different colored inks you can use, the way they flex, the inks you can blend, the way the pen feels heavy and more premium all are things that I enjoy in my writing process when I’m using one of my own.
Other things you might want to consider if you are going to own and make good use of your writer’s notebook:
Pens
Staples
Sticky notes
Paper clips
Pencils
Colored pencils
Crayons
Watercolors
Pastels
Art Kit
Bookmarks
I for one do a ton of my writing and work straight from my computer. A lot of my work never touches a physical page.
But my passion projects and my meditations they often hit a notebook page, and something about writing through and working on my penmanship simultaneously with the feel of an exquisite notebook and fountain pen in my hand, something about that interaction makes the act of writing feel more therapeutic and enjoyable.
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Common! I don’t have all day! Pick up your weapon and face me!
He hates me! I knew it!
I didn’t know what to do so I hid in the bathroom and prayed!
I had never seen anything so beautiful!
The treasure glimmered in the firelight and reflected in her eyes.
Where were you last night?
Why am I the only one that thinks this is insane?
Tell me again, were there two of you or four of you?
I told him I could only give him a ride a couple of miles down the road, but when he pulled a gun on me I said, where do you need to go? He was pretty polite after that.
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Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
In order for your tension to work at all, the stakes have to be high.
You have to make sure that the character has a lot at risk.
In order to create tension, we have to put things that our character finds important at risk.
And that risk doesn’t always have to come from another character.
In some stories, your main antagonist doesn’t have to be a human.
It could be nature for instance.
Let’s say we are writing a story set in the wild west.
The family we are writing about relies on the land and farm to live, but one winter it gets too cold and the land freezes over and the animals start to starve and get diseases and the family didn’t have a good harvest last year and now they are on the verge of starvation themselves.
What’s is the tension created here?
We create tension by making our readers think: What will the family do to survive? Will they survive?
Life or death scenarios work well but it doesn’t have to always be that high of stakes.
In order to create tension, the stakes have to be high.
# 2 Create Tension: By making your readers feel like they can’t guess what will happen.
In order for tension to really work, there can’t be an underlying thought in your readers’ minds of “I can see where this is going and they will be fine.”
That happens often in T.V. Series and that’s is partly why they die after season 2.
When you start to see a repeating pattern of how things will resolve and everything will be fine you start to lose interest because there is no curiosity there. There’s no mystery anymore.
It’s easy to lose interest when there is no mystery left anymore.
In order to create tension we have to keep our readers guessing.
# 3 Create Tension: By making your readers feel something.
We as consumers of stories LOVE stories that make us feel something and feel what the character is feeling or feel so much for the character that we want the worst or the best for that character.
If we can get our readers feeling emotions for our characters we will create tension for those characters when we put them in a bad situation or a sad situation.
In order to make our readers feel for our characters, we have to help our readers resonate with them.
One sure-fire way to make our readers feel for our characters is to make them as real and human and vulnerable as possible without going overboard.
If they are too vulnerable they can appear pathetic and whiny = BAD
If they are too perfect they can appear to be too far beyond us for us to feel for them = BAD
For our readers to resonate with our characters they have to be a little good and a little bad. Very much like regular humans. There are good people out there, but all of us have faults even though we are trying our best.
Find ways to make your characters more human and when you go to create tension, your readers will find themselves being surprisingly emotionally involved.
Fictional Characters: Bad Habits to Introduce to Your Fictional Characters
We made this list of character habits so that writers could use them to get creative inspiration for writing more dynamic characters.
Everyone has bad habits.
Some are more obvious than others.
Some characters are super-secret about their bad habits, while other fictional characters are oblivious that they have a bad habit.
And some are obnoxious about their bad habits.
This will be a list of bad habits for you to use for your fictional characters.
Use one or two or many, but remember, the more believable the better with little character traits such as bad habits.
Bad Habits for Your Fictional Characters:
Worrying.
Worry can kill. It can also ruin relationships and ruin a good date.
Doubting.
Doubting someone your character cares about can soil the relationship. A character could push others away with their doubt.
Distrust.
A character could be so jaded by the world that they chronically never trust anyone.
Easily angered.
You know the type. Ticking time bomb. Walking on eggshells being around them.
Picking nose.
Ew Gross.
Picking at face.
Distracting when you’re trying to talking to someone that is constantly touching their face.
Talks too much.
Ever get stuck talking to someone that never takes a breath?
Bad Listener.
Relationships can end or begin based on a character with good or bad listening skills.
Talks too little.
Ever been trying to get to know someone and all they have to say is, “yah” “nah.”
Flatulence.
Enough said.
Smoking.
This could be a habit they know they want to quit but have a hard time.
Chewing Tobacco.
Don’t pick up the wrong bottle in their house!
Alcoholic.
Nobody wants to be around an angry drunk.
Drug addiction.
Ever have your character steal for drug money?
Pain Killer Addiction.
Easy to get into. Even easier for a character to hide for a long time. No smell and everyone has prescriptions right?
Always late.
Your character could lose their job.
Nail Biting.
Does your character disgust their love interest because their fingers are always in their mouths?
Always on their phone.
Who isn’t always on their phone these days, but when your character is staring at their screen while having coffee with a friend bleeding their heart out, that friend might look for friendship elsewhere…
Talking with a mouth full.
Your character might not get asked to eat out much…I wonder why?
Gets lost in social media.
Who doesn’t? But maybe your character missed an important event because they were scrolling social media.
Video game addiction.
Ever miss Christmas because you had to get that game achievement? Family members do not like that sort of behavior.
Not sleeping enough.
We’re not talking insomnia here. A character could have an accident at work just from a willful lack of sleep.
Poor Posture.
Does your character look like a hunchback?
Not dealing with stress well.
Does your character bottle everything up and worry about it alone?
Eating addiction.
Does your character’s weight affect their life and relationships negatively?
Doesn’t brush teeth.
Doesn’t shower.
No care for hair.
Does your character lack hygiene? What type of social problems do they encounter on a daily basis?
Lying
Has your character lied one time too many and burned too many bridges with their lies?
Stealing
Who did they steal from? Are they a casual shoplifter, a bank robber, or did they bite off too much and steal from the mob?
Cheating
Did they cheat on a test, a lover, or a spouse? Did they get caught? What are the consequences? Does their lover know?
Yelling
Does this character shoot themselves in the foot with their mouth?
Junk Food
Cavities anyone?
Loud Mouth
Has their talk too big and not be able to back it up attitude got them into a little bit of trouble?
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Writing Characters: How to Write Character Reactions Your Readers Will Care About
As readers, we don’t think about character reactions much, we just enjoy them, but as writers, one of the most important parts of writing characters and any scene is how our characters are reacting to people and events around them at any given moment.
We need to understand how to write characters when they are at home watching T.V. doing nothing and when they are escaping a brutal shoot out with explosions.
When writing characters, writing their reactions is extremely important.
How they react to one another, how they react to events, how they react to dialogue; how they react to what you put them through is the most interesting part of your character’s true self.
The way your protagonist reacts to others will decide whether or not your readers like your protagonist, much in the same way that we decide if we like people in real life based on how they react to certain situations we engage them in.
All that to say, as writers it is extremely important that we understand that how our characters react is extremely important and we need to be able to write their reactions well to carry our readers along with the story without hitting any bumps in the road.
Writing Characters: Your Characters Need to React to Events that Happen and React Appropriately.
When it comes to writing characters we need to understand our characters well personally and how they would react to what happens in a scene and react well.
Imagine sitting down with your protagonist to have coffee or a meal. Can you imagine how they would act in such a scenario?
Can you ask them questions in your mind and see how they would react and answer?
Can you interview your characters in your mind to find out how they would react to the events you want to put them through?
And what does it mean for them to react well?
It means that character needs to react the way only that character would and not the way a different character would.
For Example: Two girls are sitting on a train. Let’s call them Girl A and Girl B They just met. They are not more than acquaintances if not complete strangers.
A staff member from the train steps up to Girl A and says “mam, I’m so sorry we just received word that your parents have died in a horrible car accident.”
Girl A shrugs her shoulders and says “Ok.”
But Girl B the stranger, balls and screams and cries inconsolably for the duration of the ride.
You can see this would be a weird reaction.
We would expect Girl A to react the way Girl B did as it was Girl A’s parents that died a horrible death and Girl B doesn’t even know Girl A or her parents. Girl B might even try to kindly console Girl A, but we wouldn’t expect her to ball and scream about the scenario, but we might expect Girl A to do so, and if she doesn’t we will immediately question her in our minds.
This example shows that when we are writing characters we do have to think about how our character will react and how it must make sense and if it doesn’t that will make our readers curious.
This type of reactive thinking can be played out in several ways.
We either make the character react the way the audience expects them to and it helps the reader solidify how the character reacts and thinks and who they are as a person.
We can also use a character’s reaction to make the reader question why they reacted that way if the character reacts in a way that doesn’t fit.
Both are great tools to help your readers enjoy the story and carry the story along while revealing a character’s true nature.
Writing Characters: Your characters need to react to each other.
Normal people react to what others are doing all day long.
We say how are you doing to the grocery clerk.
We move over on the subway to let people through the doors.
We hold open doors at stores for others walking in behind us.
If someone curses at us in traffic, we react to it. We all react differently depending on who we are and what we believe.
In the same way, when writing characters your characters need to react to each other and they need to react appropriately.
Friends are sad for each other when something bad happens to one.
Enemies might not react or they might even be seen enjoying some bitter happening to the protagonist and the protagonist may even react to the enemy’s reaction.
It is very important that your important characters react to each other and react to the events happening in the plot depending on who they are around when the event happens.
If it happens when they are together the reader will see them react together.
If it happens separately we get to see who tells who what, how much and why. All things that are important to the plot and character relationship building and development.
Some characters might react one way around their friends, but completely different in public around strangers.
While you are writing characters the better you can write this in and make it unique to each important character you have the better your reader will be able to understand who each character is as an individual.
Writing Characters: How Our Character Reacts Says Much About What They Believe.
When a person reacts to an event or another person it can say many things about what they believe.
When a person gets stuck behind a slow car on the road, if they get mad and scream and curse, they might be the type of person that believes that they own the road and that no one should get in their way and that the slow car is actually hurting or abusing them in some way unbeknownst to them.
If on the other hand the character ignores it and keeps smiling and whistling while driving, they may be more of an optimist that believes that they have to find the silver lining in everything.
We must do this as writers writing characters well. We must find events and dialogue to show what our characters believe about themselves and the world around them.
As we are writing characters the more our readers are able to see more deeply who our characters are they will grow to love and hate them and when they feel so deeply about our characters that’s when they are really hooked and curious as to what will happen to these characters that they’ve come to know so deeply and so well.
People, in general, are more interested in people they feel deeply about, even if they loathe them. The type of person we don’t think much about is the character we feel indifferent towards. We aren’t very curious about what happens to them.
Use this truth to your advantage and reveal to your audience who your characters are in a deep way through writing characters’ reactions.
What events have you put your characters through and how have you had them react?
Do you know who your character is and how they would react to any given situation, or do you create your character’s personality on the fly as you go?
I hope this helps! Now Get Out There and Write Something!
Psychopaths are usually well-adapted actors. They feel nothing emotionally and so they learn to adapt to society by figuring out the “rituals.”
-Smile
-wave
-be polite
– when someone tells you something bad has happened to them, react with a sad face and say “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
-when someone tells you good news, smile and say “How wonderful for you!”
-When someone tells you they are having a baby, don’t ask them if they’ve considered the safety of the vehicle they are currently driving. Pretend to be excited for them.
– In public, don’t stare.
-If you are caught looking, pretend not to be.
The Perfect Psychopaths think in terms of how to adapt to their environment and get what they want.
They can be very good at charming you while having sinister motives behind getting closer to you.
Usually, if a psychopath is charming toward you they are trying to get something from you or get away with something without you knowing.
They are like chameleons and do their best to adapt to any given situation. If they make a mistake they may lash out with anger or recoil and manipulate by feigning victimization.
The perfect psychopath will have multiple backup plans for blending into their desired social circles.
The Perfect Psychopaths have an extreme sense of self-importance and maybe even a “God Complex”
They usually see themselves as geniuses and view everyone else as less intelligent than they are.
Even if they carry out heinous acts against unsuspecting victims they can often be delusional in thinking that what they are doing has a “greater” purpose and centuries from their lifetime, societies will see their genius and call them heroes.
They act on the desire to have others see them as they see themselves: as the hero, the genius, the great savior of the world.
You may find that as a “good” characterthey are narcissistic and intelligent and think everyone around them is dumber than themselves, but they will act in appropriate manners when the social situation calls for it.
You can write your perfect psychopath as someone that has trained themselves to act correctly, or you can write your psychopath as someone that is learning social manners.
Either way can make for fun writing and complex dynamics.
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The Perfect Psychopaths MUST have a Plan and have Everything in Their Control
How to Write The Perfect Psychopath
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How to Write The Perfect Psychopath
I wouldn’t say the perfect psychopaths are big planners as much as they make a plan for everything because they must have a sense or feeling of control over everything they care about.
For example: Let’s say they have a secret murderous addiction in mind. They are going to be constantly planning out every move. This will enable them to control their family their friends, their victims, the police, and anyone else that happens to get involved along the way. No one must be allowed to get in the way of their plot.
If they are a boss of a company they are going to have each role planned out so that their company succeeds and if anything threatens that they may plan to “take care of it” by whatever means possible.
Child psychopaths will find ways to control their friends, siblings, and parents. Whatever their “world” is they will naturally plan out how to control the situations and they might not even realize it while they are doing it.
This trait plays a role in their need to be amazing actors. They don’t want to be good at acting, they need to be.
They have a hard time socially knowing when and how to express the right emotions at the right time until they learn to from an outside source.
They don’t feel emotions like the rest of us.
This makes them disconnected and unable to connect with most anyone.
Humans rely on emotions to connect with each other and feel for each other. They can only make real connections when they are taught or teach themselves social cues and showing emotions based on the circumstance.
They do emote anger, but sadness and regret they seem to have a difficult time with. It has more to do with how they feel about other character’s situations.
If someone knows what it feels like to experience loss, they are more likely to feel empathy for another human when they see them also experiencing loss.
Psychopaths are unable to feel empathy for this reason.
They have no idea what it feels like to feel emotionally bad so they have no idea how to feel bad for anyone else.
If they decide to try to learn to act appropriately, it is mostly to be able to control their environment to continue to get what they are trying to get and not lose relationship points with those that they have convinced to trust them and be around them.
Some psychopaths learn to react to situations as if they are feeling emotions and some don’t bother.
Usually, a sinister psychopath will view feigning emotion to make people happy as a futile game that is a waste of time and energy.
A more mogul psychopath that wants lots of power will view feigning emotion as a way to gain peoples’ favor and trust and they need people in order to become more powerful. (Think of some politicians that might think this way.)
Psychopaths are MASTER MANIPULATORS.
You may find your master manipulative psychopath being the second in command of an army whispering one thing to one general and another thing to another general so that the two generals fight and the psychopath gets what they want out of it.
They like to play master of puppets behind the scenes.
They love to know that what they say and do controls people and their decisions. It feeds their feelings of importance and intelligence above others.
You might find your psychopath in high school dating the most popular boy in school so that people like her and see her as popular, but in secret, she hangs out with the boy next door that is the weird kid at school.
You would never catch her dead talking to her true friend at school, but only at home when no one sees her. Remember she can never lose control.
Your master manipulator might be working his way up the corporate ladder and find him figuring out who his next competitor is so that he can find ways to take out his competitor from the running.
Remember, psychopaths, need to be in control. So she or he is not just going to work hard to get the position. They will plan and scheme to MAKE ABSOLUTELY SURE there is no way possible that he could lose.
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Even if it means creating a trap that breaks his competitor’s leg so that they have to take sick leave for months while the bosses choose who gets the position.
You might find your psychopath manipulator as a bank teller who regularly uses access to people’s information and money spending “habits” as blackmail for keeping their money secrets.
As you look to get ideas for writing your next psychopath I hope this helps!
If you enjoy How to Write The Perfect Psychopath, Storytelling and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
If you enjoy How to Write The Perfect Psychopath, Storytelling and writing in general, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
5 Tricks How to Hide Your Villain Right Before Their Eyes
One of the most fun and entertaining things to do as a story lover and writer is to hide the villain right in front of your audience and keep them guessing until the end.
Throw in a twist here and a twist there and voila, you surprise everyone that they knew who the villain was all along and they met them in chapter 2 but didn’t have a clue until the very end.
In some stories, the villain is bold and insidious and it’s obvious the entire time who they are, but some stories the villainous creature is scheming and conniving and even in their own mind is the good guy.
Whether your villain is insane and doesn’t recognize they’re evil deeds as evil or they are doing their best to fit into society and hide their dark secrets, it can be a lot of fun for readers to be surprised as to who the real villain is.
So here are some fun and creative ways that you can entertain your readers by hiding your villain right before their eyes:
When readers are poring over your words they expect to find the villain as some cruel ugly hag, but if you make her nice and kind and enjoyable, they might just skip right past this one on the possible guilty subjects list at first, expecting you to reveal them later, being none the wiser to have just met them.
Give your villain a scene or two where they are enjoyable and likable and perhaps even charming and potentially heroic and you’ll find folks are pleasantly surprised later on to learn that that charming character is actually an evil character in disguise.
Make your evil person a random shopkeeper that helps the protagonist find an item in the store in the first couple of chapters and even gives them a discount showing the villain to be charitable to throw them off the scent even more.
A good way to hide your bad guy from your audience at first is to make them believe he is a fool or a bumbling idiot.
By making him a fool at first, you make them look like a side character in the story. That adds extra dynamics and enjoyment, but nobody would ever expect the fool to be the cunning evil undertaker in disguise.
Give them some sort of physical handicap to make them “appear” to be physically “weaker,” but in truth, they are NOT weaker at all. It is only a guise. Give them a limp or hobble. Make them a character with paraplegia or quadriplegia. Make your villain a character with muteness, deafness, or blindness so that your heroine and reader are none the wiser to their evil schemes and less likely to put them on their mental suspect list.
It doesn’t even have to be an actual ailment to your villain. The antagonist could be feigning the injury or birthed medical condition altogether. Both work equally well for making a dynamic character with complicated ideas and emotions.
Readers expect the evil antagonist to be strong and of equal strength physically to the protagonist. By making the villain appear “weaker” or “vulnerable,” your readers could look right over them and might not suspect a thing.
Think Mr. Glass in Unbreakable and Glass. People all around him underestimate him, but that is the most dangerous thing to do. The main antagonist in Glass assumed she could control and outsmart Mr. Glass and that was her fatal mistake.
Because of her foolish assumption, she fell right into his plans perfectly and handed him everything he needed to show the world that the myth of superhumans was real. She assumed she was smarter than him and could control him and that was her downfall.
(Side note: make sure to have the utmost care and respect with how you research disabilities and write characters with disabilities, whether they are humans or fantasy creatures that you are writing. We all have friends and loved ones we know with disabilities, so be kind and respectful. Disabilities can be written about in fiction in a responsible and respectful way 🙂 .)
One of the easiest ways to throw your readers off the scent of the villain is to make them attractive. Make them kind, polite, and charming.
Make them the life of the party. The person that could spit in your face and that you would still want to be their friend and have their attention.
That character could never be the villain, could they?
5. Make the villain assist the protagonist.
Have the protagonist meet them on a train ride and have the villain help them find their cart and sit with them and have a very needed helpful conversation.
You could go as bold as to have the villain be there “sidekick” up until the time of turning against them, or you could have the villain help them in a moment and turn the reader’s mind to think that the villain is just a kind helpful person in the story.
One of the key secrets to great storytelling and writing stories is creating surprise.
Most writers and critics would call this a twist at times, but it doesn’t always have to be a twist.
With a villain that surprises our reader, it could be an act of cruelty.
One great way to do it is betrayal.
Think Judas and Jesus. Think Brutus and Caesar, “And you Brutus…”
Betrayal is a great way to surprise our reader with who the villain is as well as really put on the emotional sting when they find out.
The Way to Set Up Betrayal
If you want to use betrayal to surprise your reader with your villain you’ll have to set it up for it to have a great effect.
The villainess should start out in the story as someone close to the heroine. It could be their sister, mother, cousin, or best friend.
When we meet the villain we should think that they are a side character and are good.
Write them playing with the heroine as children. They can grow up together telling each other their deepest most trusted secrets.
They can go to the same school, or live in the same castle.
They can fight alongside one another in battle or be on the same basketball team.
Whatever you choose, make them close before ultimately showing that the villain was right underneath the reader’s nose all along and then write them doing some act of betrayal and showing little remorse for it.
They could be cheating with the heroine’s boyfriend or husband.
They could be secretly plotting to kill them to take their place on the throne.
They could be planning to take revenge for an act the heroine didn’t know they felt bitter about.
Whatever you choose, make the betrayal heinous and hard for the reader to accept without feeling angry for the heroine, or it might not work in the story.
Write a Villain that Could be Your Reader’s Next-Door Neighbor
If you want your villain to be bigger than life, you need to make sure the villain comes across as a plausibly real person.
Villains that are fun but too spooky are sometimes forgettable, but the villain that could be their next-door neighbor in real life is hard to get out of mind. If they have a hard time looking at their neighbors the same way after they have read your story then you’ve opened up their eyes to how dangerous a seemingly “good” person can be.
The idea is the psychopath next door.
Write the villainous character as someone that is the leader of the neighborhood watch in the cul de sac.
Everyone knows and loves the villain and the villain is greatly kind and generous in daylight and during office hours, but if you somehow got surveillance into their private home or office you’d cringe to find out what they are doing in secret.
That’s the key to a game making villain that’s real, but pure evil.
They are kind and generous in public, but in secret, they have nasty skeletons in their closet, or better yet the backyard of their second home.
Don’t take this overboard, don’t write them as fake nice that’s so easy to see through. Write them as genuinely kind so that when our reader learns what they do when no one is looking, they’ll be shocked, surprised, and in horror.
You can even carry this out in a creative way by picking a person in real life that you know or look up to.
Give the villain their personality and mannerisms and this will help your reader see and believe that this character is very real to life and could be their next-door neighbor.
Write a Villain That Doesn’t Care About Anyone But Themselves
A game making villain is completely selfish. A complete narcissist could work.
But don’t be so extreme or your reader will just be sick of them and ready to see them die or lose and move on.
Their actions have to give the reader hope that there is some good in them.
One of the reasons Darth Vader was so HUGE in villain history is that the entire trilogy Luke was saying “I can see the good in you. There is still hope.”
If our readers see a villain that does good things but surprises them with the evil deeds the villain commits our readers might cling to the idea that it is possible that they could change.
Leaving it possible means that curiosity about the villainess character can continue.
But we as the writer know deep down inside that our villain is complete and utterly consumed with selfishness and will never change despite leading the fact that the villain manipulates our heroine and leads them on.
Write a Villain that Has Extenuating Qualities
Give the villain excuses for the way he or she acts.
Give them a goal that the reader could possibly perceive as a good goal.
In Lord of the Rings, every member of the Fellowship of the Ring had the potential for good and evil.
Boromir wanted to take the ring and use it as a “weapon against the enemy.” But everyone knew the ring poisoned the wearer’s mind, turning them insane or against the good and towards the evil Saruman, making anyone a potential threat.
When Boromir says they should use it against the enemy it is tempting to think that this is a good idea. But deep down we as the readers know this is a bad idea.
When Boromir acts in this way his motives are potentially good, so when he tries to take the ring from Frodo the reader can be curious to know if his actions are good or bad. During this act, he acts as a potential villain but in the end, we know that ultimately the true villain is Saruman.
When we do this for the reader we make the villain and their acts more emotional and deep for the reader.
Write a Villain that has a Palpable Description.
Use the physical description of your villain to make her or him jump off the page and into your reader’s mind.
Give your villain a back story that leaves them with a hideous scar.
Use that scar to tell a story.
For example: the character has a deep gash in their back. When the villain was six years old the hero was fighting another villain in the same neighborhood that they lived in. The fight got so bad that it ended up destroying a part of the building above the villain. The villain’s apartment caved in and it killed her parents. A piece of rubble pierced her back and totally severed her spine, leaving her a paraplegic for the rest of her life. The villain blames the hero for her parents’ consequent deaths and her paraplegia. She hates the hero for this and plots ways to get revenge every single day.
Try to think of other ways to use their physical description as a way to remind the reader of their twisted back story.
As a Blogger, Why Making Viral Content is a Bad Blogging Strategy
If you are a blogger don’t get caught up in the wrong thing.
If you are a blogger and are wasting LOTS of time on trying to make EVERY post written a viral post you may be putting your energy into the wrong place.
This is a terrible goal and a waste of time for most any blogger and I’m going to tell you why:
1. The amount of time you put into the blog post is unlikely to amount to its “viralness.”
There is absolutely no guarantee that if you spend a bunch of time trying to write a post that you think we’ll go viral that it will.
It can be surprising what audiences like and don’t care for.
I use Pinterest to drive traffic and I am often surprised as to what pins people love and ones they don’t. I’ve created many thinking oh they’ll love this one. And crickets…
At the same time, I’ve had some that I threw together in a minute and they went viral, which really shocked me and made me realize:
As a Blogger, the goal shouldn’t be to spend most of our time and energy figuring out what goes viral and trying to make that.
Our goal should be to create more content as a blogger and adapt as our audience reacts.
Which brings us to our next point:
2. Our goal as a blogger should be to make lots of quality content.
This idea as all ideas should be taken with a grain of salt of course.
As a Blogger, you should definitely spend some of your time researching what people in your niche like and want to read.
The point is, when we first started we probably spent too much time on research and not enough time on building a habit of just creating and letting things flow naturally.
So as a blogger spend some time researching, but most of the time and energy creating.
3. Are you using your research time efficiently?
As a blogger, you should create while you research your topics.
Don’t make the mistake of researching a topic for a week without jotting down post ideas or even writing a post as you go along in your research.
As you’re reading, (if you are a blogger) great ideas will come to your mind. You should write them down.
Either write them in notes, or feel free to start putting them in your next blogger post and revise later when you’re done researching.
4. By creating more blog content that is well done your odds of it going viral go up exponentially.
It’s almost like a time bomb waiting to go off.
The more you create as a blogger the more likely you will create something that people will latch onto.
The less you create the less likely you will create a blog post that goes viral.
I personally found that the time I put into making something go viral didn’t work as well as making lots of content and then when one of mine did hit a nerve with my unique audience trying to create more blog content like that and better than that.
Convert your energy as a blogger into creating lots and lots of good content. Learn your unique audience and give them what they want.
Try this for yourself and let us know how it goes!
