If we want our readers to enjoy what we write and the stories we tell than we need to carefully consider how we get them to see what we want them to see while they are reading.
We especially want to do this with our villains because who doesn’t enjoy seeing a good interesting dynamic villain?
Good example: “he threw her to the kitchen floor muttering how worthless she was. He immediately reached down and took a twenty out of her purse that had spilled onto the floor. As he stared at the twenty tilting slightly from being drunk he spit on her, walked out the door and slammed it behind him.”
It takes more time to write that way and we have to find more creative ways to “show” our readers who our characters are, but the end result is much more interesting and will hold onto your reader’s interest longer.
Sometimes it’s hard to know what to write to help our reader see our villain more than just hearing about them.
A sure-fire way to get through this is to be more specific about details.
Bad example: “he wore a coat and glasses.”
Good example: “when he walked through the door the first thing anyone noticed about him was his dirty unshaved face hiding behind small circular thin glasses. There was a tiny chip on one side. Even his facial hair couldn’t hide his striking cheekbones and jawline, but he never looked up. His long brown leather jacket that looked to be as old as twenty years. It looked as if it had never seen any type of wash and it dragged just sightly with each step. If the smell wasn’t his own body it was most certainly the jacket.”
Again, longer to write and takes more creative juices, but we really want to get into the practice of imaging what our villain looks like and then using specific details to tell our readers what we see.
Don’t worry about being a dynamic writer.
Be concerned about passing what you see, hear, and smell the best you can as if you were in the room yourself.
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All villains start in the same place. They start off living in our heads. And that’s their only beginning until they start to make it on the page with our writing.
If we don’t take the time to sit down and actually write about them and play with their thoughts abilities and lives, they will never become anything more than just a passing thought in our heads.
So how do we get our villains from our heads into our readers’ imaginations?
We start by getting to know them and the only way we’ll truly get to know them it’s by spending some quality time with our villains.
How to write from your villain’s Mind:
# 1 How to Write From Your Villain’s Mind: Write short stories about your villains
11 + Things You Should Know About Your Main Character Before You Start Writing Chapter 1
We spend so much time thinking about the story and the plot and what we want to happen and why and then… we start writing chapter 1.
We start writing only to find that we don’t really know our main characters very well.
Have we ever taken the time to see what it would be like to sit down with them and have a cup of coffee to see what they would be like as a person in the real world?
Imagine you are sitting with your main character on a nice sunny breezy day outside a coffee shop and their name is Thor.
“Hi Thor, how are you today?”
“I’m marvelous and this brown liquid you have served me, what did you call it again?!”
“Hah, Thor, that’s coffee.”
“Ah! Coffee! I love this stuff! It makes me feel so alive and ready to conquer all my foes! I’ll take 3 more pitchers!”
“But Thor that much might make your heart race very fast.”
“Good! Indeed, I hope it does! I’ll take 5 more in that case! Bring them at once bar maiden!”
Silly though as it may be, it can be quite fun to think about what it would be like to sit and talk with your main character in various scenarios and even in their realm.
What would it be like to be their sidekick on an adventure?
What would it be like to walk with them through a quiet field?
What would it be like to go with them into a bar or tavern?
What would it be like to go on a 10-hour road trip with them?
What would it be like to go on a high-speed car chase with them?
By knowing upfront how they would act in a certain situation we can put them into almost any scenario and not betray their character. This is one simple way to make sure we write a good main character compared to a lousy one.
How would they act if they were sad?
Characters show sadness in different ways. Some bottle it up and try to manage it on their own.
Others immediately wail out and tears are flowing.
What pokes the heartstrings of your character? What would make them a little sad and what would be devastatingly sad to them?
When we are able to make our characters realistically sad it will have an effect on our readers too.
How would they act in anger?
Are they the type of character that can’t handle their anger and they act vengefully? Or do they act cool and calm no matter what comes at them?
What would make them angrier; their best friend getting punched in the face or their own face being punched?
Does injustice make them angry? Or could they care less? Does their own suffering make them angry or does seeing the suffering of others make them angrier?
What would devastate your character emotionally?
What things could your antagonist target in your character’s life that would devastate your main character?
How would they feel emotionally and react to someone messing with:
Their brother or sister
Their mother or father
Uncle
Best friend
Acquaintance
Stranger they see
Shop owner
Their teacher
Their relationship or crush
Their waiter or waitress
Their car
Their grades
Scholarship
The sports team (cheating)
How does your character react to change?
Change comes in many forms and it is a brilliant idea to introduce change to your character while you are writing about them to see how they would react and what the consequences would be.
Are they forced to move away from home?
Did the school just kick them out of one class with their favorite teacher to a class with a terrible teacher?
Did they lose their job? Did their boss quit? Did they get a new assignment with a different team?
Did they not make varsity this year compared to last year?
Does your character make friends easily?
Whether or not a character has friends and makes friends easily says a lot about them. Are they the life of the party or a good personal listener?
Or are they a loner and have a hard time relating to others in any form?
How do they normally react to the idea of spending an evening around strangers? Do they thrive on meeting new people or do they hate the idea?
Do they have many friends? Do they have just a few friends? Or do they not really have any friends?
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What are the character’s major fears?
Know what your character fears and how this affects the plot. Some characters fear getting into certain situations.
They may fear being on stage or swimming with sharks. They might be afraid to talk to a popular person they like.
Other’s experience fears of certain things.
They may fear certain animals or bugs like snakes and spiders. Those are a bit cliche, but you could make them afraid of other things like certain flowers or butterflies. These types of fears give our fictional characters more depth.
What are your character’s minor fears?
Writers often think of major fears without thinking of minor fears. You can give your character more humanity by giving them a slight fear of rats, bats, or spiders. Things people are commonly slightly afraid of.
Everyone has minor fears, things that might make them jump or scream. They might run out of the room because of these fears, but they won’t become debilitated or break into a sweat or start crying.
What are your characters not afraid of at all?
We can make entertaining and interesting characters by writing that they have no fear of more commonly feared things. Make them not afraid of sharks, speaking, cliff jumping, sky diving, or bank robbing. Think of common major fears.
Is your character a planner?
Does your character plan out what they do? Do they know what they are going to do tomorrow or not?
Are they extremely spontaneous or do they plot every move they make at the grocery store?
If plans don’t go their way do they get impatient and lose their cool? For planners, the plans they make are EXTREMELY important to them, so if anything goes outside the bounds of the plan that can make the entire event a COMPLETE and utter failure.
For someone that is more spontaneous, they actually enjoy just going and seeing what happens. They’d rather not have a plan at all and just enjoy the adventure.
Is your character spontaneous?
Does your character jump first and think second? A spontaneous character can be easier to write sometimes because you can easily make something up as you for their actions.
Planners have to be planned out and stick to the plan.
On the flip side, your character could be a hardcore planner where their plans almost NEVER work out. This could be entertaining and interesting to watch how it plays out for a character that experiences a lot of stress and turmoil just by plans going out of whack.
Does your character have a habit of lying? What do they lie about?
Do they lie because they are afraid of getting caught? If they do lie but not easily, what first prompts them to lie? Why would they give in to the temptation and who are they willing to lie to and about what?
A character’s personality and traits are a complicated web of thoughts, habits, and emotions, but know how they would think about and react to things is a great place to start figuring out just who this new character you have in your mind REALLY is.
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In order to beat writer’s block, you’re going to need to figure out where you’re at in the writing process.
In order to know where you’re at in the writing process, you are going to need to know what the writing process is.
What is the writing process?
The writing process goes as follows:
You get an idea.
You start to write that idea out
You finish writing that idea out
This sounds really simple and it is. The hard part is figuring out why you specifically are suffering with writer’s block.
Do I have writer’s block because I don’t have an idea?
In order to start writing you MUST have an idea.
An idea is not complicated in itself.
An idea is like, I want to write about a bank robber, but the bank robber isn’t nasty or mean she’s actually extremely polite and kind. She just gets a job at banks and figures out a nonconfrontational way to rob it and then disappears.
How do I start writing about my idea if I have writer’s block?
Writer’s block happens for different reasons at different times.
If you don’t have any idea of what to write about than it is time to do some reading and researching and thinking and sitting down and just making a giant list of ideas until you find one that you just love the idea of writing about.
If you already have an idea but you are having a hard time actually sitting down and writing that is a completely different beast altogether.
IF I have an idea what about writer’s block is stopping me from writing?
This is where you have to dig deep down and be really honest with yourself.
Are you having a hard time getting the idea in the right words or are you having a hard time actually sitting down and physically doing the work of writing.
Some of us fantasize about the idea of being a writer and being famous for a story and making lots of money and being called an author, but if we are honest with ourselves we don’t actually love the work of writing.
Let me make something very clear: The real work of being a writer is finding a place where we can sit or stand and write manually or type words on a page that cause others to want to read those words.
If you don’t like the idea of getting alone in your mind and creating words that lead to interesting words and paragraphs then you don’t actually like the work of a writer or author.
This very fact is to be considered when you have an idea, but you find it much easier to turn on Netflix, play a video game, go on social, go out with friends, and the thought of actually sitting down and writing seems bleh.
What do I do if my writer’s block is actually me not liking the physical work of writing?
This may sound blunt and it is. If you want to get past this type of writer’s block, you will have to stop what you’re doing and just go sit somewhere and start typing words.
It doesn’t have to be a million words the first time and every time you sit down to write, but I would recommend treating it like physical exercise.
Start small. Start by writing 10 words at a time and in time if you find that you can sit down to write 10 words then most likely you will feel like writing more.
The biggest problem for this type of writer’s block is not knowing what to write. Its the daunting feeling of feeling like writing takes a lot of work.
And writing can be a lot of work, but if you don’t just sit down and start writing something as small as ten words in a session you will never write anything you want to. You’ll just keep putting it off and procrastinating.
What if I have an idea and I’m trying to sit down and write, but I just stare at a blank page with a blinking line?
This is the real writer’s block and I’m going to give you the BIG but not so crazy secret to crush writer’s block and never have it be a problem for you again.
RESEARCH.
AND
READING.
Instead of staring at a blank page, start to read and think about and research the idea that you want to write about.
Let me give you some practical ways to research say BYE BYE to writer’s block.
EXAMPLE: Let’s say I just got a story idea and I want to write about an orphan girl in Vietnam during the Vietnamese war and her journey to find life family and love amidst war and being orphaned by that place and war.
Even though I have this idea that I like if I go immediately to the blank word document I still have ABSOLUTELY no idea how to write about an orphaned Vietnamese girl during the Vietnamese war.
So what should I do instead?
I should start reading about the Vietnamese war. I should read about orphans. I should read about young girls during that time and in that place and what their life and culture were like to deal with.
If you start to think this way and you start to read anything about what you want to write you will instantly start to have the knowledge to work with for the next time you pull up the blank page.
And I recommend that you write as you are reading and researching.
If you think of something while you are reading DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE WATI TO WRITE IT DOWN.
I can’t stress that enough. You will almost always forget your ideas if you do not write them down right away.
I recommend keeping a writer’s notebook near you while you are researching.
What if my idea is about fictional stuff and I can’t research it historically?
If you want to write about dragons, vampires, werewolves, unicorns, and leprechauns read about dragons, vampires, werewolves, unicorns, and leprechauns.
Exact same principle, different reading subject matter.
I hope this helps! Now gt out there and write something!
IF you have a specific idea and you are having a hard time figuring out how to research it, PLEASE feel free to reach out and I’d love to help you think of ideas for how to research any specific subject.
Leave a comment and I’ll try to get back to you soon!
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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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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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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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.
One of the best ways to develop your characters and reveal who they REALLY are deep down to your readers is to put them into specific situations and then allow your readers to see who they are without just telling them boringly.
Case and point: Instead of saying he is mean and arrogant, you write that “he yelled at his sister for leaving the roast in too long and he bragged to everyone, he got the chance to, about making varsity this year and took up the whole conversation talking about his football throw and how far and accurate he could throw. He wasn’t interested in hearing anything about them at all. In fact, any time they would try to chime in, he would interrupt them or zone out until he could say something else about himself.”
By writing a scene and dialogue that shows who your character is, you never have to actually talk about their personality at all.
Your readers will be able to see it. Your readers will love you for this and they won’t even know you’re doing it. It gets amusing figuring out how to write their actions or inactions into scenes that show what you are desiring to tell.
Just a Tip before getting started: Take a few minutes, sit down, and write out specifically what you want to reveal about your character through these scenes. For example: arrogant, funny, secretive, aloof, gruff. You can use these scenes on your protagonist, antagonist, secondary characters, villains, pedestrians, temporary characters, any character you can think of.
Now on with it.
# 1 Write The Action Scene
The action scene is an easy setup and an easy way to reveal character quickly.
The key secret to a well set up action scene that reveals character is putting the character against a problem where they must take action or decide not to take action but either way their action or inaction reveals who they are deep down as a character.
Important note: It’s not only the action they take that defines to the reader what their true nature is as a character.
It’s also the actions they don’t take.
Not only that, but you can also reveal character by how they make the decision as you write.
Are they meticulous and plan everything out?
Or are they quick to action and don’t plan anything out?
Does this lead to further problems by taking too long to plan things out?
Or by acting to rashly to quickly do they create self-destructive problems?
Does the character learn as they go and approach problems differently based on past events you took them through?
Or do they keep making the same mistakes?
Are they cowardly and take no action at all by running or leaving the problem for others to solve?
Writing task: Take a few minutes to develop a problem and write out how the character works their way through the problem or problems and be sure to write character traits you want to portray to your reader by showing how the character would or wouldn’t take action.
# 2 Write The 1-2-3 Punch Scene
The 1-2-3 Punch scene is called “the 1-2-3 Punch Scene,” because it happens REAL fast. If you blink you might miss it. (So don’t blink…Okay, do blink)
Your reader won’t know that you’ve done it but all within one paragraph usually you’ll have divulged very specific character traits that run down through your character’s core in a matter of a minute or two.
Let’s use the movie “Guardians of the Galaxy” as an example, and we’ll use Ronin the antagonist.
It happens really fast but in the first few moments, we see Ronin as he is going through ritualistic ceremonies.
You can tell they happen daily.
In an instant, we see that he is dedicated, determined, no-nonsense, and disciplined down to his core. And then immediately following we see him harshly judge a man and execute him with his own hammer. We watch his victim’s blood flow into his bathing chamber.
We see his cruelty and how he judges an individual based on his ancestor’s actions without any thought to see how the person is individual.
We see that he’s determined, extremely cruel, and prone to violence, and desires genocide. In a matter of minutes, we know this character.We know that he is cruel and that he will stop at nothing to carry out his cause of vengeance.
This is, in essence, the 1-2-3 Punch. In as quick as a paragraph you can have your character carry out 1-2 or 3 quick actions that display who that character is down to their core and it all happens as quick as a punch and your audience suddenly has a large sense of who that character is. To execute this type of scene well you need to decide a couple of character traits you want your character to have.
Let’s make an example: I have a Protagonist named Jim. I want to portray that Jim is kind, caring, and charitable.
Let’s say Jim’s widowed Aunt stays with him and his son.
She comes home one day and realizes she forgot the butter. Jim hears her exclaim her disappointment and he quickly jumps up and says “Don’t worry about it Auntie, I’ll run out and get your butter for you so that you don’t have to run back in town.” He says it with a big smile of course and a great attitude about the whole thing whistling as he’s off on his way to the store.
While waiting in line to buy the butter the person in front of him is a dollar or two short. Jim quickly says “Oh, let me get that for you” and smiles at the distraught stranger while digging in his pocket for two dollars.
In a short paragraph, we have seen that Jim is kind, caring, and charitable. We didn’t have to SAY “Jim is kind, caring, and charitable.” We used a scene to let the reader see it for themselves.
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# 3 Write The Vulnerability Scene
Have you ever been reading a short story or novel and you start to notice that there is absolutely nothing wrong with the main character or their antagonist?
If you notice, you’ll see that you start to lose interest and resonate less and less with the “perfect” character. This is because, in real life, we know there no such thing as a perfect person. And if their life was perfect, it would be boring. This is why it’s important to have the Vulnerability Scene.
This scene is exactly how it sounds. You have to make your character a little vulnerable in some way. You can go as far as you want with it, but you have to show that the character isn’t perfect and that they have consequences just like people in the real world. Most often it doesn’t have to be some big unheard-of thing. In actuality, this can work best if it is some quick notice of something that could be considered “normal” or small.
For example: Our Sheriff drinks most nights when he’s off duty (and sometimes on duty.) The mailman sometimes reads our letters before delivering them. The DMV worker has an expired license but drives anyway. It could be anything and it could be small or a big deal, but if your characters are going to be believable you have to show some vulnerability so that readers can relate to them a little.
Another way to write a scene that shows who the character is is to put your character through loss. The loss doesn’t have to be a big deal to you, but whatever it is that they lost, it MUST be a big deal to them. The more strange the loss is and how much it hurts the character you write emotionally the more readers can see what is actually important to the character and see what they are like as you write.
If you write your character losing a family member and is only a little sad, but they lose an animal and sob for weeks we can see what is important to this person. Another good example you can write would be a character losing their job and not caring, but their car gets a scratch on it and you write them going into an unforeseeable rage. As we see what the character doesn’t care about and what they care most about in their heart we can see their heart and the core beliefs of the character as we write.
Like I said the loss doesn’t have to always be something that most people would see as a big deal. It could be something you write that you don’t consider to be a big deal, but the fact that it is a big deal to them helps the reader see more and more of who this person is at their core self.
On the flip side, you can use the BIG loss scene in reverse. Write them through a scenario where they experience a loss that most of society would consider a big deal but the fact that you write the character doesn’t, shows who they are as a person and a key part of their character and maybe even an important part of your plot. Make them lose a father, mother, brother, or sister and make them not care and your readers will be lead to curiosity why they don’t care.
Play with the big loss scenario and use it both ways to show what is and isn’t important to your character.
If you enjoy How To Write 4 Scenes That Reveal Who Your Character Is Seamlessly, 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)?
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