Intro to: 11 Tips How to Write Villains that Manipulate Their Prey
Writing villains is fun to think about, but the goal of writing villains and the art of writing worthy villains is becoming more and more complicated.
Villains are becoming more and more predictable. We as writers must begin to really rack our brains and gather our creative juices to give our readers enjoyable and compelling villains.
Not everyone enjoys the likely villain with the glowing green eyes and the fiery breath.
Some readers like hidden villains and the intelligent, cunning and conniving villain.
Hopefully, this post will help us think through what we want our villain to be and how we want our readers to perceive them.
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11 Tips How to Write Villains that Manipulate Their Prey
Write villains that are of a genius-level intelligence.
How do we write villains that are evil geniuses? How do we write villains that are believable?
Evil geniuses are a 50/50 for audiences. They either love or hate them, but that doesn’t matter. If we want to create a villain that is intelligent enough to know how to manipulate their prey they are going to have to be smarter than most people.
If we are going to write villains and make them truly worthy and superior to any woebegone hero, making them a genius sometimes works best.
What are some ways you can make your villain look more like an evil genius?
Write villains with an obsession that leads them to dedicate all their brains to that end. Their obsession should be selfish in nature. They are not obsessed with solving world hunger and world peace. That may be their guise, but in reality, they are ultimately obsessed with their own selfish wants and desires.
They could be obsessed with finding immortality. They could be obsessed with power. They could be obsessed with a person that they just must have or be romantically involved with.
Ultimately their obsession will lead them into doing evil things to accomplish their goals.
They may design technology to do their bidding so that they can rule over anyone. They may use charm to attract the right people into their network to use them for their own purposes.
One thing remains clear: they are going to use their genius intelligence to manipulate people they want things from.
They could be a philanthropist that feigns giving to charity so that they can get closer to those who have money and status.
They might play the victim and get others to feel bad for them and give them what they ultimately desire.
They may become a professor at a university so that they can use their intelligence and time to work on their evil projects in the background while looking as if they are a benevolent teacher who cares. All the while they are enjoying fooling everyone.
Write villains that like to do their work in the dark.
Manipulative villains get their kicks from working behind the scenes.
They actually get happy from planning and plotting evil acts that no one is expecting, especially not their targets.
Think of a stalker watching their prey from afar, but not just to watch, they are actually scheming how to attack their prey, but at the right moment.
They’ll work and wait for a time if they feel they need to.
I wouldn’t say they are usually patient people, but the really intelligent ones can be.
How do we write villains that like to work in the background? How do we write villains that don’t get caught working in the dark?
Some ways to carry this out:
Write villains that think outside their cultural system.
Have your villain be someone’s best friend for years only to turn on them when they least expect it.
Your villain could work his way up the company ladder just to destroy the business when she or he becomes authoritative enough to do so.
They could marry someone with the intent of taking everything from them and then moving on to the next prey.
Write villains that love to run experiments on their targets.
How do we write villains that run experiments on the innocent? How do we write villains that prey on the helpless?
Villains that want to manipulate their prey often end up running experiments on innocent people.
Think of Mr. Glass from the hit movie Unbreakable. He decided to run real to life experiments on the world and on many innocent people for the “greater good.”
Villains often love to use the “greater good” to justify what they want to do. Individuals don’t matter as much as the “goal” they are trying to achieve.
Mr. Glass would use his intelligence to create massive catastrophic events in the hopes of finding a superhuman.
When finally he explains himself to the hero revealing his deeds, he explains that he did it for himself and the world so they could know that there were superhumans in existence.
Villains like this will find ways to run experiments in real life so that they can change the world in a way that they think is best.
Write villains whose entire motive is to just gain more knowledge.
How do we write villains that care for nothing more than knowledge? How do we write villains that will do anything to anyone without caring at all to get it?
This type of villain is interesting and terrifying because they have nothing to gain or lose other than learning new knowledge and they are willing to do anything to gain new knowledge.
They are willing to kill or hurt anyone to learn, and the victim will have no idea what’s going on until it is too late.
Imagine falling asleep in your bed and waking up later in a labyrinth where half of the place is safe and half of the maze is set up with electric shock traps. Imagine working your way through this maze over the course of two years only to find out in the end that it was just one experiment so that a mad scientist could observe you and learn from your experiment.
That’s creepy.
This villain isn’t concerned about money or jail or any of the normal things in life. They will do anything to anyone at any time all in the name of science and learning, only to be never satisfied with what they learned and only wanting to know more.
Write villains that never want to stop.
They don’t repent and they don’t relent. They only pretend to stop if they feel that it will buy them more time to come up with another scheme to be free to continue to seek out more prey.
Since they don’t ever want to stop this desire leads many of them to seek out immortality.
What are some ways that manipulate villains can live forever?
Does your villain find a way to transfer their consciousness to someone else?
Do they figure out how to surgically put their brain into someone else’s body?
Write villains that want immortality more than anything else in existence.
They could manipulate someone by telling them that they could give them eternal life by putting them into someone else’s body, but in reality, they had targeted this individual for their wealth and status and were planning on taking their body for themself the entire time.
Does your villain make an elixir that they can drink to live longer? Does this elixir have to be made with other humans’ vitality?
Your hero could live in a world where the rich prey on the poor and weak by making this elixir from other humans. The poor can’t afford it, and the rich don’t care. The company that makes it actually buys and kidnaps people from the poor class in order to make it.
11 Tips How to Write Villains that Manipulate Their Prey.
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Write villains that take advantage of the weak and helpless.
Think of Mister Sinister from the X-Men comics. He took advantage of the victims in the WWII concentration camps and ran genetic experiments on them. They couldn’t protect themselves or fight against the injustice, and he really relished not having to do much work to get more subjects for his sinister experiments.
Mister Sinister used their disadvantages to bring down the cost and work of his experiments on his prey.
Think about your villain.
What in society can they take advantage of to prey on the vulnerable and the weak?
Who in their general sphere is vulnerable?
Who would they find in their town that they could manipulate?
Do they live in a small town where they can get away with a lot without being noticed?
Or do they live in a big city where people go missing too often for the police to be able to get a handle on it?
Write villains that would do anything to achieve their goals.
Write villains that enjoy using their prey’s own thoughts and feelings about life against them.
Nothing brings a true manipulative villain more joy than seeing their arch enemy agonizing over their own worldviews being twisted and diluted before their very eyes.
The villain loves to get inside the head of their prey and cause them great amounts of psychological pain in order to crush their spirit.
Try to find ways for your villain to take advantage of their prey by getting into their mind. Figuring out their values. Figuring out what they hold dear and then figuring out how to take it away from them.
In this way, the villain can relish twisting and manipulating their prey emotionally. And sometimes killing the hero’s spirit is more painful and devastating than destroying them physically.
Write villains that know how to carry out plans against their prey that leaves the villain looking innocent.
In Darkseid’s story, he agrees to a peace treaty on the grounds that he gets control of his enemy’s son.
He planned out the whole thing perfectly so the son was able to escape, seemingly all on his own. This made it look as if the son broke the treaty. This enabled Darkseid to attack as he pleased without it looking like he purposely broke the treaty.
Figure out ways to allow your villain to carry out his or her evil deeds all while making himself look innocent of any of it. Maybe even making him look as though he is there to help amidst the carnage that he himself planned out.
Write villains that were first victims themselves.
We see this a lot in stories. The villain becomes a villain after being beaten up or abused by others.
In the Joker, we see him as a normal person, for the most part, trying to be a valued member of society, but random members of society keep taking advantage of him and treating him poorly.
After a certain amount of time and finding out the truth about his mother, he gives in to his anger and turmoil and starts doing villainous acts.
What is your villain’s back story?
What drove them into their madness?
What events in their life led them to their worldview being skewed?
What led your villain to want to exact revenge on people?
Write villains that have strange beliefs.
The evil titan Thanos in the comics was obsessed with death and wanted to court her. He tried to figure out what would draw her attention towards him.
He was extremely intelligent and was able to create many machines. He used them to try to murder as many beings as he could as a gift or gesture towards death. He used mass murder in order to gain her affection.
What type of strange beliefs might your villain have that make her or him carry out evil against the innocent?
Write villains that have accomplished the ultimate achievement of convincing all the heroes that they are actually a hero as well until their evil plan is complete.
Has your villain grown up with the hero and always been by their side helping and assisting, almost like a sidekick?
In the shadows, the reader is able to see how the sidekick struggles with a dark side. Maybe they have unspoken jealousy for the hero?
Maybe they just desire to do evil but suppress it because they know it isn’t right and they don’t want to disappoint anyone?
Maybe your villain has been heroic in the open, but in the dark, they have been carrying out evil acts in secret for years?
If it is at all possible, figure out how to make this type of villain have a large world plan that is achieved before anyone realizes what is going on.
This will have great conflict and affect your hero and thus your reader.
I hope this helps!
Happy Writing!
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11 Tips How to Write Villains that Manipulate Their Prey
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11 Tips How to Write Villains that Manipulate Their Prey
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One of the best articles on villains (and supervillains). Thank you.
Thank you, DW. I hope it helped you!