The antagonist for your story can be almost anything—a person, a force of nature, an animal or a creature (as in Jaws), an idea, or the main character's inner self. It's anything that stands in opposition to your main character and blocks the way to the goal he or she is trying to achieve.
But today I'm going to talk about actual villains, personified.
The antagonist for your story can be almost anything—a person, a force of nature, an animal or a creature (as in Jaws), an idea, or the main character's inner self.
The Endearing Villains
We love a nice, juicy villain, don't we? Some villains light up the page, or the screen, whenever they appear—they're just so deliciously evil. They do all the terrible things that we would never do, and we like it. When the villains are sexy, funny, or smart, we can't help sympathizing with them.
Think about Loki, the Joker, Darth Vader, and the Darkling (Shadow and Bone, Leigh Bardugo). We recognize these characters as reprehensible, careless of human life, but we like (or love) them anyway. We'd rather they not be totally annihilated by the hero. They each have something redeemable or endearing about them—like Loki's playful cleverness, or the Joker's macabre joie-de-vivre and careless daring.
In some cases, the villain's redeemable quality involves a soft spot for a family member or love interest. Darth Vader harbors affection for his son, and the Darkling bears a twisted kind of love for Alina.
Sometimes, we care about villains because of their origin story, or because they show uncertainty or vulnerability. In Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Estella is hard and cold and manipulative because of her upbringing. In the Young Elites series by Marie Lu, the main character gradually becomes villainous—but we understand why. When Lady Macbeth tries to wash the invisible blood off her hands in Shakespeare's play, we pity her. Our humanity answers to the villain's humanity.
Our humanity answers to the villain's humanity.
The Terrifying Villains
And then there are the truly dark villains. The ones that are irredeemably, inarguably evil, through and through. Sauron, from the Lord of the Rings. President Snow, in the Hunger Games. Lord Voldemort from the Harry Potter series. Professor Moriarty, from the Sherlock Holmes books (the TV show character is arguably more likable). Readers don't generally sympathize with these characters—but why?
Most of these characters have something about them that is dramatically off-putting—a complete lack of emotion or empathy, an all-consuming selfishness, a rabid need for power, or an inhuman quality outside the pale of our experience. They may be super-intelligent and powerful, but somehow it isn't enough to make us like them.
Want to create a truly terrifying antagonist? Take away your villain's human traits, passions, and personality quirks.
Want to create a truly terrifying antagonist? Take away your villain's human traits, passions, and personality quirks. Remove any hint of a softer side or a sense of justice or loyalty, and you'll have something that is, like Sauron, less a character and more a force of evil. Sauron is pure desire and consumption, symbolized by his ever-burning eye.
Think of it this way—Loki has a soft spot for his mother and his adoptive brother; Sauron has no such weaknesses. In many horror or haunting movies, the murderers or ghosts may have a tragic history, but they've advanced far beyond that origin and evolved into something less than human, and therefore are unappealing to most of us.
Villain or Not?
In my fantasy trilogy, I incorporated both kinds of villains, the sympathetic and the terrifying. My first novel, Korrigan, features the Far Darrig, the Red One, a character I drew from some dark old Irish myths. I made my Far Darrig sexy and intelligent, and I gave him a heart-wrenching backstory.
I thought he was the villain at first, and he certainly does some villainous things—but as I was writing the story, I realized who the true villain was. And she was emotionless, vicious, cold, and careless of others, with one partially positive trait—a possessive loyalty to her family of cursed women. In the second book, a new villain joined her, one with different motives and passions, but was still unsympathetic and unforgivable.
It's all right to have characters that start on the villainous end of the spectrum, but slowly (or dramatically) transition to the other side. In modern literature, the line between protagonist and antagonist is often blurred—and I think that's a good thing. No one is purely good all the time. Your protagonists have the potential for evil inside them, and they may make bad choices and do some reprehensible things. But the growth resulting from those choices, the way they deal with the aftermath—that's what makes them positive forces in your stories.
In modern literature, the line between protagonist and antagonist is often blurred—and I think that's a good thing.
What kind of villain do you want for your next novel? The naughty but lovable kind, or the kind that makes your skin crawl?
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