A lot of the psychology that you describe regarding villains in this post, Susanne, plays very well into how Dostoevsky’s protagonist Raskolnikov is so idealistic that he misses his own flaws. He thinks he can take the laws of morality into his own hands and kill an unsuspecting pawnbroker lady. He is both protagonist and antagonist. I have never read a book like it–with the themes of suffering, redemption and idealism–that affected me so profoundly, even though I read it more than 20 years ago. Just thinking about the novel gives me the shivers.

You are so on point in suggesting to writers that they build out the human characteristics of antagonists, give them an understandable if flawed sense of logic and even–gasp–agree with the protagonist at some key moment.

Thanks for this very thoughtful post into how to create really “good” bad guys.

Joe

Glad to help!

For me, partly because I’m at the end of rereading the whole series, but also because they naturally come to mind are Voldemort and Dolores Umbridge from the Harry Potter series, and also Gar Face from THE UNDERNEATH. I know there are many more, but these are the ones I thought of and I don’t remember anything redeeming about them! lol

Thanks for your reply, Susanne – that does make sense. I guess I was thinking along the lines of a protagonist like Harry Potter, who has a ‘nemesis’ in the form of Draco Malfoy, as well as a proper ‘villain’ to face down the track (Voldemort). This is the distinction to which I was referring; Malfoy was almost like a warm-up antagonist, and later became a somewhat sympathetic character as he, too, fell victim to Voldemort’s cruelty. In this example, multiple ‘bad guys’ allowed for a much deeper exploration of what it is to be a truly bad person. There probably is no limit to the number of villains you have in a story, but as you pointed out, it would only really work if there was no redundancy/duplication…thanks for helping to clarify my thinking 🙂

Thanks! I hope these books really help your writing. So much of what I put in these writing craft books comes from what I encounter in the hundreds of manuscripts I critique each year. I hope to save writers from making the kinds of mistakes in their novels that will cause novel failure.

Hi Angela, every component and character in a novel has to be considered in the light of the concept you are playing out, and the actual plot/story. You can have numerous antagonists in a novel, and numerous nemesis characters. The latest Hobbit movie came to mind, with five armies all fighting one another. A lot of nemesis characters there. I’m not clear on what the difference is between a nemesis and a “top-shelf villain. Bad guys come in all shapes and sizes. It may not be useful to have two bad guys that are similar and have the same goals, views, and issues. That would be redundant. But if they each have some goal and attitude that provides different obstacles for your protagonist, then that might be useful.