A few nights ago, I wrote about writing women characters. If you don’t have time to read it, the sentence summary is just write a male character and give them a female name. Or another way of saying it, focus more on writing the character than writing a woman. Similar thoughts apply to writing villains, too.

Before I get too far into the villain conversation, I have a brief follow-up to the writing women post. I didn’t really talk about descriptions, even though I started the post with a reference to “breasting boobily.” The follow-up is: over-applying descriptions to your women over your men is a way of drawing attention to the gender of the character, which you know, might not be cool. Treat your characters equally, regardless of their imagined gender.

Women characters deserve to be defined by their actions. As I said in the other post, women should be able to have noble deaths. Furthermore, they should be allowed to be menacing villains on par with their male counterparts.

So now let’s talk about villains.

Villains come in different shapes and sizes. Here’s a list of some villains, in no particular order:

• Darth Vader
• Macbeth
• Zuko from the start of Avatar: The Last Airbender
• Emperor Palpatine
• Lore from Star Trek: The Next Generation
• Ursula from The Little Mermaid
• Dr. Doom
• Magneto
• Annie Wilkes from Stephen King’s Misery
• Killmonger from the movie Black Panther
• The Joker from Batman: The Dark Knight

There are many others I could mention, but this seems like a good, eclectic list. Some of them have quite a bit in common with each other, and some stand out on their own. A couple of them are my favorites, for different reasons.

I’m not going to belabor this by talking about what a villain is. Instead, I want to break this list into different categories, and talk about what makes these characters work within those categories, and what it takes to write them.

Embodiment of Evil

The Embodiment of Evil villain type includes irredeemable characters that strain believability. Star Wars has a lot of these villains in Palpatine, Darth Maul, Snoke, and even Darth Vader throughout Episode 4. Depending on who is writing him, Dr. Doom might sneak into this category, though I think the best Dr. Doom stories are the ones where he is more nuanced.

That’s the thing about Embodiment of Evil characters. They serve the simple purpose of being bad guys, without a lot of depth or nuance at all. They don’t need it. There usually isn’t a lot of difference between any of these types of character. Palpatine and Scar from The Lion King may have more lines than Darth Maul, but we don’t get a lot about what makes them tick or why they are motivated to be evil.

How do you write one of these characters? Don’t think too hard about it. To pull off a proper Embodiment of Evil, the character should have a strong presence. Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men may not have an impressive costume, skull horns, or glowing red eyes, but there is no doubt that he has an overpowering presence on par with that of Darth Maul.

Embodiment of Evil characters do terrible things on screen or on the page, and we usually see them through other characters. If we sympathize with the characters that are witnessing these monsters, we can empathize with their fear, which is the key to making these Embodiments of Evil characters terrifying.

These characters are generally pretty easy to come up with. The challenge to writing these characters well is conveying the effect they have on the other people around them.

Bad Guys with a Message

The Bad Guy with a Message can often look like an Embodiment of Evil. The difference is that they have just a little bit more depth and motivation.

Heath Ledger’s Joker is a perfect example. In that movie, Alfred sums him up: some people just want to watch the world burn. We are given multiple explanations for The Joker being the way he is, which is chilling because these explanations are contradictory. There is implied depth but no definitive backstory, making him even more an agent of chaos. For all his chaos, he executes elaborate plans, all in an effort to say something about human nature: we’re all just one bad day from being monsters like him. He ultimately fails in that movie not because Batman beats him up, but because the people on the boats refuse to act in the way he predicts, thus refuting his entire message.

Anne Wilkes doesn’t have much of a message, but we see her motivation. She’s a reader that would never let a single profanity slip from her sweet lips, and a fan so driven and attached to a set of characters that she’s willing to torture the writer in order to get him to write the next book. She is the darkest muse. If not for the explicit motivation spelled out, giving her a little bit of depth, she would be an Embodiment of Evil.

That is the first clue on how to write one of these characters. The Joker and Anne Wilkes both have the presence and terror of an Embodiment of Evil, but they’re distinct in that they are highly motivated. Motivated characters are beloved, even when they’re villains. Sometimes, especially when their villains.

Broken Moral Compass

The Broken Moral Compass character is probably my favorite. Like the Bad Guy with a Message, they are highly motivated. They’re living in a world that from their perspective, is wrong in a specific and infuriating way, and they are driven to act out and solve it.

Magneto is a Broken Moral Compass character. He’s intelligent and compassionate. He cares deeply for mutant kind, even those that stand out as his enemies. The evil he does is in the name of preserving mutants and elevating them.

Good Dr. Doom stories paint him with a similar brush. And another Marvel character on my list, Killmonger, has a moral compass so close to being correct that if he hadn’t burned the heart-shaped herb, he might have been the hero of that story.

It seems like Marvel really likes the Broken Moral Compass character type. An argument could be made that Thanos and Loki fall into this category, too.

To write a Broken Moral Compass character, you must look at the world you’re creating through a unique perspective. Take something that your heroes hold to be true and important and turn it upside down.

The Broken Moral Compass character is ultimately the hero in their own story. The hero in their own mind, though they might not admit it. Like the Bad Guy with a Message, the Broken Moral Compass character is highly motivated, to the point that their motivation defines them.

Dark Reflection

The Dark Reflection character is one that mirrors or highlights qualities of one or more of your heroes. Lore from Star Trek is a Dark Reflection of Data. What if Data traded in his decency and conscience for emotions? Ursula is a Dark Reflection of Ariel’s father, King Triton.

The Dark Reflection character is more derivative than the Broken Moral Compass. In some stories, Magneto is essentially written as a Dark Reflection of Professor Xavier.

To write a Dark Reflection character, pick one of your favorite, most flavorful heroes, and invert them in some way. You still need to do all the work to make them work as a character. The Dark Reflection character is usually deeper than the Embodiment of Evil characters, but not always.

Doomed with Knowledge

The Doomed with Knowledge character used to be my favorite type, and I’m still very fond of them. These are characters that would have been the hero, if not for some piece of information given to them when they weren’t ready for it.

If Macbeth had not been given the prophecy that he would be king, would he have still killed his best friend and taken the crown? Would Lady Macbeth egged him on to do it if he hadn’t shared knowledge of the prophecy with her? Macbeth was a hero right up to the point where he became the villain.

Would Anakin Skywalker still turn into Darth Vader if he wasn’t told that he was the one prophesied to bring balance to The Force? That probably played a part in his downfall. Would he have turned to the Dark Side if he had not been plagued with visions of Padme dying? He closed the loop on that vision because in turning to the Dark Side and assaulting her in his anger, she probably wouldn’t have died in child birth.

I like Anakin for another reason, because looking at Phantom Menace, he was doomed by the Jedi Council’s lack of knowledge. When asked how he felt, he answered, “cold, sir.” Yet Yoda took that as a sign of Dark Side influence, when really, the kid was used to the heat from his desert world.

I think Boromir also qualifies as a Doomed with Knowledge character. He knew where The One Ring was, and he knew that it was powerful, perhaps something that could be used to save his people. Had he not bore such knowledge, I don’t think The Ring would have been able to find purchase within his mind to tempt him.

To write a Doomed with Knowledge character, write a hero, and then give them some temptation they cannot resist. Doomed with Knowledge characters are best when they are deep and pitiable. You have done well when the reader can imagine how they might have turned out if only they had the strength to resist temptation. Preferably, a temptation that the reader can appreciate and sympathize with.

The Redeemable

The Redeemable character is essentially the complete opposite to The Embodiment of Evil. Where an Embodiment of Evil is thin, The Redeemable is deep, complex, motivated, and nuanced. The Redeemable can do terrible, evil things, but they usually aren’t kicking puppies for fun or acting without a conscience.

Let’s look briefly at Zuko from The Last Airbender.

Zuko is tasked with hunting down and killing Aang in order to reclaim his honor. That’s all he’s ever wanted, really. He sets off on a dangerous journey, serving the man that claimed his honor and deeply scarred him when Zuko didn’t deserve it.

Zuko is a survivor of abuse. He acts on his emotions. He’s impulsive, driven, and young.

Over the course of his adventures, he learns and he grows. He finds that he and Aang aren’t so different, and that they could be friends if they weren’t on opposite sides of an ongoing conflict. And through the love and patience of his Uncle, he learns his own worth, and that the honor he always wanted was his all along.

Zuko is one of the best written characters, pretty much ever, and he started as a villain. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

In spite what we see in Return of the Jedi, I don’t believe that Darth Vader falls into this category. He gets some redemption, but I do not believe he is actually redeemed. He killed too many younglings.

If you want to learn how to write a Redeemable character, go watch the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender. Even if you don’t want to learn to write this type of character, go watch that series anyway. It’s excellent storytelling and a good time all around.

In Summary…

I prefer nuanced, interesting characters. However, not every story needs the villain to be that deep. Palpatine was a perfectly serviceable villain in the original trilogy. Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace served his purpose, too, and he basically didn’t have any lines.

Look at your story and determine how important the relationship is between your protagonist and your antagonist. If it’s important, your story may be better served with a villain that is deeper and more interesting than someone that just laughs and twirls their mustache.