Author Topic: Bad Guys  (Read 11116 times)

Offline The Deposed King

  • Posty McPostington
  • ***
  • Posts: 2350
  • Persuasion is the key to success.
    • View Profile
    • Luke Sky Wachter Blog
Re: Bad Guys
« Reply #15 on: January 24, 2014, 01:57:11 AM »
So you all would say the real issue with villains is not so much originality as there ability to affect the audience's emotions?

You don't have to have every character be a unique and special butterfly.  On the other hand your Villain needs to have his own quirks that make him different.  Most of the time so long as your bad guy has a good reason for what he's doing and enough perceived power to pull it off, most people will go with it.

I will say that a random mugger can be a one dimensional bad guy and the audience will be happy to see him go down but your ultimate bad guy or even just this book's bad guy needs to be a little more solid.

As for Villain's affecting the audience's emotions, he can be a highly developed character or just someone we can get a good mad on or root for the MC to defeat.  The main thing is really the MC and his struggles.  A great villain can be a great addition.  But look at the Blade movies.  How much are you really effecting the audience with teh bad guys and how much more are you effecting things with Blade!

I don't go and watch the hobbit to root against Smaug or the Goblins, so much as to root for the hero against these evil foes!


The Deposed King


Proverbs 22:7, "The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave of the lender"

The Deposed King (a member of baen's bar)

Offline Paynesgrey

  • Bartender
  • Seriously?
  • ****
  • Posts: 12131
    • View Profile
Re: Bad Guys
« Reply #16 on: January 24, 2014, 02:01:46 AM »
And then there's that creepy S.O.B. from "No Country For Old Men"...

Offline the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh

  • O. M. G.
  • ***
  • Posts: 39098
  • Riding eternal, shiny and Firefox
    • View Profile
Re: Bad Guys
« Reply #17 on: January 24, 2014, 03:20:18 AM »
And then there's that creepy S.O.B. from "No Country For Old Men"...

I parsed him as halfway between personification of Death rather and villain, which is an interesting combination.
Mildly OCD. Please do not troll.

"What do you mean, Lawful Silly isn't a valid alignment?"

kittensgame, Sandcastle Builder, Homestuck, Welcome to Night Vale, Civ III, lots of print genre SF, and old-school SATT gaming if I had the time.  Also Pandemic Legacy is the best game ever.

Offline MacPhoenix

  • Posty McPostington
  • ***
  • Posts: 4318
  • I shall rise from the ashes of your verbal burns.
    • View Profile
Re: Bad Guys
« Reply #18 on: January 24, 2014, 04:28:42 AM »
I don't go and watch the hobbit to root against Smaug or the Goblins, so much as to root for the hero against these evil foes!
The Deposed King

I agree. It is just so easy for me when writing to pour my soul fire into the mc leaving nothing for an antagonist. It is a mental gear I believe these discussions have put me on the path to discovering.
Anime & Cartoons; Adults make them, Adults can enjoy them. - me
The first draft is you telling yourself the story.--Terry Pratchett

Offline MacPhoenix

  • Posty McPostington
  • ***
  • Posts: 4318
  • I shall rise from the ashes of your verbal burns.
    • View Profile
Re: Bad Guys
« Reply #19 on: January 24, 2014, 04:32:08 AM »
And then there's that creepy S.O.B. from "No Country For Old Men"...

I did not see that one any good? Death/ Villain combo sounds like the Hindu goddess kali.
Anime & Cartoons; Adults make them, Adults can enjoy them. - me
The first draft is you telling yourself the story.--Terry Pratchett

Offline Orbweaver

  • Posty McPostington
  • ***
  • Posts: 4570
  • Let the games begin.
    • View Profile
Re: Bad Guys
« Reply #20 on: January 25, 2014, 07:40:51 AM »
The reasoning behind your evil villain (their motivations, their past, and the environment surrounding them) is what is most important, when considering where to take their actions and how to have them grow as a character.

For instance, my primary villain is committing heinous crime after heinous crime, twisting the subconscious nightmares of her victims into real entities that attack, kill, devour, etc. human beings in the conscious world. Yet in doing so, she's actually helping to push back something worse: a threat that would quite literally cause the End of Everything if she were not taking the actions she does throughout the story. The main character, or 'hero', then has to decide whether the considerable amount of 'help' this is affording to that end is worth the disaster in the meantime, and try to find an alternate method of doing things that won't result in everything being returned to nothingness.

My advice is this: the best Villains, and it is just my opinion, take actions that serve to set up a series of choices, which ultimately cause your good guy to be conflicted about what to do next. They're there to challenge the protagonist, to try to make them see things a different way, even if that way is absolutely terrifying or nauseating in terms of morality.
In a world of black, white, and grey's... I'd be bright freaking purple. Resident Female Forum Denarian.

Offline Wordmaker

  • Conversationalist
  • **
  • Posts: 917
  • Paul Anthony Shortt
    • View Profile
    • Paul Anthony Shortt's Blog
Re: Bad Guys
« Reply #21 on: January 28, 2014, 02:55:42 PM »
How I'd answer this question really depends on the kind of book you want to write. How complex is the morality? How mature is your target audience?

At the core, though, some points to remember are that no villain worthy of the name ever considers themself to be the villain. There's got to be something that happened to them, that makes them see their actions as justified, or at least excusable. Villains who are pure evil, or utterly insane, should be exceptionally rare.

Another point is that the best heroes represent some dark mirror of the hero's aspects. They embody something the hero is capable of, proud of, or holds dear, but twisted into a warped, rotten distortion.

Finally, and this is just based on my own writing experience, readers want to love and hate the villain in equal measure. As much as they want to see the villain defeated, they should have a desire to see the villain do more.

Offline Quantus

  • Special Collections Division
  • Needs A Life
  • ****
  • Posts: 25216
  • He Who Lurks Around
    • View Profile
Re: Bad Guys
« Reply #22 on: January 28, 2014, 05:43:37 PM »
The Short Answer is that a Good Villain is in most respects the same as a Good Protagonist.  Define what his narrative role is going to be: in your case it sounds like he's the Main Antagonist and a Foil to your MC.  Then decide what kind of Villain you want him to be.  ts a vast spectrum, but to me they are usually somewhere between Aberrant to Sympathetic:  on one side are the villains that Neuro mentioned that have no interest in being the hero, while at the other end you have the villains that really have a valid point and legitimately believe they are doing the "right" thing.  Right in the middle you have teh stereotype super-villain that is batshit crazy but thinks he is justified and so will monologue for an hour to convince others of that fact, allowing the hero to escape and foil the dastardly etc etc...


But the Short Answer is never all there is to it...  8)
<(o)> <(o)>
        / \
      (o o)
   \==-==/


“We’re all imaginary friends to one another."

"An entire life, an entire personality, can be permanently altered by just one sentence." -An Accidental Villain

Offline The Deposed King

  • Posty McPostington
  • ***
  • Posts: 2350
  • Persuasion is the key to success.
    • View Profile
    • Luke Sky Wachter Blog
Re: Bad Guys
« Reply #23 on: January 29, 2014, 01:36:24 AM »
The Short Answer is that a Good Villain is in most respects the same as a Good Protagonist.  Define what his narrative role is going to be: in your case it sounds like he's the Main Antagonist and a Foil to your MC.  Then decide what kind of Villain you want him to be.  ts a vast spectrum, but to me they are usually somewhere between Aberrant to Sympathetic:  on one side are the villains that Neuro mentioned that have no interest in being the hero, while at the other end you have the villains that really have a valid point and legitimately believe they are doing the "right" thing.  Right in the middle you have teh stereotype super-villain that is batshit crazy but thinks he is justified and so will monologue for an hour to convince others of that fact, allowing the hero to escape and foil the dastardly etc etc...


But the Short Answer is never all there is to it...  8)

Something I've noticed just now is that this list of Villain types totally ignores what is probably the most hated and reviled of all villains to ever grace a book or the main-screen.  Shame on you guys!

What is this dastardly villain type you ask?  I'll tell you.

Its the Beuaracratic Villain, whose main and only interest is following regulations and putting anyone who breaks them, villains sure, but most especially those vigilante heros who they view as a greater threat to society than out and out criminal rule breakers!




The Deposed King


Proverbs 22:7, "The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave of the lender"

The Deposed King (a member of baen's bar)

Offline MacPhoenix

  • Posty McPostington
  • ***
  • Posts: 4318
  • I shall rise from the ashes of your verbal burns.
    • View Profile
Re: Bad Guys
« Reply #24 on: January 29, 2014, 01:57:29 AM »
Something I've noticed just now is that this list of Villain types totally ignores what is probably the most hated and reviled of all villains to ever grace a book or the main-screen.  Shame on you guys!

What is this dastardly villain type you ask?  I'll tell you.

Its the Beuaracratic Villain, whose main and only interest is following regulations and putting anyone who breaks them, villains sure, but most especially those vigilante heros who they view as a greater threat to society than out and out criminal rule breakers!




The Deposed King

Now combined that with one of the others and things get real wanko!
I thank all of you for my education on villainy!
Anime & Cartoons; Adults make them, Adults can enjoy them. - me
The first draft is you telling yourself the story.--Terry Pratchett

Offline the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh

  • O. M. G.
  • ***
  • Posts: 39098
  • Riding eternal, shiny and Firefox
    • View Profile
Re: Bad Guys
« Reply #25 on: January 29, 2014, 04:19:33 PM »
Its the Beuaracratic Villain, whose main and only interest is following regulations and putting anyone who breaks them, villains sure, but most especially those vigilante heros who they view as a greater threat to society than out and out criminal rule breakers!

That kind of gets into conflating good/evil with law/chaos as a distinction, IMO.  Heroes who are heroic because they buck the status quo and and antagonists who are villainous because they enforce it are a solid trope, but so are enemies that are monstrous and evil because they are attacking an established order of things that is good and right and heroes who are defined as heroic because they protect and reaffirm those things that are good and right.  (Examples there being the Joker, or most of the outright antagonists in the DF, or the work of Stephen King and the large section of the horror genre influenced by King.)

There's really not all that much out there that does law/chaos without having some preconceptions about good and evil attached to either side.  The original graphic novel of V for Vendetta, much more so than the film, and most of Judge Dredd in the comics; Dredd is interesting because the same writers do him as a consistent character who can be the antagonist to a young rebel who just wants to be free from the oppressive system in one story and saving the city from murderous enemies in the next one. (Don't watch the Stallone movie, don't read the DC or IDW comics; they are travesties.  The Karl Urban movie gets the spirit of the character, and a lot of the original comics are collected; the character took a while to settle so if you want one good sampling of quintessential Dredd I recommend Case Files 5.)
Mildly OCD. Please do not troll.

"What do you mean, Lawful Silly isn't a valid alignment?"

kittensgame, Sandcastle Builder, Homestuck, Welcome to Night Vale, Civ III, lots of print genre SF, and old-school SATT gaming if I had the time.  Also Pandemic Legacy is the best game ever.

Offline LizW65

  • Posty McPostington
  • ***
  • Posts: 2093
  • Better Red than dead...
    • View Profile
    • elizabethkwadsworth.com
Re: Bad Guys
« Reply #26 on: January 29, 2014, 04:26:54 PM »
For me, creating characters, villainous or otherwise, is a lot like method acting. What does the character want, and how does (s)he go about achieving it? What is (s)he trying to accomplish in each scene? What secrets is (s)he concealing, and from whom? What is the character doing when not actually "on stage"? Keeping these things in mind helps to inform the dialogue and characterization.
"Make good art." -Neil Gaiman
"Or failing that, entertaining trash." -Me
http://www.elizabethkwadsworth.com

Offline MacPhoenix

  • Posty McPostington
  • ***
  • Posts: 4318
  • I shall rise from the ashes of your verbal burns.
    • View Profile
Re: Bad Guys
« Reply #27 on: January 29, 2014, 05:47:51 PM »
I think between The DK, Neuro, and Liz a great villainess has been born.
« Last Edit: January 30, 2014, 01:57:21 AM by MacPhoenix »
Anime & Cartoons; Adults make them, Adults can enjoy them. - me
The first draft is you telling yourself the story.--Terry Pratchett

Offline The Deposed King

  • Posty McPostington
  • ***
  • Posts: 2350
  • Persuasion is the key to success.
    • View Profile
    • Luke Sky Wachter Blog
Re: Bad Guys
« Reply #28 on: January 30, 2014, 12:01:01 AM »
I think between The DK, Neuro, and Liz a great villainess has been born. Get this triangle of dread: romance(imagined with the mc), bureaucracy,  and views all those in the way of said romance as the monstrous evil that challenges the status quo.

Best of luck, MacPhoenix.




The Deposed King


Proverbs 22:7, "The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave of the lender"

The Deposed King (a member of baen's bar)

Offline OZ

  • Posty McPostington
  • ***
  • Posts: 4129
  • Great and Terrible
    • View Profile
Re: Bad Guys
« Reply #29 on: January 30, 2014, 01:25:44 AM »
Quote
There's really not all that much out there that does law/chaos without having some preconceptions about good and evil attached to either side.

I think some of the best law/chaos stories out there are Modesitt's Recluce novels. The first handful of stories (most stand alone or are two parts although they all take place in the same world) seem to paint law as good and chaos as evil. He then tells several stories from characters that are involved with chaos that are certainly not evil. He even overlaps a few stories where you see how the protagonist of an earlier story looks from the other side. I don't like everything that Modesitt does but I really liked the contrasting viewpoints in different stories.

In Jonathan L Howard's Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, one of the minor villains is Arthur Trubshaw. He was a clerk at a bank whose life of "licentious proceduralism" was ended when he was shot while demanding that robbers give him a receipt for the money they were stealing. He now resides in Hell and is in charge of admissions. He requires people to fill out reams of paperwork and if they make even the slightest error, he rejects their paperwork and makes them fill it out again. A bureaucratic villain indeed.
How do you know you have a good book?  It's 3am and you think "Just one more chapter!"