July 2, 2025
Are you looking to create a book villain? Part of the fun of writing a story is coming up with the villainous characters, the ones who foil the good deeds of your protagonist and who often are given their own compelling story arc. Readers love an evil genius who keeps the plot interesting, challenges the main characters, and threatens to put an end to the action or even other beloved characters.
However, writers can find book villain writing challenging because developing a character that readers will love to hate can be a tricky task. Too much villainous behavior, and the reader won’t be able to empathize with them. Write a book villain too soft, and the reader won’t believe their malicious behavior is authentic. Take the guesswork out of creating a book villain with a balanced personality of good and evil with these five steps to writing the perfect villain for your story.
Clichéd, tired villain tropes are not exciting to read, so crafting a villainous character who stands out from the rest of the dirty doers will help readers fall in love with your story and want to see good triumph over evil. Overdone villains are boring to read because we have all seen these obvious bad guys one too many times.
Avoid book villain writing that includes an obvious physical malformation that created the bad-guy persona, villains who use tired phrases like “Say goodbye to. . .” or characters with an evil laugh as their defining characteristic. Also, stay away from giving your antagonist an unrealistic monologue at the climax of your story that allows the protagonist to swoop in and save the story because, as we can all attest, we have certainly read that story before.
Instead, give your book villain a distinctive quirk or characteristic that helps to define and create their personality. Coming up with a physical, emotional, or psychological trait that contributes to their actions will help readers to believe their actions. The quirky characteristic will also contribute to building anticipation throughout the story because readers will be searching for clues about how that unique aspect of the villain will become part of the story, how it will help the villain in their quest to vanquish the main character’s storyline and how it will give the book villain an advantage during the climactic scenes.
This quirky element to the villain allows writers to build a solid backstory for the antagonist as well, allowing writers the chance to explain how the quirk came to be a part of the villain and, at the right time, to divulge why the quirk or characteristic is an important part of them in the story.
Some of the most famous villains have very memorable characteristics that also play a pivotal part in their stories, endearing them to readers and adding excitement and sometimes fear or hatred in the reader.
Part of why evil characters work so well in creating drama and tension in a story is that, on some level, readers empathize with them and their plight, even if it means trouble for the main characters. But for a villain’s intentions to resound with the reader, their tough-guy veneer must have enough of a crack in it to let a little bit of their humanity peek through during the story. A wholly evil character doesn’t elicit any empathy from the reader, and flat characters that don’t feel authentic don’t bring out the same excitement and emotional responses in readers.
Don’t forget to show the villain’s human side to remind the reader that, even with all of their evil intentions, they are just a person with fallibility or potential weaknesses. Of course, some stories utilize superhero villains or other non-human bad guys (think the shark from Jaws).
But even with these non-traditional antagonists, writers have to give readers some reason to consider rooting for the book villain, even if only for a fleeting moment. It’s the possibility that the villain’s weaknesses that we can all identify with will be their downfall, and this is a feeling every reader can recognize in themselves and in all the characters they read about.
For an antagonist to be realistic, the reader should be able to easily see and understand why they act the way that they do. Authors can provide this context by developing an interesting backstory to the book villain that helps to explain their motivations for the how and why of their villainous behaviors.
Even if readers don’t feel empathy with the villain’s origin story that made him who he is, they should be able to see how their backstory and motivation to act in the way they do feel justified to the book villain themselves.
Creating a backstory that explains why a book villain is so evil can help the reader buy into the antagonist’s actions. One way many authors present the elements of their background in villain writing is to weave little hints about their life into the story along the way, dropping hints about their motivations to the reader.
Readers won’t always love these types of characters, but when the reason behind a villain’s actions is made plain, their evil deeds or desires become warranted and help to move along the story. In addition, when a protagonist figures out the motivation behind a villain’s actions, it often provides the key to unlocking the dilemma of how to escape the harm intended by the bad guy in the story. Even a backstory with a shocking twist, if developed in a way that doesn’t defy logic, gives the reader a plausible reason for the story’s plot and encourages them to buy into the plot.
Authors can’t write a book villain without giving them a clear purpose within a story. Are they part of the growth of the hero who must conquer different challenges in his hero’s journey?
Or does the book villain provide a counterpoint to the main character’s development by explaining why the protagonist has grown into who they are? Writing a villain with a specific purpose gives your story a realistic feel and keeps your plot from feeling contrived or unconvincing.
A main character needs to fight off a credible foe, rather than one who feels as if he is thrown into the story just to be the bad guy, because a villain with no motivation to act the way they do is difficult to pull off.
The most successful villain without any clear backstory is Cormac McCarthy’s Anton Chigurgh in No Country for Old Men, but the nature of the unrepentant hitman’s clear lack of explanation is part of what makes him so terrifying. A highly skilled writer like McCarthy can craft a story without a hint of motivation included within the pages, but most writers would struggle to omit any hint, even the smallest one, of a character’s motivation before the end of a story.
Having a fatal flaw that keeps a villain from completing their evil deeds is a reliable strategy in creating a strong antagonist. But regardless of their downfall, all villains need to make at least one critical error if the protagonist is going to prevail. To keep your readers onboard with your main character’s energy so that good will win out over evil, write a villain who makes believable mistakes.
Oftentimes, a villain’s biggest mistake comes from their ego or lack of emotional connections within themselves, so he is unable to see that the others around them have these life-changing emotions. Harry Potter’s Voldemort is one such villain, lacking the ability to understand and see love in those around him, is the fatal flaw that ultimately ends in his demise.
Written with a backstory that fully explains his lack of love throughout his life, it becomes Voldemort’s undoing when love for Harry by a classmate provides just the opening for Harry to spring back to life and battle victoriously against Voldemort. Creating a character that makes a believable mistake, like He Who Shall Not Be Named, works for the reader for two reasons: the reader is privy to Voldemort’s backstory and the antagonist makes a mistake that is in keeping with his developed perspective on the world.
If Voldemort had assumed that love would motivate others in the story to act on Harry’s behalf, the story’s conclusion would have changed by creating an empathetic villain instead of the cold-hearted one seen throughout the rest of the books.
Creating a memorable book villain will enhance your story by giving readers someone to cheer against and your protagonist a resiliency as he searches for the way to overcome him. When your story is complete and your main character has vanquished the villain, turn to a trusted printer like Publishing Xpress to get your story into the hands of readers who will be excited to turn every page to discover the exciting trials and challenges your main characters experience as they face your formidable villain.
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