I AM PROBABLY NOT A WELL-DRAWN CHARACTER!

I talked last week about how stories that derive their drama from withheld information are inherently less powerful than those that are about informed choices.  A major realignment of story priorities that this can cause is that it affects how we see the villain.

A good villain is really essential to a story.  Every hero needs an opposite, a foil, a nemesis.  We remember good villains, we love them like we never really love heroes: Darth Vader, Voldemort, Sauron, The White Witch, the Joker.  All of these villains serve the essential purpose of highlighting the virtues of the heroes who oppose them.  Sauron isn't just some creepy ghost guy, he stands against everything the heroes believe in.  Voldemort's essential misunderstanding of love and loyalty accentuates a hero who relies on these same qualities, as well as leading to his demise.  The Joker isn't just Batman's opposite, he calls everything about what Batman does into question, forcing him to adhere more strongly to his mission and his goals.

This is what a villain is for - to give more life to a hero, to force them to question what they are and what they are doing and why they are on this path.  Villains do not just physically obstruct the hero, they cause him to reexamine his entire worldview, challenge her to define and articulate what separates them.  Without a great villain, your hero is only so-so.

This task of the villain is often at odds with the other quality that makes for a great villain: humanity.  Many of the villains we see are fully-formed.  While the hero is young and growing into themselves the villain is complete and often about to achieve their ultimate goal.  The villain does not question his own motives, or suffer from doubt, because once this happens the villain is no longer a force defining your hero, but a character in their own right.

This type is no longer called properly a villain, but rather an antagonist.  This is a character who may be malevolent and frightening, but is a human being with explicable motives and understandable goals.  They may be a bad person, they may be misguided or misled yet just as noble as your hero, but they are opposed to your hero with regards to the central conflict of your story.

A misguided antagonist is weaker, as the character and conflict will be stronger when they have deliberately chosen to oppose your hero.  This is where the waters get treacherous, because humanizing your villain can be a disaster if you aren't careful.

Villains are most intimidating when they are overpowering and scary and unexplained.  Think of Darth Vader's first appearance: you have this massive dude in black armor with a scary voice who chokes a guy to death in his first scene.  You don't know anything about him, he's just this terrifying cipher.  You know he is bad news and that the heroes will have to deal with him at some point.  Knowing this, you feel the beginnings of suspense.

Humanizing a villain like this is something to undertake very delicately, because if you are going to make them a character, then you are going to have to demystify them, explain where they come from and why they are this way, and that story had better be just as awesome as that single looming dark symbol, or the reader is apt to feel cheated.  This is, no doubt, why so many authors are content to leave the slate blank, to not draw aside the curtain.  Who was the Lord of the Nazgul before he was corrupted?  Was he a good man?  Did he have a family he loved?  What was his tragedy?  We don't know, we can only imagine.

But the truth is, an antagonist who is as fully realized as the hero can be so much more moving, can be a real character with his own story.  If you spend enough time making your villain understandable, then the final battle is not between Our Hero and The Bad Guy of Baddest Badness, but an epic confrontation between two towering personalities, both of them determined and sworn to their ideals.  We have followed and sweated and suffered and bled with them both, and when they clash we do not know who we want to win, and we read with our hands to our mouths, our feelings too tangled and conflicting to be put into easy words.

Simple villains are popular for a reason, because watching somebody we love to hate get their ass handed to them sure is cathartic, and I myself will not belittle that idea.  But it is the equally real and devoted antagonist who commands real respect, if only because it is done this way so rarely, much less done well.

Next Week: The Obstacle Course