Villains are often people’s favorite characters, and I can think of many in fiction like Darth Vader that have lots of fans. People are fascinated by heroes that have fallen, good peopled turned back, or just plain evil people like Sauron. However, writing a villain that is both pure evil and realistic can be tough. Still, it’s not impossible and here are a few tips to help you learn how to write a realistic purely evil villain:
1. Give Them a Believable Back Story
Since I’m a fantasy/scifi author, I’m going to speak from that lens. However, you can really apply this to any genre you want. Typically though, villains that are pure evil are present in fantasy novels or something similar. It’s a bit tough to write a villain that is pure evil in a contemporary fiction novel (unless we’re talking about serial killers, I guess).
However, one of the biggest points that makes a villain believable is the concept of the villain’s backstory. Every villain has a reason for why they do what they do. No villain just woke up one day and decided that the world needed to be destroyed. Every good character needs a motivator, including villains.
Your villain could have a super tragic backstory. Maybe their village was destroyed by an opposing empire’s moving army. Maybe they were killed and brought back to life in a violent way. Maybe their parents were murdered. You need to have something that would motivate somebody to commit acts of evil and do so in an unremorseful way.
2. Give Them Realistic Motives
We’ve talked about the backstory, but there’s another face to the idea of motive. Basically, why does a villain attack what they attack? Why is a villain acting the way they do? Sure, maybe their tragic backstory plays a role in their actions, but they certainly have to have more to them than just a backstory, right?
Villain Motive Example: Myth from Malware
Without spoiling too much, if you’ve read the first book of my series, The Fallen Age Saga (if you haven’t, go ahead and pick up a copy over on Amazon or Kobo), you’ll know about this guy named Myth who’s pretty much the main villain. He’s definitely got the motivation to be a villain: Myth is HUNGRY for extreme power and approval.
Myth hates Azurai because Myth was much older and yet Azurai was promoted in the military first. Myth hates Azurai because Azurai is much more powerful on a scaling level. Obviously, Myth’s motives are there and the fact is, Myth is a jealous person who lets his hate control him too much.
Do you see what happened there? Myth’s motives are present and realistic. Jealousy is a very realistic trait for people to have and it unfortunately leads to very sad endings sometimes. Jealousy has left people murdered before, it’s that bad.
WARNING: Writing Subtle Motives Can be Dangerous!
Okay, if you have a villain that you’re writing and you’re trying to make their motivations subtle, you might run into the trap of having your readers have no clue of what the motives are.
Be sure that your motives are realistic and make sense to the reader, otherwise, it’ll feel like you’re just writing a cartoon villain.
3. Make The Villain Powerful
FYI, this does not mean that the villain has a lot of magic. A powerful villain can be someone in a position of power. A powerful villain can be someone that effectively plays mind games on the hero and psychologically wins. A villain needs to be powerful. A weak villain is not a proper antagonist.
An opposing force must truly express how it is opposing. Powerful villains can also be in terms of things like military might, magic, and similar concepts.
Let’s circle back to Myth from Malware. Myth was powerful because of several things:
- Myth knew really strong magic types
- Myth held a high position in the government
- Myth basically had the king in his back pocket
- Myth was influential
Myth is a true opposing force to Azurai; he’s managed to secure all of this influence and convince everyone that he’s some strong and powerful guy.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that Myth is strong enough to face Azurai, but Myth is strong nonetheless.
But a villain that is not powerful is not realistic because they can’t really oppose the hero if they’re not powerful.
4. Give Your Villain No Redeemable Qualities
How is this realistic, you may ask? It actually is! You see, your villain needs to be believable and realistic all the same. If your villain is just too human or too normal, that’s just a person. We’re talking about PURE EVIL!!
Pure evil implies that your villain is not redeemable in any way. This villain is willing to slaughter and decimate an entire planet and not even so much as blink. This villain will stare down a burning orphanage and be completely unphased. This villain will inflict terror upon a population because they want to do that. Just because they can.
These villains are often really, really, really bad. Their objective is to seize power. They don’t care how they do it. At the end of the day, they are willing to destroy their own people if it means becoming powerful.
These are the villains that are truly scary because they feel absolutely nothing. These villains are psychopaths through and through. But they’re even more intense because they choose to be this insanely evil. They are well-aware of their actions and they’re conscious of them too.
This is the most important point on this whole list. You can’t have a pure evil villain that makes sense if they show feelings for people. You can’t have this villain fall in love with the hero. This villain’s motives are not sorrow or hatred for someone in their life. This villain exists to destroy.
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