There are few things I love more than a good villain. You know the kind, the one that gets under your skin, the one that makes you worry about what he’s going to do next, even that one villain who makes you giggle and want to follow him instead of the hero (Loki anyone?).

I try to include all types of villains throughout my writing. There’s so much to work with, but one important thing about a villain, they have to have a reason. If your villain has no rhyme or reason for what he’s doing, there’s not much point to the story is there? The hero might be trying to stop him, sure, but why?

When writing a villain, there are plenty of paths to choose. Did the hero somehow wrong him? Perhaps in the past? Perhaps it was the beginning of the book when he accidentally broke the to-be villain’s favorite magic wand.

There has to be goals, end games, plot lines to look forward to.

Is your villain unpredictable, is s/he psychotic? Does he simply want power? Was s/he dropped on his or her pretty little head one time too many?

Many villains are brought into light by their craving for power. They want to rule, they want to be the best, they want what they’ve never had before. Other villains exist because they always had power. They’ve never been told they couldn’t have something so they take whatever they want, they fear no consequences.

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard when it came to writing villains, however, was that almost every villain sees himself as the hero. He’s the one in the right. The hero is standing in his way, stopping him, preventing his ultimate dreams and goals. The hero is in the wrong from his point of view. For this reason, it is very hard to change his mind or make him see otherwise, though many hero’s try to reason their way through it before they ultimately have to fight.

The freedom with writing is that you can create whatever you want. These are all just some pointers to keep in mind when writing your own villains. Why does he want the hero out of the picture or dead? Why is he fighting against the hero?

Happy writing!