How to Write a Villain That Your Readers Will Love to HATE

Ah, one of my favorite topics of writing. For me, the villain is always were I start, not the protag, and when outlining character arcs, I work backwards. Who is the villain, what is their endgame, and how do they get there/is defeated? Then I build the hero's arc around the villain I created.

I've read this general sentiment in the comments: "Make your villain a dark reflection of your hero." This is sound advice, albeit pretty basic, but it kinda falls apart if you're writing an ensemble cast narrative with lots of POV's and moving parts. Sometimes you'll have multiple protags and antags, so don't always try you make this advice work just for the sake of it.

Cersei Lannister was one-of-a-kind petty and narcissistic. She had no real opposite or equal. Anton Chigurh from 'No Country for Old Men' was absolutely terrifying and the protags most certainly weren't the light side to his dark. Heath Ledger's Joker, even though he desperately tried to coin himself as Batman's counterpart, was simply a crazy dude who loved to instigate chaos. The best villains I've come across aren't dark reflections of heroes, but whose goals are so depraved that somebody is forced to act against them because there's no other choice.

Another bit of my own personal advice for cosmic horror, if you are attempting to write some sort of eldritch monstrosity that is essentially the villain of your story, don't try to explain their motivations. It's more creepy and horrific when they are incomprehensible and unknowable.

'The Colour Out of Space' or 'Annihilation' doesn't work if the thing terraforming our planet is given a voice. Something came here riding a meteor and now the area around where it impacted is becoming alien. That doesn't need an explanation or motivation. Although I love Stephen King, he often gets that wrong with his cosmic villains by explaining too much. Let the reader stew in the dread of NOT knowing. A villain beyond human comprehension should remain beyond comprehension.

What is we don't want to give out villain a redempsion arc?

There's a very simple reason why villains are more proactive than heroes: they're not constrained by morality, so they have more freedom of choice. The good guy may be frozen into inaction because none of the obvious solutions are morally acceptable, whereas the villain has no such limitations.

It's the same reason that villains and even morally grey protagonists are more interesting than heroes. Straight-up good guys tend to be predictable because they always choose to do the right thing (and likewise two-dimensional bad guys always do the evil thing) - a character becomes far more interesting when we can't predict their next action because their morals are more...flexible.

Thank you for the wonderful videos, super helpful! Any chance you can identify the song track/artist on your outro? I'm really digging that vibe. 😊

What do i do if my villain is a problem that needs to get sorted out rather than a person? How do I make a backstory for my problem and a reason for it, but also make sure it's known that the problem is no one person's fault that it exists?

My Villian doesn't appear until the end of the story, he is mentioned by those who knew him. He is pure evil, though he does run a Youth Recreation Center. But he is evil and has no remorse for killing the Protagonist's Fiance in the beginning. He said he killed her because he was still hungry after making a kill and she happened to come by. He is a Werewolf. But he lived in fear of the Protagonists because he knew they would get him one day. .

Some of the best written villains that I have seen depicted in various narrative mediums are: Otto Octavius and Harry Osborne from Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movies, Gnag the nameless from the Wingfeather Saga, "The Silver Prince" from Ember Falls (book two of the Green Ember series), and Nemo from The Extraordinary Adventures of Jules Verne (animated TV show).

Nemo is a slightly Moriarty style villain, controlling I operations from a distance in a number of episodes - including the first one - where only at the end do we get the revelation that it was this mysterious Nemo who had set the lesser antagonists in motion. His backstory is gradually explained over the course of the series, and once or twice he almost relents after our heroes speak to his heart.
What really twists the knife about him being so villainous is that he is charismatic, handsome (I won't deny it), and a genius. When the final piece of his history falls into place, everything he has done makes sense to some extent, and the utter destruction of what he was to turn him into what he is now almost makes you cry.

The rest of the show is obviously geared toward a young audience, but there are a few additional aspects of the story that make it worth it. I highly recommend it.

Based my villain on Benjamin Netanyahu

Ima just storm dreamwork’s headquarters, steal their next idea for a villain, make it my own, and get copyright for it

Everything Magneto feared, his fears being what caused the rift between him and Xavier, came true in Logan. Turns out, he wasn't a villain at all. He was a hero trying to save mutants from the evil humans that Xavier was protecting. That sort of story twist gets my juices flowing when you realize the "hero" is the one on the wrong side of history, but he can't know it until history is written and all of his mistakes are known. Does Xavier do some good, yes. But he fails to do the ultimate good. Does Magneto do some awful stuff, absolutely, but it was because Xavier kept blocking him from better choices. Had they teamed up from the beginning under Magneto's vision of how to proceed mutants may have gained the freedom they were after, but we'll never know.

That was a great piece of writing. The moment that bit was revealed it changed everything you thought you knew and made you have to go back and watch all of the earlier films to see what you missed. It made you face palm every time you found clues right there the whole time.

Welcome to Marvel Comics. They do complex stories where heroes can be antagonists, and the bad guys are trying to save the world.

Watching this, and then shortly after watching the Powerpuff Girls "Twas the Fight before Christmas," and if there's a character that fits this mold perfectly, it's Princess Morbucks. She DEFINITELY is someone who strongly believes that she's a good person, but everyone around her KNOWS she's the biggest, brattiest, most selfish, self-centered person in existence. She's EVERYTHING you HATE about a villain. You WANT to see her fall flat on her face when it comes to foiling her plans, especially this one where she's determined to switch the Naughty and Nice list so she's the ONLY person to get a present, which, for her, is to be a Powerpuff Girl

One of the best literary examples of hiding the villain in plain sight has got to be The Winners by Fredrik Backman. It's a book with multiple POVs, and the villain's POV is written just like the other characters, you root for him just like you do for the other characters and you only learnt that he's the villain late into the story when he commits a terrible deed. It completely shakes you up, you have no idea where to place your loyalties and you empathize with the villain till the end even though he does things that make you want to throw the book out of the window and stomp on it multiple times. One of the best written villains I have ever seen

Unrelated but I finished by first book draft!!!

My most sincere thanks for content creators like yourself who share your knowledge and experiences. This video in particular was especially helpful with my current novel. (I was struggling with where to take my villain's backstory - but we're on track now.) Thank you!

off topic, do u think me making my male character hate love cause his parents never showed love to him?

How to show a villian's backstory without interrupting the story?

My villian is my hero's grandfather. There is a propechy that his grandson will kill him one day. So he does everything to kill his grandson, which is his misbelief. He could just be good to him preventing this propechy, but as he is cold-hearted (a result of him making a deal with someone to be the most powerful wizard ever) he wouldn't do it.

The scariest villian... The Borg.

My struggle is I tend to make my villain more relatable to he point where my readers want the villain to win in stead of the hero.

I'm going to disagree with point one. Some characters are just evil. As you expanded, you said to focus on their fatal flaw, which is probably a better way of phrasing your point. But not every villain started out as a good person. Some started out entitled, as the most important person in the world. They feel like everyone is beneath them. A superiority complex is their flaw, but I would argue that if they’ve always held that belief, they were never a very good person. Especially if they were raised by people who taught them to be that way. I suppose you could argue that we're all born innocent, but I don't think that counts as the point you were trying to make.

I love the Joker. They've tried to write his backstory a couple times, and it always weakens him. He's better when he's just being evil. He's still complex, but there's no heart there. They just found other ways to make him complex, like pitting competing flaws against each other.

That said, you make some awesome points. I'm new to your channel, so I'll be looking into other videos.

Nice work.

My villain goes through his negative arc during the course of the story at the same time my MC does, and in a way, they react in the same way: killing her

What if I write an antagonist that is pure evil and does what he does cause he finds it fun?

I'm quite happy with just how deeply conflicted the antagonist of my story is, and I don't think I'd be this happy with it were it not for Abbie and her awesomeness.

My antagonist, Mr. Donovan, was highly gifted from a young age. He was writing ideas about digital consciousness transference at the age of six. The adults in his life saw his potential, but their approach kind of broke him. He was thrown into the adult world very early, always around scientists and professors, and was not really able to have a childhood. They held him to extremely high and harsh standards, basically expecting him to act like an adult scientist. As a result, he grew up with a deeply rooted perfectionism and a fear of failure.

This fear led him to his decision to merge his consciousness with AI, falsely believing this would make him perfect. He started going downhill from there. He becomes increasingly desperate to achieve perfection through technological means, which only gets him in deeper and deeper trouble as he's constantly trying to outdo himself, never satisfied.

Naruto villains itachi,madra,pain,obito all are Goated

Humans are not inherently good.
Juang put it that the human shadow already has roots reaching down to hell.
Psychologists have known that infants will lie about being hungry for mere attention. We have all seen them take the other’s toy, and hit another.
Likewise, surrounded by the best of conditions, someone can develop an apathy, an addiction, or something else.
There is even a famous experiment where mice were put in the most ideal conditions, a spacious cage, friends and an abundance of food, and they all killed each other.

I'm not sure that all people are born good, and I don't think characters need to be either.

One of my favourite villains in fiction is Dr Who baddie Davros, creator of the Daleks. There was a great audio prequel miniseries that basically serves as his backstory and the interesting thing is that he is never portrayed as having been a good person, not even as a young boy. He starts out as the sort of kid who tortures animals, and his curiosity turns to him experimenting on people. His arc is more him descending further from simply being a bad person to descending into complete villainy as he climbs further up the ladder.

What actually makes him a rootable protagonist in these stories despite being utterly irredeemable is that he is kind of an underdog. He gets where he is despite many people trying to keep him down. An enemy spy trying to kill him as a child. His own government as an adult shunting him off to the side in the work he does to stop him gaining too much influence, even sending him on a mission they sabotage with the hope of him being killed. Both the opposing faction and his own are to some degree afraid of his intelligence and how he might wield it, so they try to take down or undermine him at every turn and he still overcomes them. His physical disability is more just a visual representation of that

Mine didnt wanted power they just wanted to be accepted.

Are you a conservative? Because you seem to praise a lot of the male-driven stories and media and almost never praise any of the women.

Hay I follow your advice while writing my story, I know I ask too much, I released my story as chapters in webnovel, PROJECT ALPHA ARC-1 AFTER THE WAR, is the story I wrote like just 2 chapters only I will be writing more but can I know your reviews on my story

Boone Waxwell in Bright Orange for The Shroud, from John D MacDonald's Travis McGee series. Just chilling.

Silas character in Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal is great example of writing good villain

I think one of the best villains I have ever seen is Dio Brando in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood. He is such a complex character, and his relationship to Jojo is so well done. I recommend reading/watching that to anyone who struggles with creating good villains. I also love Joss Merlynin Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier—he’s a horrid villain, but so very human.

I'm now realizing most of my villains are cliche, but it's not because I feel like they have to be cliche, but because I actually just love writing cliche villains. I wanna make my villains laugh maniacally and give dramatic speeches. They're theater kids

This video really helped me with some brainstorming for a book I want to write someday. Here's what I've come up with (feel free to give me feedback). Thank you, Abbie!

Victoria and Angel are siblings and were born into a royal family. Angel is younger than Victoria and Victoria is next in line to be the Queen of the kingdom. Victoria wants full control of everything, whether it what her friends eat to the entire kingdom (thus wanting the role of Queen). Although Angel was tremendously more popular than Victoria - at some point, stole all of Victoria's friends. Victoria began to act like her sister. Even though Victoria tried to be caring and kind like her sister, people prefer Angel (nicknamed the "Perfect Heir"). People would do literally anything for Angel. This is when she realizes she cannot beat Angel because she thinks she is an embodiment of perfection and perfection = control to Victoria which fuels her desire to be perfect further. When the throne was handed to Angel and not her, that was her breaking point. Out of anger, Victoria murders her own sister to get the crown (with hesitation of course). Then she realizes that she doesn't need just to be perfect but her entire kingdom as well to gain full control ( realizes this when peasants riot and make a mess in response to Angel's death). So she punishes her kingdomsfolk for any little mistake they do whether through people or herself. Victoria's biggest fear is to not have control.

This is still a WIP, again, feel free to give me feedback! Also again, thank you, Abbie!

Tbh I just give the mc and the villain really interesting/confusing philosophies that clash yet neither of can bee seen in black and white, and both have a decent argument for being "correct"

What's the difference between a villain people love (ie Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars) VS a villain people love to hate?

Wheel of Time has entered the chat.

The evil sexy women in this book series are just... chef's kiss

Do you have a video about writing a Villain protagonist?

I don't mean an Antagonist Origin story (although that would be helpful for other reasons), but a video about how to make a TRUE Villain the protagonist in the story.

And conversely, how to make a TRUE Hero the antagonist.

(Imagine if you wrote Harry Potter from Voldemort's perspective, for example.)

It may not be very common, but it is slowly starting to be done more and more.

And I'd like to write a story where there is less 'oh, he's a good guy deep down, and he'll get nicer as the story goes along' and more 'he might have been a good guy once upon a time, but right now he's downright Evil, and over the course of the story he's only gonna get worse.'

A TRUE Villain, with a downward spiraling story arc.

This is, as may be obvious, extremely tricky to write well.

A story is only as good as the villain is bad.

I always accidentally make my villains too silly and less evil as I go on in the story
this was very helpful thank you ☺️

Count Dooku from Star Wars and Saruman from Lord of the Rings are two of my favorite villains, because they are both just so epic, they were formerly on the good side, and they have so much depth!

I agree with these points, but I also think that it's okay to make a pure evil character with no sympathetic emotions as long as we enjoy seeing-reading about them. I really like all your videos and find them super helpful, keep doing what you do!

I would also suggest that in many ways the "chosen one" trope works better for villains than heroes, it's not important if they are chosen but that they believe they are, then they can feel justified in whatever they have to do

I like Haytham Kenway of Assassin’s Creed. You play as him for a while and he’s such a gentleman and a badass, a great hero - until you find out he’s a Templar, and is at war against the Assassins. You really see how from the other perspective, they’re the heroes of their own story.

But what if there is no villain and no hero, just two rivals wich have both good reasons to fight for their goal? Look at some characters in the king dramas of Shakespeare. They all have their justified motives. And, other than in Hollywood, they all are able to articulate them in a way that one can understand them.

You in America might know Curd Jürgens as he once played the villain a iJames Bond movie. Some years later he played in a mini series and was very mysteriously and all the signs pointed at him. But in the end he was the puppet of the real villain who was played by a less well known actor and who appeared in plain sight. So the viewers were quite surprised in the end.

My preferred villain is Richard III. But he was a villain in literature. In real life he had some good traits. So if he would have won the battle against the later Henry VII he would have probably become one of the respected figures in history. But the Shakespeare gives him the words "Now is the winter of our discontempt made glorious summer of this sun of York." and so on until the last word of the opening wich IS the word "Villain". It shows why he chooses the way he takes very well.

Me why immediately thinks about zuko and azula from Avatar The last Airbender.