Hello and welcome back to my blog.

Today I would like to talk about creating villains. Every good story has to have a great villain. The villain of your story doesn’t necessarily have to be a person. It could be the weather the hero is up against like the movies Twister and The Day After Tomorrow. For this post I’ll stick with people because one of the questions you will need to ask is why the villain acts the way they do? When it comes to the weather, it has no emotions it just simply is what it is.

But whatever you decide to make your villain to be one of the most important things is to not make the villain one dimensional and cliched. No twirling of the moustache, no maniacal laugh. Every villain is the hero of his own story and believes he or she is the good guy/girl and the hero of the story is the bad guy/girl.

Why does the villain act they way they do? You can use a lot of the personal development books to answer this question. One book that comes to mind is How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie. In that books he says that “nobody ever blames themselves.”

Your villain will, like most people, justify to themselves why they act the way they do. It will not be enough for the character want to go out and mow down a bunch of people. Why would he want to do so?

Create your character’s back story as to what brought him to the point of committing acts of evil that are in his mind perfectly justified. Was he bullied as a kid and then wants to turn the tables and bully back?

Perhaps he lived through poverty and saw the only ones who got ahead were criminals.

Your villain in the story as to be as if not more powerful than your hero. Think of the Star Wars movies with Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker and the latest movies along with the most recent ones and the characters of Rey, Kylo Ren and Snoke.

The hero of the story must have to work and work incredibly hard to be able to defeat the villain. It creates a boring story if your hero can defeat the villain like he or she is brushing off a speck of dust from the counter. So for this part devise all the powers and skills the bad guy will need in order for him to create a challenge for the hero.

For example if your hero is female and the villain is male like I have in my book No Remorse No Regret available here.

In this book the hero, Melissa, is up against a male villain. Or actually two male villains. So one of the challenges for Melissa is that the men are bigger and stronger than she is and one of them is one of those who trained her in hand to hand combat. So how does she go up against that?

Can’t let too many secrets out about it.

Anyway, I hope these tips help you with your villain creation. Go out and have a great day.