Building a Better Monster: How to Craft an Effective Villain

By Michelle Barker

Fiction is populated by a great cast of bad dudes and wicked witches, from Hannibal Lecter to Patrick Bateman, from Sauron to Voldemort to Lady Macbeth. And they can be such fun to write (vicarious revenge, anyone?). An effective villain creates a formidable obstacle for the protagonist, heightens conflict, and keeps readers up half the night with one eye trained on the (locked) bedroom window.

There are tricks for making your villains scarier and more memorable—but, as with most things writing-related, there are also some pitfalls to avoid.

Define Your Villain and Clarify Their Conflict

The first decision you’ll face in crafting an effective villain is to define them. Are you dealing with a force of evil (such as a demon or monster), a tragic antagonist (think Macbeth), or something in between (like Gollum)?

The answer will determine your approach to character development and will shape how your villain functions in the story. A true monster or demon is more like a malevolent force of nature than a fully fleshed out human being with a (possibly sympathetic) backstory.

 In all cases, you’ll want to clarify their core conflict. What does your villain want? How does their goal conflict with that of the protagonist? Giving them a clear objective allows them to function as more than just an obstacle.

The complexity of the villain’s goal will be directly related to the kind of villain you’re writing. A monster or demon will likely have a fairly straightforward goal—to gain power, cause mayhem, spread darkness. The more human your monster becomes, the more developed their goal will be. In Lord of the Rings, Sauron’s goal is to dominate Middle-Earth. He wants power, pure and simple. On the other hand, Roger Chillingworth in The Scarlet Letter is out for revenge on Arthur Dimmesdale for sleeping with his wife, but he plays the long game, pretending to help Dimmesdale as he gathers information for his master plan.

The Monster as a Force of Evil

If you’re dealing with a monster that is more like an embodiment of evil, it can be helpful to think about the reason for the monster’s existence—which is often the fault of the protagonist or other characters.

Why does the Balrog exist in the depths of Moria? Because of the greed of the dwarves. The dinosaurs in Jurassic Park are created out of a mixture of arrogance, recklessness, and unrestrained scientific ambition, with little thought to the ethical consequences. The monsters themselves don’t get much development other than strength and relentlessness. In stories like these, the development depends more on why the monsters came to exist in the first place and what the protagonist must do to get rid of them.

But “monsters” can also come in human form. Anton Chigurh, the brilliant villain in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men functions more as a force of chaos. We see what he does, but we don’t know why he does it. As a symbol of the randomness of violence, he is terrifying because we don’t know why he does what he does. The unpredictability of it, the inability to reason with him, are precisely what make him so effective. He is not like other people. We don’t know what to do with him (other than run).

If your novel contains this kind of monster and it’s falling flat, look first to your protagonist and their responsibility for creating, waking, or provoking the monster. Then consider if your monster functions on a thematic or symbolic level.

The Tragic Antagonist

If your villain is a tragic antagonist, they will be plagued by a significant flaw and will believe they’re acting in the service of a worthy plan. They see themselves as the hero of their own story and have probably been shaped by a wound in their past. Their actions might be misguided, but they should still make sense from their perspective, if not from the protagonist’s (or ours).

For that reason, it’s worth taking the time and effort to flesh them out with as much care and detail as you would your protagonist. Their skewed view of the world exists for a reason. If you sketch out their origin story, you’ll have a better understanding of their motivation and why they feel justified in what they’re doing.

Cersei Lannister’s flaws drive her downfall: pride, ruthless ambition. But she also loves her children. Everything she does is motivated by a desire to keep them safe from their enemies. She justifies her behavior as necessary for her family’s survival. But she also comes with a wound: she was raised in a family where only sons matter. Her father never valued her intelligence and married her off to a powerful man who never loved her. As a villain, she’s very effective because she’s believable—and because (in theory) she’s not irredeemable.

The POV Decision

The decision of whether the reader should have access to the villain’s thoughts and feelings is an important one. Sometimes it’s more effective if we’re kept at arm’s length. How much insight we get into the villain’s motivations will impact how we perceive them, so choose wisely. As soon as you decide to give your villain the POV, you are agreeing to flesh them out and make them believable—maybe even sympathetic.

How do you decide? It might be worth writing a chapter or two from the villain’s perspective. See what it feels like. See how it changes the story. Think again of Anton Chigurh. Giving him the POV would have conflicted with the novel’s theme—the randomness and senselessness of violence. George R.R. Martin gives Cersei the POV (well, to be fair, he gives everyone the POV)—and this gives us insight into her thoughts and feelings.

The more we understand where a character is coming from, the more sympathetic they become.

Ask yourself what you want the reader to take away from their perception of the villain. If it’s only fear, then it might be better to create distance and deny them the POV. But if it’s sympathy and understanding you’re after, then POV can be a powerful tool for achieving that. If they’ve been wronged, if life hasn’t been fair to them, this makes them complex, problematic, and also relatable—because we see aspects of ourselves in them.

Test for Weaknesses

Once you’ve developed your villain and written either a detailed synopsis or a first draft, it’s time to take a step back and consider what you have (or haven’t) achieved.

Is your villain a pushover?

The villain who is easily beaten is too predictable; there’s not enough conflict. The reader is hoping for a formidable opponent and an uncertain outcome.

Does the protagonist beat them with a coincidence?

Coincidence may get your protagonist out of a tight spot, but it’s an unsatisfying way to dispense with a villain because it takes agency away from your hero. This will be especially frustrating after a reader has spent three hundred pages rooting for them to beat the odds. As Pixar says, you can use a coincidence to get your protagonist into trouble, but when you use it to get them out of trouble, it’s called cheating.

Is your villain too generalized or abstract (“the government,” “the system”)?

When your villain is a group, such as the government, your reader can’t put a face to the enemy. We don’t know how to picture them.

Are you working with a cliché (the evil stepmother, the violent ex-husband)? 

Readers don’t want to meet a character they’ve seen a hundred times before. Push harder. Usually, you can create an original villain simply by being more specific. If necessary, model them after someone you know (heh heh). That said, you can also make the cliché work for you. If you add a stepmom to your story, your reader will bring certain assumptions to the page—assumptions that you can then subvert.

Do their motives ring true? If not, mine their backstory for gold. It will be hidden in there somewhere—a wound, an injustice.

When Your Monster is an Abstraction

What do you do if the villain or monster in your novel is the government or the system—or some other abstraction? Does this mean the idea won’t work?

Let’s look at a few authors who have found their way around this thorny problem:

• In The Hunger Games, the enemy is the Capitol, but Suzanne Collins gives the Capitol a face: President Snow.
• In 1984, the threat begins as a generalized force—Big Brother, the Thought Police—but it soon crystallizes into the character of O’Brien.
• In Middlemarch, George Eliot pulls off the feat of making change the antagonist by personifying it in various characters: the wealthy and moralistic banker, Bulstrode, who pushes for modernization; the new doctor, Lydgate, who wants to be at the forefront of medical advancements.

These novels work because the abstractions become specific. The authors give them a face so that the reader knows how to imagine them.

In Conclusion

Decide on what kind of villain your story requires and then take the time to build a better monster. If you’re intentional about your villain, they’ll lurk in the shadows of the reader’s mind long after they finish the novel.

Michelle Barker is an award-winning author and poet. Her most recent publication, co-authored with David Brown, is Immersion and Emotion: The Two Pillars of Storytelling. Her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have appeared in literary reviews worldwide. She has published three YA novels (one fantasy and two historical fiction), a historical picture book, and a chapbook of poetry. Michelle holds a BA in English literature (UBC) and an MFA in creative writing (UBC). Many of the writers she’s worked with have gone on to win publishing contracts and honours for their work. Michelle lives and writes in Vancouver, Canada.