Making your villains real

What makes a villain? Does someone like the mustache twirling character from cartoons come to mind? Or perhaps it’s Mr. Goldfinger (pictured here)? Is your villain a thoroughly evil character or just someone who wants to ensure your protagonist doesn’t get what they want either because they want it too or for some other reason either benign or not?

If you want your villain to be like the cartoon character, that’s fine, just know that your readers will be very aware that the character is not real and possibly not believable. But if you’d like to have a villain who is as “real” to your readers as your protagonist then you’ve got to put a little more effort into creating the person.

I always like to talk about the “fuzzy socks” of a character — that would be one thing that makes them warm, nice, or makes people feel good. Every character should have some “fuzzy socks,” even your villain.

So, what is it that will make your readers understand your villain?

They must have a GMC (goal, motivation, and conflict) just like your other major characters. They can’t simply be evil for evil’s sake — although if they get pleasure out of seeing others get hurt then that is their goal, to get pleasure for themselves.

Beyond GMC, there needs to be one characteristic of your villain that your reader can either…