5 Tips for Helping Readers Empathize With Your Villain
It can feel awfully good to be just plain awful. You know it. I know it. And the dastardly-deed-dispensing villain in your story definitely knows it and wants to show it. But how do we go about showing it in a way that lets us make the antagonists of our stories as deep as our heroes? There are many ways to approach how to write villains and no one way is the absolute way.
(The 7 Rules of Writing a Revenge Story.)
My villainous intrigue began at a young age. I’ve always been curious about villains, ever since I was in middle school and my English teacher gave us the assignment to deconstruct Cinderella, retelling it from the villain’s viewpoint. We were tasked with giving them a reason for their behavior. I wrote about the stepmother, detailing why she was misunderstood and caught a bad rap because the world thought she was being mean to Cinderella when she was only trying to help her.
I must have done a pretty good job because a couple weeks later, we were called to an assembly. My science teacher walks in dressed as this gray-haired old lady and begins to read us a story. Slowly, I began to recognize very familiar words. They were mine. My suddenly gray-haired science teacher was reading my story, dressed as my villain as if she were her—one day, when I’m brave enough, I’ll show the photo of me in 8th grade with Mrs. G dressed as Cinderella’s stepmother. That my teachers got together to celebrate my story was the biggest compliment and validation I have ever received about my writing (yes, even more than the book deal and TV option). Now you know why I like to dig deep into the villain, uncover what makes that character tick and why they’re products of their own misunderstanding was born.
I am a firm believer that there are no heroes or villains. There is such a thin line between them and at any given moment, the hero of the day can become the villain. Villains are almost always products of their own misunderstanding and a distorted perception of how things really are. We say that our villains are the foil to the hero and are meant to reflect the evils the hero doesn’t have. Even if that villain loses in the end, it’s important to still put as much effort in the villain as we would the hero, especially to make the character worthy of our readers’ investment of time and energy.
So, buckle up, buttercup. Let’s talk about how to craft a worthy opponent.
1. Your villain drives the plot.
Yes, your story is about your hero’s journey and eventual vanquishing of the wretched villain, but it’s the villain and their actions who drive the story. Without that worthy foe, your hero has nowhere to go (rhyme intended). Think about it. It’s your villain who makes the story worth telling. Your villain sets the stage for your hero to perform or fall flat.
Without the character who steadily antagonizes, pushes the hero, and makes us all hold our collective breaths to see what happens next, there would be no story. It would be pages and pages of the mundane. The villain ticks up the suspense and tension. It’s through the villain, a good true, solid well-rounded baddie, that the protagonist will shine and save the proverbial day. At least, for now.
Your villain should be an equal or greater match to your hero. And your hero should be the one who must level up to whatever the villain throws at them. Leveling up is what creates tension and suspense. It’s what makes the hero have the “dark night of the soul” when they question their whole being. If you have a hero whose villain isn’t a match for them, then you have a bored hero who isn’t challenged, which means you have a boring story.
2. Make your villain compelling, layered, and relatable.
Remember, none of us are inherently good or bad, so your villain (and hero) shouldn’t be either. Push back on the typical villain stereotypes that have become the norm. They don’t have to be from other countries (unless it suits your plot). They don’t have to only be from certain regions of the world, or struggle with disabilities or illnesses. Flip those stereotypes upside down and try something new. Explore ways to make your villain different, memorable, and unexpected.
In Her Name Is Knight, my villain Paul is who I described as “a beautiful monster.” He is gregarious, highly intelligent, handsome, and charismatic. It’s easy to fall into his trap because he’s gorgeous and he talks a good game, and he can have you apologizing for stuff he did wrong. I thought to myself, “Self, wouldn’t it be ironic if someone so damn good looking behaved so twisted and horribly?” Which means, my visual for Paul must be Idris Elba, of course.
If Nena Knight actually becomes a TV series, I hope they book Idris because he is Paul. Paul is a character you can’t take your eyes off and will always question if you must hate him. And the answer is, yes, you must hate Paul. Read HNIK for yourself if you don’t believe me.
3. Create a compelling motivation that drives the villain and your reader.
I have found that when I make the villain’s motivation meaningful and relatable to the reader, it draws the reader into the villain’s maze of a mind. You create feelings of doubt and shades of gray for the reader which is a realistic representation of life. Maybe your reader even agrees with what the villain wants and why they want it, but not the way the villain goes about getting it—more on that later.
In my second book, They Come At Knight, the villain is driven by revenge because the death of their family member was ordered by the Tribe (the powerful organization that employs the Tribe), leaving the family penniless and suffering. The insurmountable loss of a loved one and having to survive poverty, and much more, compels this villain to launch all-out war on the Tribe.
This is the thing that has shaped the villain’s way of thinking and has made their reasoning so convoluted that the villain believes they are the only one who can fix this problem. The more compelling a motivation, the deeper your reader will fall into the grip of your literary genius.
Check out Yasmin Angoe’s It Ends With Knight here:
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4. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
Make your reader hate the actions the villain takes toward their end goal. The actions can be horrible, but the character should still be compelling to the reader in some way. By compelling, I don’t mean the reader should love your antagonist, I mean they are so invested in figuring out what makes this baddie tick that they want to see this character’s end, either defeated or not.
By creating a fully fleshed character who is both as complicated and regular as the readers, you create moments of uncertainty for the reader…which is great and will keep them turning the pages. If you make the character completely disgusting with no relatable qualities, readers won’t be able to connect and invest in the full story. Create a backstory for your villain even if you don’t use it all in your book. Knowing their backstories will help mold your characters.
5. Or maybe, the villain is a thing or concept.
There comes a time when the villain must be bad, no matter what. Those are the characters who will be meant to exemplify a concept or societal norm that needs to be explored through the use of one-dimensional archetypes, not as fleshed-out characters.
You may see this done as an organization going after the hero. Non-humanlike villains like supernatural or mythical beings, structures, clowns (lol), places, etc., are good examples of how you can create villains without having to make them relatable to the reader. For example, in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, the villain is fear and the ability of one’s fear turning itself into something physical that kills them.
But even with these non-human villains, they must still drive the plot and push the hero to do and be better.