I sure love a good villain. I love writing them, I love reading about them, I love watching them on screen, and I love unravelling them.
When writing No Pain, No Game I thoroughly enjoyed developing the character of Sean Cravanaugh, the evil mastermind at the centre of the plot. The whole process was extremely cathartic. So much so, in fact, that when the book came out and readers hated Sean for being so horrible and manipulative, I was almost taken by surprise.
This did get me thinking: was my love of strong villains uncommon? Did my ability to write a convincing villain make me a villain at heart? How did other writers feel about their own baddies, and how did they go about writing them?
I had to find out.
The Nuanced Villainy Trend.
One trend that’s become more prominent in recent years, be it in literature or popular culture in general, is a shift on how we look at and portray villains. Nowadays, characters from the dark side are more nuanced, more complex and more intriguing than they used to be. We don’t just see what they do, but why they do it and the reasons that drive their behaviour take us on a rollercoaster ride. We’re no longer looking at the bad guys at a singular point in time, where they’re already at the apex of their villainy. We’re given a full 360 degrees view of what’s got them to that point — we see the world and their experiences from their point of view, and they earn some sympathy points along the way.
And that’s the thing. We hate what they do, and we can’t condone their actions, but we tend to hate them, as people, a little less. We wonder what we ourselves might have done when faced with the same circumstances. Through that new lens, they become almost endearing.
This blurs the lines, to a large extent, and the world seems to love it. Gone are the days of black and white as we’re increasingly exposed to the other side of the more traditional hero-focused stories. This is a good thing, according to author Sabrina Voerman, who states that ‘we need more stories told by villains because [she] believes we are all a little grey. No one is all good and no one is all evil.’
Where Villains are Born (or: if you can write a good villain, are you a closeted villain?)
This all begs the question: why do we love this new trend so much?
My guess? Because it speaks to the darker, imperfect, highly flawed part of us we try so hard to conceal in our civilised day-to-day lives. When author Freya McMillan works on villains for her own books, she admits she ‘thinks about the darkness in [herself] and ramps it up a lot, so it’s still believable’. And we love it because we can relate.
So, do you have to be a villain yourself to write a good villain? Not necessarily (and rather thankfully, I might add). I believe it’s more a reflection that we, collectively, are starting to embrace every facet of what it means to be human. We’re letting go of the typical and rather unattainable hero-in-shining-armour ideal in favour of the myriad impulses, idiosyncrasies and desires that make us who we are as a species.
Creating a convincing villain these days is no longer about handpicking a singular cause to justify someone falling off the rails of socially accepted behaviour — abuse, loss and trauma being recurring favourites on that front. Instead, it’s all about exploring the complexity of human nature, psychology and the full colour palette of human emotions.
For Sabrina Voerman, it’s a delicate balance, because ‘villains have to have reason, and that does not always mean some traumatic event pushed them into being bad. [She] likes a villain that has good intentions, but will do anything to get there’. In fact, she highlights that ‘understanding the villain is key, and giving them a few redeeming qualities humanises them, allowing readers (or at least [herself]) to see themselves in the villain.’
Are Modern Villains Just Normal People Doing Bad Things?
So, where does this land us, I hear you ask?
Are we all villains at heart?
Are good, modern-day villains just normal people doing bad things?
Yes and no. We’re at least leaning into the idea that those once crystal-clear distinctions have blurrier edges than before.
Modern day villains often stand somewhere in the middle between right and wrong. They’re divisive characters which we can’t help but ‘sort of like’ and ‘sort of loathe’. And we’re undecided because we’ve come to realise that, in the world we live in, where things get amplified, blown out of proportions and re-tweeted till they get viral, it’s increasingly easy for anyone to be publicly perceived and pointed to as a ‘villain’. Heroes can become villains, and vice versa. It could happen to anyone. At any time. Almost overnight.
In her writing, Freya McMillan looks at it rather simply: ‘[she] doesn’t necessarily describe them to [herself] as ‘villains’. In [her] mind [she] writes about people who are victims of circumstance, or are affected by traits that are beyond their control.’
Author Tara Lake’s view is similar. Her approach is ‘comparable to any character: [she] considers their limitations, their desires and motivations, and how far they’re willing to go for those desires’.
What does that mean for writers?
The key takeaway for us writers is that we need to keep moving away from the traditional and now antiquated, overly simplified view of good versus evil. Gone are the days of irreproachable angels fighting stone-hearted demons, dark beings who were born bad and only ever did horrible things for all the wrong reasons.
Quite the opposite, in fact. They have layers. Forget black and white, or even shades of grey. Like kaleidoscopes, they’re made of a thousand shapes and brushstrokes from all the colours in the rainbow. They’re intricate and intriguing, and because this all makes them more humanised than they used to be, they can easily be hailed as the underdogs we want to root for.
As a writer, I find this trend fascinating. The prospect of getting to paint a whole different picture when it comes to villains is incredibly exciting. It opens up a world of possibilities that forces us to think beyond stereotypes, to gain (and portray!) fresh perspectives and to experiment with our characters in different ways. Something, I’m sure, readers everywhere will also appreciate!
Photo credits: Unsplash, Hermes Rivera
This article was first commissioned for and published on Kiingo: The Writing University
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