We spend a lot of time writing and rewriting the hero. After all, everyone expects him to be perfect. Especially if you’re writing Romance.
Romance readers are a finicky group. They’ve earned the right to be by their support of the fiction market. Many genres include romance, i.e, romantic suspense, historical romance, paranormal romance, contemporary romance…you get the drift. The largest percentage of the fiction market is some type of romance.
But, regardless of what specific genre you write, you sooner or later have to write a villain to oppose your hero.Remember our discussion about conflict?..how it powers your story?… how it makes every story more interesting? Well, the well written villain is the way to go.
Villains are the heroes of their own stories.Their behavior–same as the hero–defines who they are for your story purposes. Your villain will be ruthless, calculating,merciless, and a natural leader. If he’s not a natural leader, who will follow him? So maybe he’s charismatic, too.
There are different shades of evil,the same way there are different types of heroes. His motives, match his traits, and are reflected in his actions. You must show your reader who he is. In order to depict a villain who is not merely melodramatic, you will be required to explore his nature and therefore the evil of his nature and the evils’ origin. We are, after all not born good or bad, but develop into who we are by our life experience.
Be even more careful with the villains backstory. There is no need to dump it onto the page, or into your story. Save it for the perfect moment, the revelation of who the villains truly is and why he wants what he’s striving 300+ pages to accomplish.
The evil nature of a villain has many components. Greed, corruption, domination, deviancy, these traits represent the shadow side of human nature. In other words, these traits are the things we would like to be–just once, or possibly on occasion, in our everyday lives. Tell the truth, sometimes don’t you desire revenge rather than justice? Especially when the hurt is fresh, or when we are angry with others. The wicked character, our villains, act on the desires we deny.