Let's Talk About Bad Guys and Motivations
Writing Bad Guys
Sometimes the bad guy, the Big Bad, the villain, the antagonist is the key element that makes a book soar. Some authors actually think that it’s the villain that defines your hero. Gasp!
Who wants to be defined by someone else? Not my protagonist, but the truth is that villains’ actions have a big part of shaping the hero’s actions and reactions, so you want your villain to kind of make some sense and just not be a mustache-twirling, cackling baddie straight from one of those early movies where there was no dialogue.
Whew. what a long sentence!
But you get what I mean, right? Villains are important. Their actions shape the plot, too, and they need to make some sense.
DEFINE THE VILLAIN
To get things started, let’s define a villain.
According to MasterClass,
“A villain is the opposite of a hero. A villain is the antagonist of your story whose motivations and actions oppose the protagonist and drive the plot of your story. A villain is the opposite of a hero. In contrast to the hero, a villain is usually compelled by a desire to commit acts of cruelty and immorality.”
A lot of people write villains as flat characters. To be fair, in real life, when we villainize someone, we do this, too. We take away any nuance or understanding of their actions. We do this to individuals and groups, right? They have an opposite want than ours, therefore, they must be immoral or evil. Propaganda feeds off of this mentality.
But this is not real life. This is a novel. And therefore, we the authors don’t have the luxury of making everyone flat to suit our own psychological need to be the hero: we must make rounded characters. A key to this is understanding the motivation of your bad guy.
You want to have this motivation be the key to defining the villain, not the villain’s looks or demographics.
What’s Your Motivation?
There are lots of things writers have to create and juggle when they’re making a story and some of the biggest things are your characters. In your book, you will have these characters who do things. They have to be motivated to do these things. This includes your bad guys.
You have to think about the why.
WHY does your character want what she wants?
WHY does your character do what he does?
WHAT is his motivation?
The first and really important thing to understanding your character (even when it’s the baddy) is thinking about what your character wants.
Your main character (protagonist) is definitely going to want something, right? And that want motivates the entire story. That’s their desire line or emotional through-line.
But those secondary characters need those motivations, too.
Chuck Wendig at Terrible Minds, writes:
‘Characters want things. They need things. They are motivated by these desires and requirements and they spend an entire story trying to fulfill them. That’s one of the base level components of a story: a character acts in service to his motivations but obstacles (frequently other characters) stand in his way.’
According to Reedsy’s blog,
‘Character motivation is the reason behind a character’s behaviors and actions in a given scene or throughout a story. Motivations are intrinsic needs: they might be external needs and relate to survival, but they might also be psychological or existential needs, such as love or professional achievement.’
Everyone in life wants something. Every character in your book should want something too. It’s really the cornerstone of building character. Yes, even those dastardly characters.
So, why do you need to think about when you think about character motivation?
1. Your character’s motivation allows you to know what the character wants. Then you can write that want and their reactions to things happening in a way that’s plausible for the character.
2. It helps you understand the good characters and the naughty characters. Disney just did a huge villain origin movie with Cruella, right? That allowed us to understand why she was so nasty with all those Dalmations.
3. Those motivations need to be plausible. And believable.
MOTIVATIONS ARE NOT GOALS
A goal is an achievement.
A motivation is the reason someone has a goal.
THE HIERARCHY OF NEED
There is a lot of talk of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need, and a lot of writers and coaches use it to explain how our characters in novels (and in real life) behave.
It’s a wee bit cumbersome and wordy, but it can be broken down to the following:
Basic Needs
Psychological Needs
Self-Fulfillment Wants
So examples of each would just be:
Basic Needs:
Water
Food
Sleep
Shelter
Safety
Psychological Needs:
Friendship
Acceptance
Love
Self-esteem
Self-Fulfillment Wants:
Creativity
To achieve self-actualization
To have purpose
Pretty cool, right?
Motivations don’t have to be super rational in the sense that if they come from fear that fear is often irrational. They just have to be understandable or plausible. And when you can mix and match multiple levels (basic, psychological, self-fulfillment) you can make even rounder, richer characters. This is especially true of the antagonists who sometimes come off as a bit . . . flat.
Conflicting Motivations are powerful.
Internal conflict comes from your character’s conflicting motivations and that internal strife is horrible to live through, but great for a novel because it builds suspense.
That same Reedsy blog does a great job of describing how this works.
Katniss is the hero in The Hunger Games, but you could write that book from another character’s perspective and she would definitely be a Big Bad.
And there you go! A big step of creating a good villain is to understand that villain’s motivations. Just like the hero of your story, if your villain has some nice internal conflict? It makes a much better story!
You’ve got this, writers!
This is so helpful! Absolutely agree with all of it, because the 'why' is important!