Whatever the reason, when I asked you to list villains in the Who’s Your Ultimate Villain post, you gave me a list… but it had barely any women in it. The list included (but wasn’t limited to):

Cruella De Ville, Ursula, Professor Umbridge, Annie Wilkes, Nurse Ratched, Miranda Priestly and Alex Forest

Rather a small list if you ask me.

What gives me hope is that the AFI (American Film Institute) has their own list: 100 years… 100 Heroes and Villains. This breaks down into a list of the top 50 pairings, rather than a list of 100 heroes and 100 villains.

In 4th place is the Wicked Witch of the West and in 5^th is Nurse Ratched. So, 2 of the top 5 are actually female. Promising… but of the list of 50 pairings, only 13 in total had female villains, and only a quarter of the best villains were female. Better than I expected, but not as good as it should be.

Why?

Awesome Female Villains: Mental Health

I wrote a previous post about the 6 Most Sinister Villain Personalities in which I discussed mental health and its relation to villains. Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is frequently used as a mechanism to develop character in female villains. I think this is because it is widely seen as the more common female equivalent of psycho/sociopathy.

Examples of villains with BPD include: Eileen Wurnos from Monster, Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, Winona Ryder in Girl Interrupted and Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest.

Females can have psycho/sociopathy as it is not an illness constrained by gender but, it is less common in females. Perhaps this variance in gender distribution in BPD is why so many famous female villains have BPD instead of psycho/sociopathy. But isn’t this becoming a bit of a cliché? Shouldn’t we be developing a ‘different’, new and exciting kind of female villain rather than sticking to known stereotypes?

Briefly: BPD is marked by unstable moods, behavior, and relationships and typically more women than men have it. The four major areas affected are:

• emotional instability (the psychological term for this is affective dysregulation)
• disturbed patterns of thinking or perception (psychological terms for these are

cognitive or perceptual distortions)

• impulsive behaviours
• intense but unstable relationships with others

Crudely, I wonder if film makers and writers alike are entrenched in the societal concept that women are peaceful and caring, motherly, and to be ‘protected’ instead of writing stories with credible violent women?

What annoys me more, (and I’m trying not to get on my feminist soap box) is that they are all portrayed as insane, crazy, psycho bitches, often dressed in sexy clothes. It’s such a cliché, AND it’s boring.

So what can we do about it?

I refer back to my post discussing 6 Terror Tactics For Really Scary Villains. I focused on creating credible and believable villains. Personally, I don’t think you need to do anything different in creating a female villain to a male one. With one exception:

Awesome Female Villains: Create Credibility

The same core values that create good male villains also create good female villains. Not least of which is credibility. Female villains don’t have much of a reputation, they’re harder to market and less believable. It’s a sad fact, but it is true. But, credibility creates believability which means awesome female villains. So how do we create credibility?

1.Core values

Women as mothers (fathers too but I’m focusing on women) embody values. They teach and rear children and impart those values on their kids. Strong core values are therefore crucial to a credible female villain.

That doesn’t mean a juicy villain’s values aren’t messed up and insane. It means that whatever their values are, they need to stick to them like glue. If they do, then they will be consistent which builds character. It also means your female villain has a reason to fight—villains will defend their values to the death just as much as your hero will.

 2.Integrity 

Although integrity is about doing the right things for the right reasons, if your female villain has core values (even if they seem illogical) she fights for them anyway, so she has integrity.

A villain fighting with integrity and thinking what they are doing is right for the right reasons is terrifying. Especially if what they are doing is horrific like mass genocide or torture, and here goes an inbuilt stereotype but, doesn’t it seem worst if it’s a woman doing it?

Your female villain should be able to give reasoned logical explanations for why they are doing what they are doing. If it’s good enough, their reason and logic might occasionally even make you believe what they are doing is right too!

 3.Authenticity

Your villain needs to do exactly what they say they are going to do. Especially if that means torturing your main character or killing off a couple of major minor, or minor minor characters. Without following through on their convictions they become weak and flaky, another total cliché for a female villain, but worse—it makes them completely defeatable.

 4.Expertise 

Having an intelligent villain with expertise in a particular area means they know more than you do, especially more than your main character, and this makes them unbeatable.

It is possibly more essential that a female villain seem unbeatable in order to give them credibility. This is because you are starting from a lower baseline of audience perception and assumed reputation. 

5.Believability 

Can come from playing on fears. I always think some of the scariest things in life are those that are the closest to reality, the ones that could almost be true.

A mother who lost her child and then lost everything else…driven to insanity, to murder…to villainy. Torture your female villains with their history. Make it intricate and detailed enough that their motives are believable and credible.

What do you think makes a credible female villain? Let me know in the comments below.

***

If you liked this post, why not get even more awesome tips in the book 13 Steps To Evil – How to Craft Superbad Villains

OUT NOW

Click this link and just click the logo of your device or regular bookshop and it will take you to the right page.

You can also get a FREE villains cheatsheet and a villain’s short course by joining my mailing list just click here.

Amazon Book Blurb:

Your hero is not the most important character in your book. Your villain is.
 
Are you fed up of drowning in two-dimensional villains? Frustrated with creating clichés? And failing to get your reader to root for your villain?
  
In 13 Steps to Evil, you’ll discover: 
 
+ How to develop a villain’s mindset
+ A step-by-step guide to creating your villain from the ground up
+ Why getting to the core of a villain’s personality is essential to make them credible
+ What pitfalls and clichés to avoid as well as the tropes your story needs
  
Finally, there is a comprehensive writing guide to help you create superbad villains. Whether you’re just starting out or are a seasoned writer, this book will help power up your bad guy and give them that extra edge.

These lessons will help you master and control your villainous minions, navigate and gain the perfect balance of good and evil, as well as strengthening your villain to give your story the tension and punch it needs.
 
If you like dark humor, learning through examples and want to create the best villains you can, then you’ll love Sacha Black’s guide to crafting superbad villains. Read 13 Steps to Evil today and start creating kick-ass villains.

You can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Goodreads

Here’s a free infographic summarising the points above:

The post Warning: These 5 Points Will Help You Create Awesome Female Villains appeared first on Sacha Black.

But first – audience participation required:

Who are your favorite antiheroes? And more importantly why? Are you writing about one? Have you read about one recently? What do you or don’t you like about them?

So What Is An Antihero?

Your typical hero is charming, wonderful and full of positive attributes. But antiheroes are the opposite, Wiki says: The antihero archetype can be traced back at least as far as Homer‘s Thersites. So they have been around a while, which means there must be something that makes them appeal to us that goes beyond fads, and fashion. There must be something classical about an antihero that means they work time and time again.

Typically an antihero is a protagonist who has specific characteristics such as:

• Imperfections that are deemed unheroic – like, arrogance, or selfishness and self-preservation.
• Bad behaviors – such as adultery, murderous tendencies, gossiping, sexism, etc.
• They lack positive traits like courage or strength or remorse.
• Often but not always they lack a heroic stature and physique, they are ugly.
• Usually, they have traits that can be found in villains – greed, amorality and violent behavior.
• They have complex, messy motivations ranging from revenge through to love and honor.
• Last – but most importantly – they have at least one redeeming quality. Such as noble albeit confused motives (like Dexter) or perhaps they love something so much they would sacrifice themselves for them.
• This redeeming quality is what gives them their character arc and turns them into a hero by the end of the story.

Antiheroes blur the line between villains and heroes. What tips them into the hero category is that there is often a line, usually a moral or ethical one that they just won’t cross. They still have their humanity. But this leads them to a mess of contradictions and confusions.

What Makes an Antihero Different?

Antiheroes make mistakes, lots of them. They are so often motivated by personal interest rather than altruism that if put into a corner, and forced to choose between right or wrong, the antihero will often choose wrong because they are weak, it’s easier and it gets them what they want quicker. Often antiheroes think the end justify the means, and they will pursue that end by any means possible.

Why Are They So Appealing?

It’s evolution 101 find your own species attractive. To find them appealing. Well, antiheroes are the truest reflection of ourselves. Not all of them granted – hopefully, most of you don’t want the murderous side to Dexter. But elements of their behavior and personalities are.

Antiheroes embody humanities darkest secrets and desires. They blur the line between what dark and twisty parts of us really want, and what society says we should actually want. They have the affairs we cant; they stab their boss in the eye with a fork because of they’re an arse, they cheat, lie and steal and all to pursue their own desires. Antiheroes have their cake, and they con their way into eating it. Antiheroes fulfill your darkest desires and still ending up as the good guy.

It’s the ultimate fantasy. What’s not appealing about that?!

Need An Example of A Good Antihero? Here’s A List of Some of My Faves:

• Beetlejuice from Beetlejuice
• Jordan Belfort from The Wolf of Wall Street
• Jason Bourne from the Jason Bourne trilogy
• Chev Chelios from Crank and Crank: High Voltage
• John Constantine from Constantine
• Judge Dredd from Dredd
• Hellboy from Hellboy and Hellboy II: The Golden Army
• Jack Reacher from Jack Reacher (film)
• Shrek from the Shrek (series)
• Captain Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of the Caribbean series
• V from the movie V for Vendetta
• Theodore “T-Bag” Bagwell from Prison Break
• Jack Bauer from 24
• Edmund Blackadder from BBC‘s Blackadder series
• Chuck Bass from Gossip Girl
• Nicholas Brody from Homeland
• Basil Fawlty from Fawlty Towers
• Saul Goodman from Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad
• Peter Griffin from Family Guy
• Jimmy McNulty from The Wire
• Veronica Mars from Veronica Mars
• Dexter Morgan from Dexter
• Tony Soprano from The Sopranos
• Walter White from Breaking Bad
• Dean Winchester and Sam Winchester from Supernatural
• Batman
• Catwoman
• Magneto from the X-Men series
• Wolverine

If you would like more antihero examples here’s a list of 50 antiheroes.

***

If you liked this post, why not get even more awesome tips in the book 13 Steps To Evil – How to Craft Superbad Villains

OUT NOW

Click this link and just click the logo of your device or regular bookshop and it will take you to the right page.

You can also get a FREE villains cheatsheet and a villain’s short course by joining my mailing list just click here.

Amazon Book Blurb:

Your hero is not the most important character in your book. Your villain is.
 
Are you fed up of drowning in two-dimensional villains? Frustrated with creating clichés? And failing to get your reader to root for your villain?
  
In 13 Steps to Evil, you’ll discover: 
 
+ How to develop a villain’s mindset
+ A step-by-step guide to creating your villain from the ground up
+ Why getting to the core of a villain’s personality is essential to make them credible
+ What pitfalls and clichés to avoid as well as the tropes your story needs
  
Finally, there is a comprehensive writing guide to help you create superbad villains. Whether you’re just starting out or are a seasoned writer, this book will help power up your bad guy and give them that extra edge.

These lessons will help you master and control your villainous minions, navigate and gain the perfect balance of good and evil, as well as strengthening your villain to give your story the tension and punch it needs.
 
If you like dark humor, learning through examples and want to create the best villains you can, then you’ll love Sacha Black’s guide to crafting superbad villains. Read 13 Steps to Evil today and start creating kick-ass villains.

You can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Goodreads

The post Secrets of Antiheroes – Master Villains or Master Heroes? appeared first on Sacha Black.

I’ve been thinking about my own antagonists/villains in my WIP, and what I can do to develop them and make them more hateable because they’re loveable.

Your villain needs a redeeming quality or positive trait. 

Even Voldemort has positive traits. As Tom Riddle, he is charming and handsome, and as Voldemort, he is patient and intelligent. This, although you never really like him, at least makes you feel sorry for the mess Tom ended up in. Hence you empathize with Voldemort. It gives depth to his character and draws you into his story. Isn’t that the point of stories? To be drawn in and empathize with the characters? I like nothing better than that feeling of finishing a novel or a series and feeling bereft like I just lost a friend. To me, that is the mark of a good writer, and personally, I think empathizing with villains is one of the key elements needed to do that. Make the reader feel for your villain. Make their craziness, their insane ideas and philosophies seem plausible just for a minute. Momentarily make the reader care about the villain, before slapping them back to reality with a chunky slab of crazy villain.

But How?

In developing my villains, I use six simple sets of questions/principles to create what I think is an authentic baddy. These aren’t meant to be comprehensive solutions to the best bad guy you can create, but a starter for ten on basic elements you need.

1. History

No doubt you created a rich and full personal history for your protagonist and probably for most of your supporting characters too. But did you do the same for your villain? It’s important to know how they got that way, rather than just having an evil character for the sake of it. So I’ve started to ask myself lots of questions:

• Why are they a villain?
• Did something happen to them?
• What was their childhood like?
• What was their relationship with their parents like?
• Did they ever have a boyfriend or girlfriend?
• What’s the best thing that ever happened to them?
• What’s the worst thing that ever happened to them?

And loads more, have you got any key questions you ask your villains, I would love to add them to my list…?

A lot of these questions will lead you to the answers and information for some of the points below, like where they get their morals or reasons/motives from.

2. Positive Traits = Realism

There’s nothing worse than a flat villain. A villain who is evil for the sake of it. No one is evil for the sake of it, and no one is just plain evil. That’s an exaggeration you can only get away with in very young children’s books, and even Disney films the villains have at least one positive redeeming quality. You need to make sure you give your bad guy at least one positive trait. It gives balance to all their negative ones, and with balance comes realism and believability. It makes them human, relatable. After all, humans aren’t all good or all bad, so your villains shouldn’t be either.

Maybe they are kind to a sidekick, or a pet – take Voldemort again, he has a pet snake which he loves called Nagini. It’s redeeming quality – to love another thing and gives him depth and authenticity.

3. Emotions

Villains need emotions just as much as heroes and supporting characters do. It gives them validity, authenticity and encourages conflict. Emotions drive the plot and show historical wounds. Emotions mean weaknesses, which mean blind spots. Blind spots mean a hero can exploit his weaknesses and beat them.

4. Morals or Reasons

“I want to destroy the world….”

“Ok, why?”

“Because I do….”

Sounds pathetic right? You need to give your villain a reason to want to destroy the world. Not just because ‘they do,’ no one will accept ‘because I do’ as a valid reason and it will make your villains seem false, flat and unbelievable.

But better than reasons, are morals. Giving your villain morals makes them truly insane. If they have morals they not only think what they are doing is right, but they think it’s just and for the better good of everyone else. It also makes it harder for the protagonist to destroy the villain if they aren’t all evil. I spoke about Dexter and his anti-hero ways, and the fact that his morals are what make him and his TV series. The same principle can be applied to villains but in reverse. I guess like an anti-villain.

If you have ever been drawn into a villain’s master plan and momentarily agreed with them, let me know in the comments. I have, the last time it happened was with Virgil, in the final book of the Disturbed Girl’s Guide to Curing Boredom Trilogy, its one of ‘those’ books, one that made my most inspiration books ever list. Virgil sucked me into his evil virus-releasing world-destroying plan, with a well argued and to be honest, quite logical plan for destroying most of the population! But of course, I came to my senses.

5. Motive = Conflict

This is part and parcel of morals and reasons. But is the most important aspect of your villain. It’s the why behind their plans. Without the why you don’t have a good enough villain. The ‘why’ gives you conflict, the fundamental disagreement between villain and protagonist. Conflict gives you plot and believability. You don’t have to have reams and reams of why explanation either. Take Captain Hook he hates Peter Pan because he cut off his hand. Or the evil Queen in Snow White, she’s partly driven by vanity, but that leads her to be envious of Snow’s beauty. 

6. Character Arc

Your protagonists should through change and grow as your story progresses, and so too should your villains, even if it’s just a spiral downwards. If your villain is the same at the beginning as they are at the end, then what was the point of the journey and the battle with the protagonist? They flat lined and I imagine quite a boring villain.

Questions I’ve been asking myself include:

How does the story affect the villain? Do they get more evil and bitter? Or do they see the light and get redeemed? Or maybe I should just kill them off!? How do they feel about what happens to them? What is their goal or objective?

Whatever you choose your villain’s journey to be. They should end the story different to how they started it.

***

If you liked this post, why not get even more awesome writing tips in the book 13 Steps To Evil – How to Craft Superbad Villains. Click this link and just tap the logo of your device or regular bookshop and it will take you to the right page.

You can also get a FREE villains cheatsheet and a villain’s short course by joining my mailing list just click here.

Read Keepers, the first book in my Young Adult fantasy series now. Or to hear more about the release of the sequels as well as get regular CogMail updates you can do so here.

You can also find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Goodreads

The post 6 Simple Steps to Superbad Villains appeared first on Sacha Black.

April brings the start of another series, as I start to look at the villains in my novel, I thought I would share with you the things I learn. But first: Audience Participation Required…

I want to run a poll, to see who your favourite villains are? Comments below. There are no rules your villains could be from literature, TV, Film, Theatre or anywhere else for that matter, and you can have more than one if you like.

The Telegraph has a list of the 50 Best Villains if you need some inspiration.

It’s not something that I have thought about very often. Don’t we usually have a favourite hero? Not a favourite villain. But villains are the characters that linger, that you love to hate, so why haven’t I thought about this before?

I had a little look at the list and picked out my faves from it.

Captain Hook is on there at 40

The Joker from Batman is at 23

Patrick Bateman from American Psycho is at 17

Hannibal Lecter at 14

Lord Voldemort came in at 5

Cruella de Ville came in at 2

Not on the list, but one I had to add is, Ursula

She had to make the list, partly because I have a strange obsession with Octopuses, but also because I loved the Little Mermaid, until I watched it on maternity leave, and realised the absolute horror of the contents, cue a feminist rant on The Abomination That is Disney.

I asked the wife who her favourite villains were and she said the joker, but specifically Heath Ledger’s joker, we both agreed there was something special about the way he played it, neither of us have actually figured out what that ‘special’ was yet, but I’ll come back to you! I find it interesting that most of the villains on the list were male, and that as a result most of the villains on my list are male. But I will write another post about that later. Suggestions on good female villains?

So who else can you add to my list of ultimate villains? I would love a big old list to be able to deconstruct and study, so if you have a moment, please do comment.

If you liked this post, subscribe here to hear about the release of 13 Steps to Evil, my writing craft book designed to help writers craft superbad villains. Due for release MAY 2017. 

The post Crafting Villains Series #1 Who’s Your Ultimate Villain? appeared first on Sacha Black.