You can have a pretty lame protagonist and story can still hold some water, but have a lame villain and people are going to be groaning from sunup to sundown (and probably the time in between, too).
So, today instead of actual archetypes I'm going to talk more on specific details of a villain.
Everyone hates the villain, even the villain's minions
This is a terrible way to make a villain. It's easy to make him evil when everyone hates him, but it's also not realistic. The best villains (both in real life and in fiction) weren't hated bastards by every single being that ever existed, rather they've had an entire group that absolutely loved him to the point of being fanatical. Hitler had his Nazis, Lord Voldemort had his Death Eaters, Vader had his Stormtroopers. If the villain is hated by all, especially his minions, ask yourself this: How did he get into so much power in the first place?
Sure, maybe the guy had some phenomenal cosmic power (itty bitty living space is still under debate), but it still takes minions to help run an evil empire, and it takes those minions to help seize control. The Big Bad is taking care of the large problems of a takeover, but you need minions to help with the little things.
If you're being a jerk all the time then you're not going to get any minions. If you don't get any minions then it's pretty much an inevitability that you're just some sad, angry guy who kicks puppies until either you're squashed by the hero, or else a villain who's designed better is going to squash you (for ironic effect he will send his most happy and devoted servant to do it for him.)
Maybe there's a way around that, though. Maybe the Big Bad who's hated by all didn't start out as evil, he just got corrupted or something, but he's still in power on the basis that he at least used to be loved.
That's all not to say that he has to be nice to his minions, or even treat them with respect. What's more important is the minion's attitude toward the villain, not the other way around. This is how you end up with situations of abusive relationships, which is a bit of a dark road to go down, but villains are all about dark roads.
Make your villain respectable
Don't matter how evil the guy is, he has to be respectable in some way. Again, how else did he manage to get power unless he also had respect in some manner? Don't make him a bumbling oaf, or the comic relief, unless your story is so silly that not making him like that actually detracts from the whole story. You want your readers to like the villain on some level "Whoa, that guy is so evil," or "Whoa, that guy is so awesome," are both because he is a respectable villain.
Give your villain standards/limits
No matter how evil, a bad guy has standards. Standards are one of the main things that make the villain interesting, and sometimes his standards actually manage to amplify how evil he really is. Avoid some cliches, like the guy owning an aviary, because he will, inevitably, end up squeezing one of his precious birds to death when he gets some bad news.
Maybe your villain refuses to hurt women, or children, or animals. They can even be twisted standards, like the bad guy sends off some poor peasant villager to be tortured to death but keeps the peasant's dog and takes care of it and coos at it while the dog's original owner is screaming in the dungeon as his arms are relocating themselves to the far end of the room without him.
It's also the standards and limits that can further complicate the morally grey area if a second villain happens to come along. Villain 2 is a pretty bad guy, he's bad enough that Villain 1 has a beef with him. Villain 1 can then either team up with the hero in some way, or else try to fight Villain 2 in his own way. For a quick example, think Spiderman 3. For a longer, more deliciously complex example, read the Dresden Files series (especially Small Favor.) For a real life example consider how child rapists are murdered in prison by other felons.
Don't always make it visually obvious
Yeah, have some fun with some of your villains, but don't always give them black-clawed fingernails, twirly mustaches, fanged yellow teeth, a black wardrobe, horns, etc etc. Better yet, use those qualities as a focus on someone else. Harry Potter was so obsessed with the black-robed, greasy-haired, mean Professor Snape that he failed to pay any attention to the puny Professor Quirrel being weird. Actually, the whole Snape rivalry continued throughout the series and, as much as fangirls like to portray him as a pretty-boy emo, I think a hefty chunk of Harry's mistrust was mostly because Snape was a dark-clad jerk.
That said...
Don't make evil ugly
There are some obvious villains out there, but most of the time in real life you always hear people say how normal and everyday the guy looks. Yeah, that's actually part of what makes them so dastardly.
That's not to say I'm telling you to go to the other extreme. Making the villain a super-hunky pretty boy may have been original and mind-blowing at some point, but now has been so overdone that I think people are actually expecting it even more than the villain being ugly. The same holds a bit true to good guys only being attractive. It's a bit uncommon for good guys to be ugly, but that's another talk for another time.
And that being said...
Evil is evil
While it sounds like the redundant caption of an LOLcat, it is actually the logic of some people who are trying to create villains. This ties in to my above statements of a respectable villain with minions who like him.
Don't make your villain some guy who always shoots the bearer of bad news, or kills random minions out of spite, or kicks a quota of puppies before breakfast.
Evil Names
Along with looking evil, there's some pretty obvious evil names that kick the cheese factor into high-gear.
Titles, like The (Dark/Lost/Black/Mad/Red/Nameless/Evil...apply as needed) One. Ridiculously done with James Patterson's Witch and Wizard series. I just can't read a book when they're fighting a guy called The One Who Is The One and treating it wholly serious. this is a name for a guy in a parody.
Anything with the letter X in it (or the number thirteen, or roman numerals...although roman numerals are actually evil, I'll give you that.). Anything with the letter K, this is variable, however. If you're using a real name, like Kate, you're good, but making up a name like, say, Kalchek, it's going to be pretty obvious. Ending in "th". Anything with "mal" (mal is actually latin for "bad"). Mor-anything is the same. Morgranth, Morfield, Morloch.
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| Morbo! |
Summing everything up
All of this can be wrapped up into a single sentence: Be subtle sometimes.
Of course, there are still other factors to consider.
Killing the villain makes a void
If you have a respectable villain that his minions love, what happens when he dies? There has to be a reason he's been in power for so long, and not just because he's evil and power-hungry. There could be something else waiting on the sidelines to take over, or the villain was a Lesser of Two Evils. The hero doesn't always win, and doesn't always defeat the villain. Creating a (metaphorical) chaotic void when the villain does might just be what keeps the hero in check, and allows the villain to reign supreme.
And most importantly...
Have fun with your villain
Heroes have to be in check all the time, you have to constantly keep the good guy doing good things. With a villain you can make him good, evil, mean, nasty, nice, complicated, dark, bright. Every spectrum of everything there is. Villains are just plain fun. Fun to create, fun to write, fun to imagine. There's a reason actors scramble at the chance of playing one in movies.
Finally we close with a more obscure idea of an antagonist.
Sometimes there is no villain at all
There are quite a few times when there's no actual villain at all, or rather, it's not an actual person. In medical shows the antagonist is a disease, or really little kid's shows usually have more of an idea: "I can't find the salt shaker"...I really have no idea what kid's shows are actually about.
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| I watched a single episode when I was sick once, and foamed with rage. |
Talking about villains can be some pretty dark stuff. After talking about domestic abuse, prisoners murdering each other, cancer, Dora the Explorer, and other evil subjects, I think we can all agree we need something to lighten the mood a bit.
So I close with a video that's been making the rounds on the Internet a bit: A Corgi falling down some stairs.
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