Lee Allen Howard
Nav Menu
Nav
  • Home
  • Books
  • Newsletter
  • Bio
  • Blog
  • Dark Fiction Editing
  • Contact

Tag: Weekend Novelist

June 17, 2013
Fleshing Out Your Villains

This article was first posted at Mary DeSantis’ Out of the Lockbox.


 
As readers, we’ve come to expect the fully developed protagonist. After all, if the main character is a pasteboard creature, who wants to read the story? So writers spend a lot of time developing their protagonists, and, perhaps, their “helper” characters.

Snidely Whiplash, Celluloid VillainBut one thing I’ve learned to do is to give my antagonist equal treatment. Early in my writing career, I created antagonists—what I called “villains”—for the sole purpose of frustrating my hero and his goals. This led to “cardboard villain syndrome.”

Your protagonist and plot are only as strong as your antagonist. He or she (or it or they) must also have a backstory that has led to the development of certain weaknesses, strengths, fears, desires, and goals. He might be an evil bastard, hell-bent on destroying your protagonist, but he also might be a decent guy who just wants the same thing your hero/ine wants, and has the gumption to compete for it. Or he wants the exact opposite of what your hero/ine is striving for, and is willing to fight for it.

Your villain cannot be a skeleton (unless we’re talking about that story I wrote in second grade). He/she/it/they must be fully fleshed using the same development tools you used for your protagonist.

The best information I’ve encountered in 20 years of reading and writing fiction—and reading about writing fiction—I discovered recently in Robert J. Ray’s The Weekend Novelist, in the sections “Weekend 1” and “Weekend 2.” (If you buy this book, be sure to get the original 1994 version, not the revised version.)

Ray leads you through the process of writing a brief character sketch (the broad strokes), plotting a timeline for life and story events, developing a backstory by asking “what if?” to probe motivation, and building a wants list—for your protagonist, your helper, and your antagonist, exploring where desires mesh and clash.

I followed such a process in DEATH PERCEPTION, my latest supernatural thriller tinged with horror and peppered with dark humor. My tag team of antagonists turned out to be well-developed and interesting characters equal to (well, not quite) the hero, Kennet Singleton.

By devoting as much effort to your antagonist as you do to your protagonist, you will have a stronger story, one that readers will love. Flesh out your villains, and you’ll flesh out your fiction.

DEATH PERCEPTION is available in trade paperback, Kindle (.mobi), and Nook (.epub) at https://leeallenhoward.com/death-perception/.


Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • More
  • Email
  • Print
Like Loading...
Comments to this post

Recent Posts

  • How Story Coaching Can Help You Write a Better Story
  • Writers: Do you remember fun?
  • Why Dark Fiction Writers Need Proofreading
  • What Do You Need on the Fiction Editing Spectrum?
  • Dark Fiction Writers: Do You Need Editing?

Recent Comments

  • Kevin Killen on Grave’s End by Elaine Mercado
  • Kat Craig on Omniscient POV in Peter Straub’s Ghost Story
  • Kat Craig on Paranormal Activity (2007) Scares the Old Fashioned Way
  • Jennifer Wells on Catholic Faith in The Exorcist and The Exorcism of Emily Rose
  • Jennifer Wells on Ghostbusters Improved from 1984 to 2016

Archives

Categories

Copyright ©2023 Lee Allen Howard. All rights reserved.
Disclosures & Privacy Policy
=
%d bloggers like this: