Hello, all!
I am going to update this blog weekly from now on, not exactly Wednesdays, because Wednesday has become a busy day for me. I passed a beginner archery class this past Wednesday, and am excited to proceed to intermediate!
Today, I wanted to ask a question to you:
How do you write good (bad) villains?
Sometimes, I think about it and find it difficult. Maybe it’s because I’m still revising drafts and outlines for 2 different fantasy novels. Maybe it’s because I haven’t found a recent villain that I found to be amazing in a book. But also, I think I need some help because, historical villains are TOO horrible. Hitler and the holocaust. The nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. War in general.
War comes up in a lot of fantasy books, but WW1 and 2 were so awful, with so many atrocities committed. I just can’t imagine writing someone THAT evil. The things that happened to real survivors and victims of these events…they are almost too terrible to contemplate. Yet I think it’s vital we do. But how to write them??
These days, we do see villains doing awful things, and not all of them get their comeuppance. Look at Game of Thrones and all the gore and rape in that series, and even so, it became so popular. It seems that audiences don’t want predictable villains anymore, or sometimes not even clear-cut heroes and villains, but gray ones that we sometimes even like. But for villains doing truly evil things as historical ones have, we certainly want to see them come to justice.
I guess my real question is – how to make a truly evil villain, and then get the stomach to write it? Because when I look at history and study villains that I find terrifying or interesting etc., I find it hard to comprehend how to put such villainy to paper.
If you can give me any tips, I’d love to read it in the comments!
Until next time,
Chaitanya
Typing Madly 