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I love all these thoughts so far! The two main divisions between relatable villains and inhumane villains are especially helpful.

Also, as someone who is currently reading “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” I feel like it would do us well to look at some real-life villains.

Hitler, whom many believe was possessed. His main agenda was to wipe out anyone he didn’t consider to be “perfect,” which makes him seem inhumane, but reading about his youth is rather unsettling because of how relatable he is. He was 13 when his father died unexpectedly, and broke down sobbing when he saw the body. He was 19 when his mother died. He lived on his own in Vienna after that, and he didn’t smoke, drink, or have inappropriate relationships with women. If I remember correctly, he was even vegetarian. He hated working and desperately wanted to be an artist, but after being rejected time and time again for not being good enough he gave up on his dream. One can only imagine how his life, and the world, might have been different if someone had given him a chance and helped him pursue a life as a painter.

There’s also Jessie James (who I happen to be very distantly related to), who would never rob a preacher because his father had been a preacher.

Then there’s Al Capone, who was so confident and cocky that he entered a “Who looks the most like Al Capone” contest while on the run from police. Ironically, he only got 3rd place.

I think that some of the main take-aways from these villains are:

1. Give them a lengthy backstory, even if it isn’t all in the book. You have to understand them to write them well. If they are inhumane, they must have been relatable or at least pitiable at one time (or else intentionally trained in evil by someone since youth-which, in my opinion, is still pitiable).

2. Give them some kind of unique quality, habit, or quirk, such as Jessie James not robbing preachers, and a reason why.

3. Give them some level of confidence.

I think it can be hard to find a good mixture of the 3 C’s: Confidence, Caution, and Cowardice. A good villain (once again, just in my opinion) will be both confident and cautious, but this will sometimes come across to others as cowardice. And it is not necessarily unlikely that cowardice is involved, though the extent of it will, of course, vary from villain to villain and even from situation to situation.

That’s another thing to figure out: what kinds of things make the villain uncomfortable? Where would he prefer to face his foe, or would he rather let his henchmen do all the dirty work? Does he have any phobias, even mild ones?

And what inspires his confidence? Was he into drama at one point and does a showdown in a theater give him a mental boost? etc.

Wow. That was way longer than I meant it to be. 😛

@ethryndal Where’re you at? You’ve got some great stuff to chew on here. 😉