When you’re writing the first draft of your Fantasy novel, it’s perfectly acceptable to characterize your primary villain simply as a Nasty Piece of Work. In the next draft, however, when you’re trying to iron out all the wrinkles in the story, you may find it useful to delve into your villain’s personal background. If (as is often the case) the villain is the primum mobile of the plot, you owe it to yourself to explore what makes him 1 tick. He Has Arrived by DoodleDeMoon , Flickr It may be helpful to bear in mind there was a time when your villain was potentially an Everyman. To discover what he was like at this stage of his existence, start with what your villain is like NOW and work backward until you arrive at the moment where, confronted by a crucial moral choice, this otherwise “ordinary” individual crossed a line and embarked on a path of no return. This reconstruction impels you to look your villain as a fully rounded character, and this knowledge can help you for...

Photo by David Bleasdale , Flickr The Screwtape Letters , by C. S. Lewis, purports to be a collection of letters written by a senior devil (Screwtape) to his nephew Wormwood, a junior tempter. In one of these missives, Screwtape notes, the great (and toothsome) sinners are made out of the very same material as those horrible phenomena, the Saints . Screwtape is here alluding to the fact that certain people are born with a potential for greatness, endowed with exceptional gifts and talents which set them apart from the general population, and enable them to shape their own destinies. The same principle holds true when it comes to characters in literature. To restate Screwtape’s observation from a Fantasy-writer’s perspective: a first-class villain is a hero gone bad. 1 Quentin Crisp once defined charisma as the ability to influence others without the use of reason . This is a prime attribute of heroes and villains alike: wherever they go, they stand out in a crowd. Heroes t...

Great villains often make great novels. Your protagonist will be measured by the strength and cunning of her antagonist. Indeed, since the villain is often the prime mover of the plot, his motivations become crucial. In The Silence of the Lambs , Agent Clarice Starling must figure out the motivations and thought processes of two different serial killers, Hannibal Lecter and Buffalo Bill. Sherlock Holmes requires a Moriarty; Superman, his Lex Luthor; Batman, his Joker; Bond, his Blofeld; and Luke Skywalker, his Darth Vader. Without the villains, there would be nothing for the hero to do. Some authors, realizing that their most creative efforts are going into devising a fascinating, complex villain, simply make their villain the protagonist, alá Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment . I grew up in the 60s and 70s, the heyday of the anti-hero and the villain-hero. The Man with No Name from Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns, Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, the Submariner, and Dr....