On the Nature of Villainy

In my writing career I have seldom been able to make use of well-defined villains. Perhaps that was due to my definition of the role. I never saw a character acting against our hero/heroine out of sheer cussedness; they had to have motivation, and motivation which came from some logical or plausible origin or cause. That's me being a realist, I suppose. Villains acting out of pure evil is the stuff of comic books, to my mind.

In most of my novels, the hero/heroine (protagonist) generally struggles not against another character but against himself/herself (e.g., self-doubt, frustrations, lack of confidence, physical or mental flaws, etc.). They could struggle against another protagonist, each one being the other's antagonist while neither is truly a villain. They might also struggle against forces of nature (including dragons or even alien beings). I haven't used a distinct person to oppose the protagonist directly.

Having another character oppose the main character (protagonist) simply as a vehicle for drama never seemed quite fair to me. Add conflict, they say. No conflict and you have a Mary Sue story. It might be easy to create a kind of character who could be described as a monster, a character who acts against the protagonist for no more reason than to oppose almost as a matter of principle. Like: I'm the 'baddy' so I must act bad, no getting around it.

Usually characters act in their own interests and those interests tend to simply interfere with other characters' interests. That isn't a true villain, that's just normal human nature. Each one is usually an agreeable person most of the time but given a random incident and villainy can erupt - like road rage. They can be bad (disagreeable), clumsy (abusive), insensitive (rude), but are seldom actually evil. To manifest a completely evil character, such as may be found in some fantasy or science fiction stories, always seems a bit deus ex machina to me - an artificial device inserted to solve a dramatic problem.

In the first two books of the FLU SEASON trilogy, a lot of bad acts happen (it's pandemic time and our hero/heroine are escaping a city in chaos for what they hope will be sanctuary in the countryside). Yet the characters performing those bad acts are not what one could say are villains. They are merely "normal" people acting for themselves - to survive. A hungry person stealing bread from me is not so much a villain as a desperate normal person acting for self-preservation. In the same circumstance, I might do the same, but I wouldn't call myself a villain.

Finally, in writing Book 3 of my FLU SEASON trilogy, DAWN OF THE DAUGHTERS, I created a good set of great [sic!] villains. I did not relish bringing them to life, for they acted against my wishes. Yet I could not fault them for acting according to their own best interests. Their actions may result from having some animosity to our hero/heroine, of course. They are humans, after all. They are not, however, pure evil incarnate - although their victims may believe they are.

The first in chronological order is a figure named Parson Brown who meets our central family as the leader of a band of slavers. His backstory is one of abuse and opportunism. Even so, he is performing a useful function, he believes, and profits from it. It is his playful interactions in the course of evil acts which gives him depth, making his actions truly despicable. He could be said to possess no conscience, acting only for his own amusement.

My second favorite villain in that novel is the woman who runs the local brothel, Madame Delight. She stands almost as a female version of Brown. She delights in the abuse of her girls, openly stating she doesn't care about them; they only serve her. She has a backstory which includes her being bullied by the pretty girls when she was young. Now she rules over them, forcing them into sex work. And she enjoys every minute of her efforts to abuse them.

There are other villains but they are a little more morally gray. Such as Mr. Chesterfield who acts badly but feels bad about what he does. His brother, however, acts badly but doesn't feel bad about it. There are marauders and militia acting badly, and other devious characters who lie, cheat, and steal. Even our central family's supposed friends will lie and cheat to save themselves at the expense of our hero/heroine. Some will commit murder to save themselves - but is that the act of a villain?

I don't like villains - actors like to portray them because the roles are often richer than those of the hero/heroine. I feel like I am creating monsters and unleashing them upon innocent protagonists. That makes me feel bad. I would wish my good guys/gals to fight forces of nature or against other protagonists - so there isn't any actual villain but momentarily disagreeable characters who happen to get in the way. Then I feel less responsible.

So why do villains act bad? Self-preservation? Self-motivation? Some kind of reward, achievement or material gain? Satisfaction in causing harm? A feeling of superiority? Playing God? Controlling someone's actions or some physical space? Seldom is it going to be the simple desire for amusement alone.

I recall one time in high school when a guy my age kept hassling me. We were both about the same size so I couldn't say he was 'bullying' me but he was definitely annoying. I asked him why he kept bothering me. There didn't seem any logic to his actions. I'd done nothing to him. His reply, rather than a confession of being in league with the devil, was simply "Because it's fun." All right, that made sense. I strove to make bothering me less fun after that, mostly by avoiding him.

A villain wants something, just as the hero/heroine does. It could be the basic pleasure from an act that brings a sense of agency - the power to act in the world, to be present, to declare "I'm here and I matter!" A lot of criminals act out for such a reason: to prove they exist (violence), to leave their mark (graffiti, vandalism), and that's all. Others believe and follow the self-fulfilling mantra to 'tear down the system' as iconoclasts - a system they generally do not understand. Anyone who gets in the way of that effort could be hurt.

In real life a villain will seldom want to hurt the hero/heroine just for the heck of it - although the act may bring pleasure to the villain. The main motivating factor is going to be the desire to achieve something - just as the hero/heroine wants to achieve a certain something.

In my forthcoming novel, Book 4: THE WAY OF THE DAD, set in an authoritarian society rebuilt following the 10-year pandemic and decades of anarchy, our hero* is beset by the ultimate villain - I'm happy to announce. Allow me to introduce Big Sister. She will care for you, her citizen family, give you all you need - but only what is absolutely necessary, for your own good. But there are rules to follow and punishments if you don't. And that is where our hero finds himself. What can he do to escape the city? How can he save his family?

*The narrator and protagonist is grown-up Fritz, born in Book 3, the youngest son of Isla.

FLU SEASON 4: THE BOOK OF DAD (a sequel to the trilogy) is coming June 2024.

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(C) Copyright 2010-2024 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

A Question of Quests

A little more than a year ago, I set out on a quest, pushed by fellow writers who encouraged me to try my hand at writing an epic fantasy. Well, good folks, I did that. I typed every day of the year with a story firmly in mind. On good days in the summer I wrote for a full eight hours. I actually wrote a novel following a hero's quest. Then I wrote a novella about a little princess in another part of the realm. Then I merged the two stories. The result is a 235,000 word tale of daring-do chocked full of all the epic wisdom I could stuff into it--which, I am learning, may be relevant in our heated political season.*

By "quest" I mean a journey of some kind--a hero's journey, in Joseph Campbell parlance. However, in writing an epic fantasy, a quest could be a hero going in search of something of value, or a hero simply trying to travel home from far away, perhaps from a place of tribulation. A quest could mean a bubbly travelogue, much like Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Or, a quest could be a hero going to a particular place where he intends to do something important. This last option is the pattern I adopted for my epic fantasy. (e.g., A man with a plan, out getting a tan, and learning to pan the jokes of his sidekick Tam.) My model for a quest was Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, although I bent over backwards to avoid borrowing anything from it. Likewise, I started reading George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones, but I deliberately avoided any dragon references which my readers might tease were similar to Martin's use of dragons.

Then, much to my chagrin, I discovered a problem. A fatal flaw. An underlying faux pas. A fundamental error. So...what to do with a 235,000-word tale of rousing adventure that falls short of being an epic fantasy? Maybe call it epic sci-fi? That just might be crazy enough to work! You see, there are some rules....


Rule #1. The setting of the epic fantasy must be a world of non-existence to the world of both author and reader; hence, a totally fabricated landscape. If we dare suggest it is here on Earth, we lose. 

The "present" of my epic fantasy is about A.D. 8000.

I beg a waiver. Initially, I invented a world, true, but as I laid out the plot, the series of happenings our hero would experience, I marked them out on a map of a known location here on Earth. By then I had decided this epic would be a behemoth comprising five separate interweaving story lines and one of them would be from a novel I had started long ago in my youth. That early novel idea was set in a futuristic America. As I started writing my epic fantasy, that futuristic America was slated to be the mythological history underlying the present story. As the manuscript grew tremendously, I scaled back that "backstory" to only the mentions my cast of characters would speak once in a while. However, I kept the setting of a future America.

My waiver is because the setting is so different from the world we know today that it might as well be some other place purely of my imagination.


Rule #2. An epic fantasy must have a large cast of characters which includes certain ones in stereotype roles. 

I deliberately tried to achieve that large cast but, going on a quest, our hero and his sidekick are not likely to come upon very many people. In fact, after a couple chapters of just traveling down the valley, I thought I better introduce some new quirky character to liven up the story. Hence, the magus appears. More people to talk. And the magus, being old, can impart some of the backstory. Also, a trek down a valley can only entertain for so long. At some point they would come upon a city, and what would they find there? More people.

My eyes fell upon an infographic, not long after I started writing my epic fantasy, which stated that an epic fantasy needed I needed 20 characters. Besides my hero and sidekick, there would be others playing important roles: the evil prince, the jealous rivals, ordinary townsfolk with devious agendas, warrior tribes in the wilderness, corrupt judges, executioners, crowds of biased citizens, trinket dealers, stable boys, and so on. There would be a love interest for our hero, of course, and maybe temptations down the road. The one character I did not have was a clear antagonist. 

In English teacher lingo, the protagonist is the character that moves the story forward, no matter if that person is good or evil. Usually, moving the story is what causes us to set the story on that character's shoulders, as narrator or our main focus. The antagonist is not necessarily the villain, though he/she may be. Rather, the antagonist is that character (or force of nature) which seeks to thwart the advance of the protagonist, preventing the achievement of his/her goals. In the case of my epic fantasy, the antagonist is chiefly all the dragons of the world and assorted rogues along the way.

So, in the end, I have 20 characters that play some significant role in the plot--not just walk-on roles for color but say or do something that pushes the plot forward, regardless how much "screen" time they get. I'm particularly fond of the hunchback and the river pilots.


Rule #3. The average "bestselling" novel (at least in the fantasy and sci-fi genre) have 15 obstacles to achieving the goals of the quest. 

No problem, I thought. I had a map and I knew how to use it. Something would happen about every half-inch on the trail I had drawn on the map. I pretty much kept to that plan. Later in the story, as new ideas developed from the current writing, I switched out some of the events happening. However, making sure our hero had to deal with 15 (or more) episodes, each a danger, distraction, or detour to overcome, was the reason this epic fantasy reached 235,000 words.


Rule #4. The epic fantasy requires lavish description, flowery language, quirks of speech (including made-up words for things), to better envelope the reader in a strange world far from our own here on Earth. 

Well, I did write a science fiction trilogy involving interdimensional travel to another world, so I did invent other languages for that world. However, in our present day and time, when my college students have such aversion to reading even the shortest, simplest texts, I find myself skipping over large paragraphs of description. All right, it's a room in a castle, and there are pieces of furniture. I don't see how the colors or textures matter unless it somehow influences the plot. Becoming jaded, I suppose; I have read some of the longest novels ever written (e.g., War and Peace, Shogun, The Well at the World's End) and did not skip any portions of them--but that was then.

Therefore, I swore to keep it lean, to concentrate on action, dialog, and offer enough description to paint the scene. I swore to keep scenes manageable in length and chapters at the size to read in an hour or less. I promised myself to get to the core of the action or present information or backstory in colorful ways (usually through dialog) that were fun to read in themselves. I was aiming for an epic fantasy length story, of course, so the leanness of the initial writing was not a concern. I knew I could flesh in a scene where needed after I'd finished the draft. And I did. 


Rule #5. Things happen in fantasy places, both impossibly wonderful and just as likely amazingly cruel. Unconstrained by modern law or sensibilities, an epic fantasy can be quite open with regard to the particular incidents that occur.

I also had in mind to keep this book clean; that is, morally sound, suitable for at least the New Adult category. I accepted that I could not keep it at a Young Adult level because there would be dragon slaying about every chapter. There got to be more violence, and some sexual episodes downstream but I had the camera turn to the window so we could watch the sunset. I feel good about keeping it less graphic than my other novels. As it turned out, I would even let my mother read it. My father, however, is a different case.

I think I can save my book by calling it an epic science fiction fantasy adventure and leave it at that. Hard to put all that on a title page, of course, but then I have maps this time--maps of a place not quite our own landscape. After all, our hero was born only 4800 years from now, give or take a few days. A lot happens between now and then.


NEXT: I shall further explicate the amazing episodes that comprise the greatest epic fantasy (or similar genre) that I have ever written on a computer! 


*"political season": I started to believe from my "inhabiting" wise characters that I could be a fair alternative to the presidential candidate options and so I began the Bunny Party. Unfortunately, we only achieved 12 votes, half of them from my relatives.

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(C) Copyright 2010-2017 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.