Inventing Reality: A Guide to Writing Science Fiction
Villains
Every story’s protagonist faces conflicts, and often they are with a special type of antagonist called a villain. A villain is an individual character or group of people who oppose the story’s main character. Often the villain creates the situation that forces the main character to address the tale’s central problem.
Villains are well known - sometimes as much so as the main character: Darth Vader in “Star Wars: A New Hope”, the Klingons in “Star Trek: The Original Series” and Kahn in “Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn”.
Sometimes science fiction villains are referred to as “dark lord”.
The advantage of using a villain in your story is that such characters are great fun. Villains can be over the top in their evil and powers. And while your main character is “limited” to behaving in an ethic and responsible manner, the villain can be as devious and frightening. He’s Id unleashed.
But villains often are poorly constructed antagonists, created purely to be representatives of evil. Such characters aren’t real; they’re flat characters. Indeed, one of the reasons Worf was created for “Star Trek: The Next Generation” is because series creator Gene Roddenberry felt the Klingons of “The Original Series” were unreal villains. Another problem with villains is that they’re often just clones of established villains - they’re usually deformed, a paragon of evil, reside in a lair, wear black and laugh maniacally whenever something bad happens to someone else. Ultimately, such cliché villains diminish plot possibilities. The only outcome that the reader can expect is that the story’s hero will defeat the villain.
To avoid creating a cardboard villain, construct him as if he is a hero – but give him a motivation for which the reader isn’t likely to feel sympathy. In short, make a good man who has fallen into a bad cause. A good example of this is the Romulan Commander in the “Star Trek: The Original Series” episode “Balance of Terror.” After years of duty and loyalty, he begins to question the need to start a war with the Federation; ultimately, though, as protagonist Captain Kirk succeeds in defeating him, he performs his last duty, of blowing up his own ship. The struggle between Kirk and the Romulan commander becomes more intriguing because the commander is a real person, not just an aggressor bent on destruction.
In science fiction, a special type of villain is the mad scientist. We’ll discuss this kind of character in a future blog entry.
Create a villain that is three dimensional. Explain his motivations for being evil/taking the wrong path. As part of this, explain his emotional attributes and give examples of good that he has done in the past. Describe how he game to embrace evil and why he feels that he’s meting our justice.