How to Write Good Bad Guys

by Stephanie Morrill

Stephanie writes young adult contemporary novels and is the creator of GoTeenWriters.com. Her novels include The Reinvention of Skylar Hoyt series (Revell) and the Ellie Sweet books (Playlist). You can connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and check out samples of her work on her author website.

A writer emailed me to ask, "How do you go about writing bad guys? I know that they need to have a goal, but I don't know how to show them taking steps to achieve it when they're always off somewhere plotting and my main character is off doing their own good guy thing. Do you have any ideas on how to fix it?"

Writing bad guys can be tricky for lots of writers, so you're certainly not alone. First let's clear up a couple of common questions about villains:

Can I have more than one bad guy in my story?

Sure. In the Harry Potter series, Harry has Voldemort, but he also has Snape, Draco, Dudley, all of Slytherin. Often the bad guys are in cahoots with each other, but not always.

In a book that doesn't have bad guys in the traditional sense of the word, we still often see multiple characters working against the main character. Like in a romance novel where the heroine is the main character, the hero may often play the antagonist role at times, along with the heroine's mother and a jealous friend or two.

Can my bad guy be an idea or a force rather than a person?

Technically, yes.

In 11/22/63, which tells the story of a man from 2011 travelling back in time to stop the assassination of JFK, you can make the argument that the villain is the past. When Jake tries to change things, he always senses a force working against him. While there are several antagonists (characters who work against the main character) in the book, they’re usually only around for a brief period of time, whereas Jake is always working against the stubborn past.

But here’s what I would say about that—it was written by Stephen King. The guy knows what he's doing. I think it’s harder than it looks to make a faceless force as scary or intimidating as a person. (In the TV series Lost you’ll notice they finally gave us a person to root against [Benjamin Linus] instead of continually asking the audience to fear the island itself.)

But how do you go about creating an villain audiences will love to hate?

Start by spending time with them.

You spend most your time with your main character, so of course they have your allegiance. In order to understand your villain, you must spend time with them too. Like in Ender's Game when Ender expresses, “In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him.” 

How do you do this? For me, it happens on the page. I can do lots of exercises for developing characters, and those are helpful, but nothing replaces time on the page. When I read through my first draft, most of my characterization edits ("Hey, that doesn't sound like something Bob would say") happen in the first half of the book, because when I wrote it, I was still figuring out these people and their motives.

While I recognize that writing a first draft is a very time consuming way to get to know your characters, in my opinion it's still the best way to understand your villain and how he or she ticks. 

James Scott Bell is who introduced me to the idea of
character journals, one of my favorite character devel-
opment exercises.

If your books don't have scenes that are told from the villains POV, then I would strongly encourage you to do a character journal. This is where you just let the character talk in their "I" voice. I try to give them a starting place ("Did you have a happy childhood?") and then they take off for a few pages.

Here's a quick example.

My childhood was a very happy one. The house often smelled of my mother's famous sunflower seed bread, which she baked several times a week so we could have fresh bread for lunch. Sometimes she would let me help her. But I haven't been able to stand the smell of fresh bread since that day when I came home from school and found her...

It's crazy, but the characters really take over and seem to tell you their story.

But why are you so evil?

I've only seen "evil for the sake of evil" done well once and that's in The Dark Knight with the Joker. And while great writing certainly helped, I think Heath Ledger's brilliant acting sold the character. I'm not convinced you could get away with it in a novel. (Though if someone wants to suggest a book where evil for evil's sake is done well, I'd love to hear.)

Even in The Dark Knight you'll notice that twice (if I'm remembering correctly) the Joker tells stories for an audience about how he got his scars/why he's evil. And then both times he laughs and says he made those stories up. The audience wants to know why, and the Joker understanding that his audience wanted to know why and playing on that makes him all the more creepy.

But for most villains, you'll need to at least hint at a root cause for why they do what they do, same as your fears and decisions and ambitions tend to have a root.  Like I have trouble trusting friendships because I've been burned several times times by girls who I thought were my best friend. And I have a phobia about public bathrooms with those push-button locks because of an embarrassing I-thought-the-door-was-locked-but-it-wasn't moment in my life. Not sure, exactly, where my irrational fear of spiders comes from, but your villain's backstory is critical to breathing life into them.

Why me?

Make sure you know why your bad guy has engaged in battle with your hero. Bad guys tend to be busy people and they don’t want to waste their time with those who are beneath them, so you need to make sure they have a reason to take notice. 

Like in The Hunger Games, you'll notice President Snow doesn’t pay extra attention to Katniss until her defiance becomes a threat to his way of life.

If you're having trouble creating active bad guys, this might be the first thing you check, if you've made your hero enough of a threat.

Your bad guy should be active

A great example of active antagonists is in Divergent by Veronica Roth. The bad guys are so active the reader can hardly take a breath. You’re too worried that Tris’s eye is going to get stabbed out. The bad guys in that book seem to be constantly scheming and waiting for a moment of weakness, but like we just talked about, they don't target Tris with serious danger until they perceive her as a threat.

Let's briefly look at a book that isn't high action, just to get a peek at how this can be done in a more character-driven story. The "bad guy" in Pride and Prejudice is Caroline Bingley. She wants to become Mrs. Darcy, and once she's discovered that Mr. Darcy has a bit of a crush on Elizabeth, Caroline tries to make Elizabeth look bad whenever she can. She mocks Elizabeth's family and points out flaws that she knows Mr. Darcy can't deny. 

Consider showing the hero and villain as two sides of the same coin.

The best example I can think of is the Harry Potter series. As the series goes on, Harry realizes that he and Voldemort are extremely similar. They even look alike. 

Another example of this is Lightning McQueen and Chick from Cars. They're enemies because they want the same thing and only one of them can get it. At the end with Chick, we see what Lightning could have become had he stayed on the same trajectory.  

Having your hero recognize the villain within themselves is a great way to make both characters more real to the reader.

Just like your main character shouldn’t always be right, your bad guy shouldn’t always be wrong.

Have you ever done something good but for the wrong reason? Well your bad guy can be doing wrong things, but for good reasons.


In Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy advises Bingley against pursuing Jane Bennett because he doesn’t think Jane loves him. He's wrong, but in his heart he’s trying to do a good thing by preventing his friend from a difficult marriage.

Something else that can be effective is when an antagonist calls your hero out on something. In The Revised Life of Ellie Sweet, Ellie is told by the antagonist that she's difficult to be friends with. It hurts Ellie's feelings, but she also knows it's true. And the message wouldn't have been as effective, wouldn't have hurt as much, had it come from another character.

How do you feel about the antagonists in your novel? Do you feel like you've done a good job with them?

FYI, Stephanie is at her grandmother's funeral today and will respond to comments when she can. -Jill