The villain gives the story conflict for the heroes to overcome. Understanding the villain's perspective and motivations is key to creating a compelling antagonist. Fear of losing control, love, attention, wealth or life can motivate villains. They may seek to gain control over themselves, situations, others or love to compensate for these fears. Deeper exploration of the villain's gender, race, skills, family, friends and views can reveal their psychology and why they oppose the protagonist. An effective villain is more than just evil - they have depth of character from past experiences of love, fear, hate, passion and loss.

1. Villains. The dark shadows that hover in the backgrounds of rich worlds, woven words, and
silent nightmares. Often as a writer starting out on a new venture we pour our hearts and souls
into the layers of depth needed to build a teeming background and vibrant heros, but in all the
rush, the villain of our little tale is forgotten and left until the last.
What we forget is that without the dark, we would have no story at all. He gives the
heros something to fight, he creates the decisions that define how they grow and change, his evil
plots and scurrying minions are the forge that turn our unlikely stars into knights and ladies of
legend. But this evil too, in all it’s varied forms, had a beginning. The key to making an
antagonist that brings your story to life is in understanding him every bit as well as you do your
hero. If you were asked to turn about and write a scene from his persepective, you should be
able to do so, and in doing so make your readers feel as passionately for him as they do when
they turn the pages for the good guys. Love him, hate him, fear him, or pity him, his dynamic
will define your book.
I recommend that you approach this workshop with some concept of your story or yous
world in mind. It does not need to be fully formed, concrete details are often the last things to
fall into place for me. To start in a complete void, however, can be overwhelming. The process
of character creation, whether mastermind or mouse, requires details that can only be pulled from
the tapestry of your world itself. If you start with nothing, you may well find that by the time
you have made one character, half a world and almost a whole story have come along with it.
That said, never fear a good tangent. If any question or answer about your character sparks
further exploration, then follow the web it spins with excitement and passion. No one
questionnaire, workshop, or guide is going to have all the right answers. The best we can hope
for is to produce something that helps to awaken your own inspiration. These are not character
creators, these are characters scavenger hunts. All we can do is give you the map and the key,
and set you free. Go, write, trade words for new life.
So, that said, lets get down to the business of creating this monster, this madman, the
boogeyman of your choice. It is my hope that this workshop will help you think a little more
deeply about the man or woman behind the shroud.
~L.A Erickson

2. The Mind Behind the Mask: a psychological
approach to creating villains
Building Blocks: Before we get too deep into the mind and motivations of your next great
mastermind, lets build a base upon which to lay our creation. These are the questions that give
us something solid to work with, while beginning to set the stage for our creation.
Gender: This greatly colors how we see the world. No matter how much we may want to
believe that we are free of such distinction, it will always play a part. Men tend towards
decisions made through logic. Women tend towards decisions made through emotion. Of course
there are exceptions, men can be just as emotional, and women just as logical, but there are
innate tendancies.
Is your character male or female?
How strongly do they identify with their gender?
Have they ever been persecuted/exulted because of gender?
How do they perceive/steryotype the opposite gender?
Will they treat men/women differently when making decisions? For example
execution/reward/assignment.
Race/species: Wheather you are writing historical fantasy, steampunk, or high Fantasy.
There is a good chance you have lines and barriers drawn by race, species, or cultural boundary.
If you are working in world where there is no real separation of race or species, move on to the
next section.
What is your character’s race/species?
Are they a minority or a majority?
What is the most prominent steryotype about their race/species?
How do they identify with their race/species? Love? Hate?
Have they ever been persecuted because of their race/species?
Skills: Mage, soldier, king or spy. The skill set that a person wields defines what they may think
they are capable of. A soldier won’t feel he can call down rain, a mage may not like to use
weapons. This category may not have much to do with the way your villan consciously thinks,
but it will greatly affect how he subconsciously deals with matters.
 What is your Villain’s job?
 How did he obtain this job? Hard work/bribes/birthright?
 What is his strongest skill? Fighting/magic/strategy?
 Is his strongest skill the same as what he perceives his strongest skill to be?

3. Into the Mind: moving deeper into what it is that makes your Big Bad tick, lets look at the
things that prowl deep in his motives. The motivation that drives the good villain to do what
he does may be a delightful combination of the conscious and subconscious, known and
unknown desires. Moving through several categories of motives and questions to help you
explore those motives, let your villain speak to you, discovering what blend of these moves him
forward day after day.
I will define motivations in two ways. Positive motivation, and negative motivation. Positive is
defined by gain. You receive something. Positive motivation would be the desire to obtain
power/gold/magical items/love, etc. Negative is defined by loss. The taking away of something.
Negative motivation would be the fear of losing power/gold/magical items/love etc.
Each of the categories below should be developed and utilized if you feel this is an accurate
motivation for your character, and only skimmed or passed over if you find that it is not
relevant for him or her.
I often find that the characters that are the most fully realized are unaware of their Fear, or at
least unwilling to consciously admit to it. The excuse they then use is in the Control category,
their active response to their passive Fear. Fear and Control are therefore two halves to a
coin, something to keep in mind as you plan your world domination.
Fear: Fear can be one of the most powerful driving forces behind what we choose to do and
not do. Generally a negative motivation, many fears are subconscious, and compensated for by
actions. A deep-seated fear that your villain may not be willing to face can define his desperate
behavior, his need to succeed, and many forms of violence and anger.
What intangible thing does your villain fear losing the most? (power/control/attention/etc)
How did he gain this in the first place? (fear/birthright/etc)
What first made him realize that it could be lost?
Here is some more detailed expansion on those questions you may want to pursue if you find that
your Big Bad is responding to your questions favorably.
 The Fear of Losing Control
o What is it that your character currently feels that he has control of? Is it
political, like trade routes, the creation/enforcement of laws, or the entire
government itself? Is it a business, a world, or even just one family?
o What has made him think that his control is slipping? Did minion #463
defect? Stand up to him? mutiny?
o Why does he feel that his control is necessary? If this is the one thing he
just can’t let slip through his fingers, why?
 The Fear of Losing Love
o Has your villain been left already or does he just think he will be?

4. o Is he losing something/someone he loves(death, kidnapping etc), or does
he perceive that someone who loves him is going to stop doing
so?(betrayal, an affair, etc)
o What or who is he losing?
 The Fear of Losing Attention
o Is he worshipped, either as a god or a king?
o Does he panic when he’s not the center of attention, feel his power and
control slipping away?
 The Fear of Losing Wealth
o How did he come by his money in the first place?
o Why doesn’t he feel safe without it?
o What else will he lose as a direct result of his plunging fortunes?
 The Fear for his Life
o Why does he feel personal danger? Is someone after him? What gave him
this impression
o Does he perceive himself as to weak to protect himself as he is now?
o Did real or imagined danger trigger this response?
o What was the trigger?
Control: Maybe your villain isn’t motivated by anything in the fear category, maybe it’s hubris
or good ol’ fashioned dementia. Or maybe the Big Bad is now a terrified little child cowering in
your mind looking for the monsters under the bed. How does he get from there to the towering
dark master of evil? Through the actions he takes to gain control of his fears, or to inflate his
ballooning pride. These are the positive motivations. The motivation to gain, to possess, not the
fear of loss. Lets look at your various options in depth.
 Control over Self
o Do his own actions sometimes betray and unnerve him, leading him to
want greater control?
o Does he do things that even he doesn’t understand?
o Has he lost control in the past, perhaps with disasterous results?
 If so, what happened?
o Does he have powers/abilities/etc that he wants to gain control over?
 Control over Situations/Knowlege
o Does he panic/get angry if things don’t go exactly his way?
o Does he have trouble adapting quickly to changes in
plan/environment/situation?
o Has he felt helpless in the past in some situation where he had no control?
 Does he think this could happen again, and is he preparing for it?
 Control over Love
o Does he love something (real or imagined) that he perceives as out of
reach?
o Does he feel that his love takes priority, giving him a right to do as he
pleases, makes decisions arbitrarially?
 Control over Others

5. o Does he need to be the center of attention, admired? Why?
o What does he think others should see in him?
o What traits does he think are his best, that should be recognized by all?
His benevolence? His altruism? His eye for art?
Family
o Did he know his parents/siblings?
o Are they still living, or dead?
o How did they die?
o About which family member does your villan feel most strongly? (love or hate)
o Do they recognize or avoid the strength of these emotions?
o How were they treated by their family members?
o If they were to achieve their ultimate goals without interference from the
protagonist, how would they then include/treat/reward/punish their family?
Friends
o Do they inspire loyalty in others?
o How do they accomplish this? (fear/charisma/love)
o Are they loyal in return to those who are loyal to them?
o Do they have any friends who see things the same way they do?
o Do they plan to include anyone else in their plans? (Ex: deposing a monarch for a
sibling’s sake, sharing ultimate power with a cohort, etc)
o How does that other person feel about this? Approval? Dissaproval?
o Have they ever cared about or thought they cared about someone?
o How did they lose the person closest to them?
Views
o What does he see as his greatest accomplishment?
o What does he see as his worst failure?
o How has that made him pursue his current goals?
o Does he blame others for the failure or himself?
o Is he optimistic or pessimistic? How does this effect the way he sees his goal?
o Does he think he’s making the world a better place? How?
o If not, how does he expect to gain from a worse world?
The protagonist
o Is he aware of the protagonist initially?
o Is his conflict with the protagonist personal, or incedintal?
o Personal: He is in direct opposition from the start. The goal has to do with the
prot.
 Revenge? If so, for what? Is the insult perceived or real?
 Competition? Are their goals similar? The same throne/woman/item.
 Were they once friends? Family?
Was the event that cause their falling out about the story goal, or
something unrelated?
 Needs something the prot. Has. Power/skills/item
o Incedental: The opposition occurred later. The goal was separate from the prot.

6. o How does he react when he is ignored or disregarded
Among all these options and ways of looking at your character, I hope that you also consider
that he may just plain enjoy the game. It thrills him, it pleases him. But ask yourself why?
Hopefully he is more than just a sadistic bastard from birth. He has loved. He has feared. He
has hated. He has felt passion and loss, regret and joy. I hope you know have a better idea of
why and how.