: Re: What to avoid when writing a villain? The villain so far has only appeared in two chapters. However now he's making a return in a chapter which is mostly about him, his actions and his past.

@Sent2472441

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Ditto @Mark Baker and @josh .

I see lots and lots of villains in stories who I find totally unbelievable because they have no coherent motivation. The worst are those Hollywood villains who scream, "I shall destroy all that is good and right and true!!" and then bursts into insane laughter. Think of even the worst real-life villains. Hitler and Stalin didn't boast that they were fighting goodness and truth and laugh maniacally. No, Hitler said things like, "Germany was betrayed by the Jews, and we must take steps to protect ourselves from these dangerous people." Stalin talked about the need to stop the greedy kulaks from exploiting their neighbors. Etc.

I've read lots of stories where the explanation for the villain's behavior is that he has some extremist religious belief, sometimes a made-up religion, sometimes supposedly based on a real religion. Except 90% of the time the religion is silly nonsense that no one in the world really believes. And if you're an atheist and your response to that sentence is, "But all religion is silly nonsense that no rational person would believe", you need to take a step back. Ditto if you say, "But all Republicans/Democrats/socialists/Teabaggers/hippies/whatever believe utter nonsense that no rational person would believe, so of course their motivations and actions don't make sense." You just don't understand people well enough. Even the people I think are craziest almost always have an internal logic that makes sense to them. They don't do evil things at random for no apparent reason. When they do evil things, it's usually because they honestly believe that they are serving a greater good. Their beliefs may not make sense to me, but they're usually not random and incoherent.

Of course when villains give a justification for their actions, maybe they really believe it and maybe it's just an excuse for selfishness. But selfishness is a comprehensible motivation.

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