: Re: How do I write a compelling villain-all-along twist? I have in mind a character who is the protagonist's trusted ally throughout the story, but it is revealed at the end that he was the primary

One such strategy is to have your villain, on more than one occasion, actual act against his own best interest and defeat his own plot, kill his own men, etc, in order to convince the hero (and the audience) that he is truly on the side of the hero.

He can do this when he perceives the hero is going to prevail anyway, but (for example) instead of letting his men escape a compound, takes action to blow the whole thing up and kill them all.

A trait of many villains is sociopathy, a complete disregard for human life or suffering. It doesn't give them pause for a moment to kill people, including their own loyal minions, if this serves to advance their agenda.

If you like, you can also let such a killing be a cover-up, a way for the villain to ensure there are no survivors that might tell anything important to the hero.

But the important thing is, he deceives the audience by doing things, taking risks, helping the hero in ways that seem loyal, so we just wouldn't expect the villain to be doing them. The tricky part is giving him an ulterior motive to do this, but that can be because it isn't possible to achieve his primary goals yet, and his secondary goal is to be trusted by the hero, no matter what the cost.

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: I don't understand the dilemma, just write it the way you want. Ultimately if you want a strong women that embraces her femininity, you are going to put her in a dress, have her pay attention

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: Doubt about the double action of the concept of plot in fiction writing In the first discussion of the concept of "plot" given by [1] I, maybe, understood two different, but complementary, concepts

: Re: How do I write a compelling villain-all-along twist? I have in mind a character who is the protagonist's trusted ally throughout the story, but it is revealed at the end that he was the primary

More posts by @Odierno164

: I don't understand the dilemma, just write it the way you want. Ultimately if you want a strong women that embraces her femininity, you are going to put her in a dress, have her pay attention

: Is it okay to have a sequel start immediately after the end of the first book? The sequel to my first book is supposed to start immediately after the end of the first book. Zero time gap.

: Doubt about the concept of "true (or complex) character" Following the answer of @Cyn and my comment (on Doubt about a particular point of view on how to do character creation ): I would like

: Doubt about the double action of the concept of plot in fiction writing In the first discussion of the concept of "plot" given by [1] I, maybe, understood two different, but complementary, concepts

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