How to write evil characters?

[ThrillingHuman]

I was thinking about how to write very overpowered evil characters.
I think I got it.
A person doesn't just go evil, they don't just go eating babies or torturing people or even aiming for world dominance for no reason.
So, there must be some fundamental flaw in that evil character's personality, one that they cannot redeem permanently or refuse to do so, and instead they either satisfy their urges or ease their pain through or insist on their mistake, continuing to act evil. It's like a crack that keeps growing bigger and bigger the more it's not tended to properly.
Which is why, the longer a character goes evil, goes against logic or their own morality, theblonger they lie to themselves ornindulge their flaw, the bigger the flaw in their personality becomes, they need more energy, more time, more emotion to ease it, and it becomes harder to fix.
So that's why the overpowered calculating all-around amazing evil antagonist (or protagonist/side character) at first can be wise, amazing and unbeatable. But later? Later their flaw grows and they become less wise, less amazing, more beatable.
And it also allows for some good drama - as a protagonist they make for a person so close to redemption keeps refusing the opportunity, and it keeps snowballing. It's dramatic and tragic frustruating and, ultimately, entertaining. As an antagonist? It makes all the more tragic that their victims are really required to be sacrificed. It's almost a sacrifice to some dark malevolent force that is traded for a chance to take down the originally unbeatable monster. If handled nicely, it can make for some good drama and tragedy. Also one can compare the protagonist and the villain if they mirror each other. One can overcome their flaw, the other indulges.

 

[BearlyAlive]

That's just making your character a character instead of a plot device. Giving your characters flaws.

A good evil character, at one point, believed they were either right or had no other choice. And then it spiraled from there.

Or they were cartoonishly evil from the beginning. Those are always top-tier villains.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

Or they were cartoonishly evil from the beginning. Those are always top-tier villains.

Based.

 

[Panthers426]

I mean, Akagi in my story is fundamentally evil. She will do horrific things to get her way. Her flaws come from other parts of her personality.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

"Evil" Characters do things that appear to be against the common weal.

• Some are motivated by cruelty (either they received nothing but it in life and wish to return the "favor" or they just have a chemical imbalance that makes them take pleasure from it).
• Some are motivated by a love of power (and some of these villains have truly noble goals, but believe "the end justifies the means" - MCU Thanos is one of these - his goal was to help the universe survive, but his method was to kill half of it to do so; the comic book version was a bit more bizarre - his motivation changed frequently but usually kept falling back to "he believed he met Death and she was the most desirable and beautiful woman in all of existence so he did everything he could to get her attention, up to killing half the universe at once." - that version did not even care about the power except as a means to an end).
• Some are just flat out insane and have motivations we could never quite fathom (most of these are the "cartoonishly evil" ones - but there are some real-world examples, like H. H. Holmes, who may have killed far more than was believed, but who also claimed to kill several that he could not have had a hand in due to timing and geography).
• Some are slaves of a hierarchy of evil, with either tradition or a true monster (sometimes literally, sometimes just in terms of personality) at the top.
• And some are more technically amoral, they just want to see what happens and don't worry about consequences - Victor VonFrankenstein was of this ilk (or Henry in the movie) - had an idea, tested it, and then rejected the results as "too ugly and unpleasant."
• Most villains do have a tragic flaw - some obsessive trait that stands out and led them to what they are, but this is a commonality, not a rule.

The key is to figure out what motivates them so that they are not just a cipher, an obstacle in the road and not a real character. And then stay true to said motivation.

 

[Jerynboe]

To be fair, even the cartoonishly evil from the beginning types should have something they are aiming at. Like, even Captain Planet villains just really fucking hate the environment for some reason. You don’t need to explain it, but you probably shouldn’t have them shift tracks and hate true love or rock and roll in the next chapter, totally abandoning anti-environmentalism.

Or, if you do, you should probably lean into the fact that they are an erratic weirdo who gets a bug up their ass about a different random subject every week or two. That’s a fun flaw.

This is also all assuming “evil” rather than “alternative morality.” Like, evil characters probably know they have a moral fault on some level and are compensating for it or denying it, like you said. Someone with a totally cogent worldview that a reader from a liberal/progressive nation would find disturbing and evil can be completely at peace with themselves because by the metrics they are using they *are* the good guy. An Assyrian warlord could probably give you a totally rational explanation for why torturing your enemies to death and making a mural of it to keep in the guest waiting room is Good, Actually. All his friends do it, and his parents did it, and there are practical reasons to operate like that.

 

[ThrillingHuman]

This is also all assuming “evil” rather than “alternative morality.” Like, evil characters probably know they have a moral fault on some level and are compensating for it or denying it, like you said. Someone with a totally cogent worldview that a reader from a liberal/progressive nation would find disturbing and evil can be completely at peace with themselves because by the metrics they are using they *are* the good guy. An Assyrian warlord could probably give you a totally rational explanation for why torturing your enemies to death and making a mural of it to keep in the guest waiting room is Good, Actually. All his friends do it, and his parents did it, and there are practical reasons to operate like that.

And here it diverges into two-three paths:
1) completely alien evil - a moral worldview (if it can even be called that) so different, a human has no hope of empathising (Cthulhu, some bug hivemind etc). This is not a character thus irrelevant
2) a clash of different cultures - then it can't be called evil. Or it will be evil at first but lead to a rapid redemption soon. Like a weaker antagonist (or equal) from a different culture entering ptotagonist culture. Because they will begin to adapt to each other (or the weaker party like a singular alien from another world in our world adapting to the stronger party) and find common points (unless they stubornly cling to their worldview without adapting but that makes them an antagonist in how I described)
3) protagonist is the weaker party. Then there can be an invasion, for example, but then the other party will be an antagonist but will either not be necessarily evil, or not be a character (but a carricature evil like nazis can be portrait which isn't me somehow justifying the nazis, but if the individual soldiers act like parts of the collective, then they saren't characters). Or a protagonist in another world - which will probably make the protagonist the evil party if they don't adapt and portay the aliens as evil.

 

[TuulikkiUnelma]

I personally don't think of characters as truly evil or good (at any point of their lives), just characters which have various different evil and good traits and sides. Just like with real people; "Good and evil" are after all human invented concepts/categories, not some fundamental parts of the universe.

A better way of seeing characters, in my opinion, is to consider their place and purpose for the story first-and-foremost. Like as a character fitting the role of an 'antagonist', who furthers the story by creating conflict within it. If you think about what kind of effect the character should create in the plot, like what kind of conflict will they cause in order to further the story and develop the protagonists, then the rest of the character might start to naturally flow from that simple concept.

That's how I develop my characters anyway; First I get an idea for a plot-point or challenge involving opposition, and think that this kind of antagonist/enemy might be interesting and bring an interesting side from the other characters, or force them to consider themselves or the world in a new way, and then they develop from that.

Not seeing the antagonist as inherently evil also opens new doors here, as you can afterwards just remove them from that role if you develop them afterwards as well, maybe giving them a redemption-arc or something similar.

The antagonist might even be a better person with more good qualities than the protagonists from the start, which might make the conflict even more interesting and force the protagonist to either avoid thinking about it or to take a hard and critical look at themselves. Maybe at first they seem to be a ends-justifies-the-means–type of a villain with a noble goal, but turns out that they did actually think about their 'means' and addressed most of the problems in a good way already. This could even lead to a reverse–redemption-arc where the protagonist switches sides to the previous antagonist's side in a satisfying way; The possibilities are endless.

 

[3guanoff]

It is the same as writing any person. Unless they are crazy, they need to make sense. If they are crazy, there is usually still some consistency.

What makes sense? A principled person will be principled even if his principle is to loyally serve the baby-eating alien emperor.
A selfish person will be selfish even if the self he strives for is someone with the reputation of a saint, admired by all.
Of course, few people are purely selfish or purely principled. People's psyche's are complex.

He is a selfish coward but very empathic, and his ideal self is one of self-sacrifice, always chosing the difficult path.
He feels all the pain of those around him through empathy, and he cannot stand it since he is a coward. He wishes the pain to end since he is selfish. But because of his ideals, he cannot admit that this is the reason.
Instead, he convinces himself that he wants to save the people around him from their pain and suffering. They are not "strong" enough to take the difficult path, he tells himself, so he will do it for them.

However, this "difficult path" is naturally the easiest path available. After all, he is, at heart, a selfish coward. Instead of becoming a naive hero, always trying to help everyone, he becomes a wicked villain:
He designs a virus to kill all living beings and thus, end all suffering. In his mind, he is being selfless, bearing infamy for the sake of others.
In other people's minds, he is a crazy mass-murderer!

Always keep in mind that you are "building" people.

Building "crazy" people is a little different. They may have memory problems, hallucinations, gaps in perception, inability to empathize, people blindness, ... that leads to their thought processes being very different.
If you cannot distinguish other people from each other (this goes beyond face blindness), your thoughts and life will be very different.

Or a specific example, if your vision works differently, you may not be able to develop a proper understanding of cause and effect.
Imagine this: you regularly see apple trees. You've got some visual issue that keeps you from connecting images. You see a apples on the tree and you see apples on the ground, but you can never see them fall. You may assume that apples spawn naturally around apple trees.
Or that apples spawn naturally in that location, trees or no trees. Since there are trees, some of the apples that would spawn on the ground instead get spawned in the trees. How about making collecting the apples easier? Simply remove the trees, and all the apples will appear on the ground! Or will they appear in the air?

Writing "crazy" people means removing the restrictions on your imagination. They are there for a reason, the reason being your model of reality.
Everyone knows that no one is pushing the moon and that apples do not materialize out of nowhere. But if your senses or brain were different, you might be incapable of knowing this.

Still, thoughts come from somewhere. Beliefs stem from somewhere. People who do evil are people.

 

[Alfir]

Examples of evil characters you can draw inspiration from:
Sukuna
Hitler
Lucifer
Kid Buu
Sinister
Darkseid
And lots...

 

[ThrillingHuman]

I personally don't think of characters as truly evil or good (at any point of their lives), just characters which have various different evil and good traits and sides. Just like with real people; "Good and evil" are after all human invented concepts/categories, not some fundamental parts of the universe.

A better way of seeing characters, in my opinion, is to consider their place and purpose for the story first-and-foremost. Like as a character fitting the role of an 'antagonist', who furthers the story by creating conflict within it. If you think about what kind of effect the character should create in the plot, like what kind of conflict will they cause in order to further the story and develop the protagonists, then the rest of the character might start to naturally flow from that simple concept.

That's how I develop my characters anyway; First I get an idea for a plot-point or challenge involving opposition, and think that this kind of antagonist/enemy might be interesting and bring an interesting side from the other characters, or force them to consider themselves or the world in a new way, and then they develop from that.

Not seeing the antagonist as inherently evil also opens new doors here, as you can afterwards just remove them from that role if you develop them afterwards as well, maybe giving them a redemption-arc or something similar.

The antagonist might even be a better person with more good qualities than the protagonists from the start, which might make the conflict even more interesting and force the protagonist to either avoid thinking about it or to take a hard and critical look at themselves. Maybe at first they seem to be a ends-justifies-the-means–type of a villain with a noble goal, but turns out that they did actually think about their 'means' and addressed most of the problems in a good way already. This could even lead to a reverse–redemption-arc where the protagonist switches sides to the previous antagonist's side in a satisfying way; The possibilities are endless.

Outright rejecting that a character can be evil is closing more doors instead.

 

[RepresentingCaution]

It comes down to a combination of bad parenting, trauma, and genetic/epigenetic factors. The more stress hormones one experiences in the womb and first five years of life, the less resilient they become. Recommended reading/watching:

4 Types Of Parenting Styles

Column: Hey teachers, please stop using behavior charts. Here’s why | PBS News

A top researcher says it's time to rethink our entire approach to pre-K : NPR

InBrief: The Science of Neglect

Harlow's Studies on Dependency in Monkeys

Attachment – Human Development

Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent: Meredith F. Small: 9780385483629: Amazon.com: Books

 

[OokamiKasumi]

I was thinking about how to write very overpowered evil characters. ...

Google: Psychopath.
-- Some people are born evil. (No matter what the current politics of medicine are saying.)

link: Are Some People Born Evil?

 

[Tsuru]

That's just making your character a character instead of a plot device. Giving your characters flaws.

A good evil character, at one point, believed they were either right or had no other choice. And then it spiraled from there.

Or they were cartoonishly evil from the beginning. Those are always top-tier villains.

+1 (totally agreeing)

Viego of LoL for example is praised as a good villain, despite cringe/mocked.
Because like someone said :
"The dude has a totally bs reason to be villain, which is [Resurrect lover] and not a big [Destroy the world/ChangeSociety/etc] kind of reason, and that is why he is a well-written villain. Because lot of true villains are often simply villains for small reasons."

Teamrocket is comicly villain.
Their boss is a true villain with his flaw is being too arrogant and greedy to the point of creating Mewtwo. Thinking he can control him.

 

[KevGuevara]

I'm currently writing out the outline to a story I plan to publish here and encountered a problem with my villain and his relation to the story. It's not a problem so much has how he moves the story forward, but why. So I start pondering some questions, like what's his relationship to the protagonist, what is his end goal, what steps has he taken and what is his next move, etc... Now in order to really answer those questions I have to consider his personality and how that was formed. What are some of his defining moments before the story began. Now that I have this full-fledged character who I know intimately, I can start considering how the protagonist ties into the villain's plans and ties them up. With all that sorted out, I can start writing the story.

 

[Galvant]

Yo, writing evil characters can be super fun! Try giving them motives that make sense to them—even if they're twisted. Maybe they think they're the hero in their own story. Add some depth and quirks to make them more relatable. A villain with layers is way more interesting than just a 'bad guy' doing evil stuff for no reason.

 

[BearlyAlive]

Add some depth and quirks to make them more relatable. A villain with layers is way more interesting than just a 'bad guy' doing evil stuff for no reason.

Unless it's a bad guy doing evil stuff for fun reasons, sociopaths killing people because they didn't sleep well or because their lunch was lukewarm is pretty funny, in a morbid way.

 

[Puji-Maki]

Just make him Hot and Handsome, give him six packs and over 6 feet tall. That's the best way to make a evil character.

"If Evil, why Hot?"

 

[Succubiome]

I think you're coming at this with a bit of an incomplete view of things, as I believe power tends to magnify any destructive potential of aspects of personality.

People who are hella racist against elves still usually won't just murder elves without reason, because there's consequences. Someone who can just burn down an elf village because someone offended them, and not be worried that there'll be consequences though? Or just kill all elves in the area because they think of them as a plague? That becomes much easier.

Someone can believe they're more fit to rule than the current rulers, and without power they won't do much about it, but with a ton of power, they may do horrible things to get on top with the reasoning that it'll be worth it when they're up there.

Someone can believe that life is fundamentally nasty, brutish, and short, and it would be better if it was different, but without power, they'll probably just be kind to others or use it to justify their minor cruelties. With enough power, they may decide it's best to end all life.

Etc.

 

[Galvant]

Unless it's a bad guy doing evil stuff for fun reasons, sociopaths killing people because they didn't sleep well or because their lunch was lukewarm is pretty funny, in a morbid way.

Yeah, or he just hates a certain song and kills everyone who sings or likes it.