Earlier this week Brayden Hirsch posted a nice article titled What Makes a Bad Guy Bad that got me thinking again about the villain’s role in a story. I come back to this topic now and then as I think the best of heroes are defined by their villains, but I don’t feel the inverse is true. Why should villains care about heroes or even want to encounter them? Can a villain’s role be just about moving the hero forward? Or should the villain stand alone and conflict with the hero only when their goals collide?

Characters that simply oppose the protagonist hero at various points in a story are antagonists; villains need to have their own role and identity. Hirsch’s article lists three common characteristics of villains: obsession, back-story, and cleverness. In short, classic villains tend to be driven by a needed goal, have some personal connection to the hero, and the brains to properly match wits with the hero in a perceived fair fight. I agree that those points are valid, useful characteristics, but they don’t define a villain’s role.

A villain can’t simply be the hero’s evil twin. Direct opposition conflict really only happens in poor cardboard-cutout stories like old comic books and bad movies. I feel villains work best when they work alone. A complex and rounded villain will have unique personal motivations that, back-story connections aside, are unlikely to have anything at all to do with the hero. Heroes are often defined by their villain-defeating acts, but there’s no reason to assume a villain is looking for that fight. A villain playing to win should want to attain the needed goal as safely and easily as possible. Even if the hero is known to the villain and accounted for in the villain’s plan, the villain would work to achieve success without opposition if possible.

This of course doesn’t account for a villain whose goal is say the suffering and/or death of the hero, but honestly I find that conflict simple and trite. The hero as victim is not engaging; can’t the hero take it? Readers will know that, so where’s the drama in it? The protagonist is more heroic when saving others, and isn’t a villain more interesting, more evil, when the achieved goal is at the expense of innocents?

A real villain doesn’t wait to be opposed; he or she just goes out and does villainy. That is what defines the “bad guy” role. Once the villain sets up a problem situation, the protagonist choosing to oppose it becomes the hero. Perhaps there are back-story connections between them, but I feel the motivations, and in effect roles, of the two characters should be independent in the story. Doing that will keep your villains realistic and complex and insure the conflict you write will be believable and engaging to your readers.