Introduction
What is a hero without its villain? Well nothing. A story needs a conflict and that conflict usually comes in the form of a moustache-twiddling, cloak wearing, masked man. But an antagonist can be anything, don’t feel it’s necessary to include a personification of your antagonist if it works well enough as something vaguer. But most of the time you will need your villains to even have heroes.
What makes an antagonist terrifying?
How to make a villain menacing is simple: Make them human.
Okay maybe it’s a bit more complicated than that.
No one is evil for evil’s sake, everyone has their reasons and needs. Your villains should be created with the same quality of care as your main characters.
No one just wants power or money, its what those things give the villain that make them go to such terrifying lengths to get them. And if you want to make an antagonist absolutely scary make sure they are completely fixed upon their convictions and why they need what they’re after, because that then makes it easier for the reader to understand that – oh yeah, they will murder everyone if the hero cannot stop them.
However, a villain can of course waver in their conviction, they can be torn between what they know to be right and what they want. I think this can help make a villain more relatable if you give them time to grow almost mirroring the hero. Show them doing, every day thing like having a family. Let them have a vulnerability or even show the world as the villain sees it, so the reader may be tempted to even side with them.
But this can make your villain less terrifying so its really up to you which route you want to go down: Terrifying with less internal conflict or internal conflict with less external conflict. Making the reader sympathise with the villain versus making them love to hate them.
Let them be a Villain
Do not fall into the trap of only saying what a villain does. A hero or group of good guys who constantly evade any sort of damage from the villain both dramatically reduces the stakes but also the threat level of an antagonist. Show the threat and let someone die. This helps so when the hero still fights against the villain, it shows both your main character’s strength but the also that the fear is still real because if the villain has done it once, they’ll do it again.
Without this, the audience will catch on and won’t fear the villain and like I said, there is no story without conflict so why would a book reader continue to read a book that isn’t a book.
A way of doing this is to escalate the villain’s crimes throughout the book, so start small and ramp it up throughout the book to stop the reader from becoming desensitized to them. The height of this should be just before the climax. This is where the villain wins, where the hero loses the most. Allow the villain to invade or win the competition or kill the hero’s brother, just to hammer home how badly not only the hero needs to win, but how badly the reader wants the hero to win.
Conclusion
Above all don’t be lazy, your villain isn’t a prop for the hero, it’s a character as much as the rest of them and should be created as such. Love how hateable they are! Good Luck Xx
Further Reading
https://thewritepractice.com/menacing-antagonist/
https://mythcreants.com/blog/how-to-make-your-villain-threatening/
https://www.nownovel.com/blog/how-to-make-the-villain-in-your-story-more-human/
https://www.nownovel.com/blog/how-to-create-a-great-villain/
http://blog.karenwoodward.org/2012/12/12-tips-on-how-to-write-antagonists.html
http://writerswrite.co.za/10-essential-tips-for-writing-antagonists/
Cafe Reading 