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| Gollum art by TL Jeffcoat |
When I write an antagonist I like
to dig deep into their inner workings. I want the reader to sympathize and
loathe them all at the same time. Some villains I’ve created are just people in
bad situations, doing bad things. Some look for the bad things to do out of
boredom or compensation for an inferiority complex. And then there comes the
truly evil villain. Whether he’s a pathetic envious creature that wants to
reach some higher plane of existence, or bring the world down to his level. For
me, every antagonist must have a human element to him. There must be some
purpose to his questionable behavior that I could understand why he does what
he does, even if I feel it’s the wrong approach. The worst written villains are
the ones that are evil because they just are. They were born that way or
created that way. Sometimes we just don’t know what drives the villain in the
story, but the writer must have had a reason for the bad guy to be the bad guy.
