Tips, tricks & discussions: How to make your story better

it sure does :smiley:

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I’m so guilty of the name thing :sweat_smile:

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Hehe, well you might think of it in the next story :slight_smile:

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Holy Jesus I just puked, when the narrator describes anyone with this amount of corniness I kind of just, die inside, and not in a good way… It’s just, ew.

Honestly I don’t know why I’m back on this site, I left a few weeks ago and moved onto Wattpad lol

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Hey, why don’t stay on both?! :joy:

Continuing character theme, today babbling is about villains.


Hot to create a good villain or Turn to your dark side ^^


"Every villain is the hero in their own mind."
Tom Hiddleston of his character, Loki.
loki


Now note, that in this post I won’t include psycho/socio types, as they were covered earlier. Here I wanna talk about completely sane villains.

I tended to have problems with writing, or even picturing a villain in my head, maybe because I just couldn’t relate. Most of us want to be heroes, right? We can easily find the motivation and qualities to ground the hero. It is not so easy with the villain.

The things you need to define for your villain, in order to create one are:

  • Motivation
    And it’s that thing, where it is easy to fall into cliche motivations. Your villain might commit evil deeds to gain power, or get revenge. But who says you should go down this easy lane? I think in order to find your own kind of evil motivation, that will reflect you, as a writer, and also make the villain more appealing to the writer himself is to take his place.
    What you should understand is that regardless of how good you feel you are, all of us can be villains or evil from time to time. We all have these evil urges depending on the situation, or event or other things that are happening to us on a daily basis. Your colleague bashed you in front of your boss, and you shyly smiled, avoiding confrontation, while picturing how you strangle her to death. Not so dramatic, but I can bet it has happened to you at some point. The difference between you and the villain you want to create is that the villain won’t turn to the social norms, or empathy, or conscience. Just imagine what would you do, if your moral boundaries would lift? You won’t feel the guilt or care about other conviction. Your lack of morals or some twisted understanding will let you do these things, that you can only do in your imagination.
    I’m not telling you to become mean and nasty, but to get into your dark side long enough to know what makes a good villain. Giving your villain a motivation will make him more than a cardboard cutout.
    There have been countless studies where people have been asked if they’d commit crimes if they were guaranteed to get away with them, and the majority always say ‘yes’, whether the crime is something relatively harmless, like the theft of a chocolate bar, or something abhorrent, like murder. If there were no consequences, and we could gain something, we too might easily turn to the dark side. Think about it. :wink:
  • Reasoning
    The thing you should keep in mind, that villains don’t usually think that they are evil. They think they are different, maybe that they understand more than average people. He/she is convinced that he/she is a good guy. Remember Tanos? He is convinced that he is doing the best for the world and that the world just doesn’t understand him. Hell, let’s take a look at the real-life villains, like Hitler. He was sure he is doing the right thing. So the villain must have reasoning within himself, why he thinks these actions he does are justified, although not accepted by society.
  • History
    What made him this way? Why his way of thinking is different than of average person?
    Villains are people to whom terrible things have happened. Maybe when they were kids, maybe in adolescence, or later. At some point, rather than learning and overcoming something, their stopped developing empathy, or understanding or other qualities. On the outside, they may have many, if not most, of the same attractive qualities of your hero, like strength, or cleverness, maybe humor. But just under the surface, there are some qualities, that you can access in yourself only if you allow yourself to. Give in into temptation kind of thing :wink:
    willow
  • Boundaries
    Now there are different kinds of villains. The spoiled high-school girl might be as evil as some superhuman in comic books. How far each of them can actually go, in order to achieve their goals? Usually, the more power you have, the fewer boundaries you have. Can he/she kill? Steal? Rape? Even villains have some things, that they won’t do, unless under heavy circumstances, and these boundaries sure may disappear in the story progress. Make this codex for your villain, define what would make him/her break it.
  • Likeability
    Now your villain might be plain scary and horrifying. But why not make the reader more conflicted and emotional, by giving the villain likable traits? Maybe he is funny? Or loves animals? Or cares for his/her sick mother? His history might contain some facts, that may make us feel sorry for the villain, but why not grant him with something, that will make us like him. Love/hate relationship between the reader and the villain are the best.
    spike
  • Horror
    Maybe you don’t want to make your villain too likable? Maybe you want to create him/her really scary.
    You can make your villain more interesting and frightening by avoiding cliches. Evil is creepier when it’s found in unexpected places and shapes.
    How do you feel about Harry Potter’s Voldemort? The main villain, with creepy appearance and a lot of evil shit done in past and present. I dunno about you, but he wasn’t that scary. You know he is evil, and that he can kill, and torture, but you’re not really afraid of him.
    And then there’s professor Dolores Umbridge. Personally, I found my emotions way more strong towards her, because she is something more real, something that can happen in real life, and something we sometimes can’t fight, due to subordination principle. She is a cruel, sadistic woman with a sugary voice and freaky pink outfits, and an office decorated with pictures of fluffy kittens. While her resemblance with real life was very frightening and causing strong negative emotions, her contradictory exterior made her very memorable.

Good to remember

  • The villain must be worthy of your protagonist.
    What’s the point in creating a villain that doesn’t match your hero? The powerful villain will make your hero shine even more while giving them both a kick in character developing.
  • The reader must like if not the villain himself but at least watching him in action
    He must be exciting, captivating, and create contrast in his and hero’s actions.
  • Avoid creating completely evil villains.
    This concept of pure evil works of course in horror/monster stories, definitely not in drama, or fantasy.
  • The villain should sometimes be kind.
    Because reader must like the villain in some point, and also because giving the villain humanly moments will make him more realistic. Even Voldemort expressed affection towards Nagini :wink:
    nagini

Who’s your favorite villain ever?


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What do you do if you want a character to walk off screen on the left hand side in the first zone? That’s the only time I feel like I have to use the exit command, but if there’s a better way, it will stop my characters from growing or shrinking when they exit :joy::joy::joy:

Use spot command.
I dunno if you use Writer’s portal (which is the best way for advance coding) or mobile. But anyway.
You pick the character you need to exit. Take a note on her current spot position (1.193 213 -4)


Now you want to move her with the Spot Helper outside of the screen. There. Well, you will move character even further, but check her spot position. The second number is now in negative. (1.193 -36 8)

Just remember to keep the third number the same (if she walks straight of course) and don’t forget to put timing.

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That’s a lot easier than I thought it would be and I really don’t know why I didn’t think of that. Thanks!

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@MyMomHadMeTested is my favourite villain :smiling_imp:

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:joy::joy::joy: Ikr.
Thank u for this honour

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gonna save this cause i suck at villians

Maybe, idk tho

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Mmm…I see them Myers Briggs 16 types you got there ^^ I love figuring out my character’s personality types!! Love it ^^

My most favorite villain is Ganondorf. ^^ Super biased in that, but he’s scary af, evil, and it is even scarier because of how intelligent he is. Definitely a worthy villain to the best hero in the world: Link!!! Oooo

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No link dude :smiley:

:thinking: ??

Aaaand don’t make a bad boy’s flaw be the nerd who’s had a crush on him forever and ‘isn’t like other girls’ :grin:

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what? :DDD

Lots of people want to make the bad boy have this massive flaw, right? So that’s usually his flaw, in cliche stories, anyway. He’s a stone cold grown man, but the nerd is his ‘weakness’.

Humm… Not sure about this. When I see “bad boys” who are good at school stuff, I see it as a redeeming thing :smiley:

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