Seven Powerful Ways to Add Complexity to Your Villain

By Jodi Clark

If you’ve ever sat in a theatre or read a book and yawned every time the villain appeared on the scene, raise your hand. If you’ve ever known exactly what a villain was going to do because they are too predictable, raise your hand. And finally, if you’ve ever been more interested in a minor subplot than learning more about the villain and their plan, raise your hand.

I’m going to pretend that I can see your hands right now. I totally understand how frustrating it can be when villains just feel…flat. Boring. Like a last-minute addition or useful tool for exactly one scene. How do you write or fix a villain that just sits on the page uselessly and doesn’t leap off it, sword drawn and witty remarks flying?

Today, let’s dive into seven tips on how to add complexity to your villain in order to bring your villain to life and keep your reader on the edge of their seat whenever the villain comes on the scene.

1. Give Them an External Conflict Between Something They Care About vs. Their Evil Goal

Villains choose to do evil things. They kill thousands of people, they manipulate others into harmful situations, and they rule with an iron fist. So, when the villain is shown to genuinely care about something other than their evil goal, the audience will pause and take note.

In Treasure Planet, the cyborg Mr. Silver was bent on stealing a massive stockpile of loot from no other place than the titular Treasure Planet. At the same time during a long voyage through space, he was also attempting to develop a fatherly relationship with the hero, Jim Hawkins, in order to steal Jim’s map to the planet and its treasure.

Though Jim attempted to keep the treasure map he had discovered to this loot a secret, the map was discovered. Mr. Silver betrayed Jim’s trust by attempting to kill him and causing a mutiny on the ship. Eventually, Mr. Silver captured Jim and forced him to lead the way to the treasure. But when the planet’s secret traps were triggered, the treasure trove self-destructed. As a result, Jim fell near boiling lava and was unable to pull himself out of danger.

In the end, Mr. Silver was forced to make a choice between saving as much of the treasure as he could or saving Jim before the hero fell into the lava. The complexity of Mr. Silver’s character truly shone when Silver chose to save Jim instead of following through with his lifelong obsession regarding the treasure.

Source: Tenor

In your story, consider giving your villain something or someone that they care about. Make your villain struggle, even momentarily, to choose between their evil goals or the things/places/people they love. This will add a layer of complexity to your villain that will make them stand out from villains that only have evil goals. And who knows? Maybe your villain will choose to do the right thing before the end.

2. Give Them an Internal Conflict Between Good vs. Evil

The inner pull between good vs. evil can perhaps best be seen in Tolkien’s well-known Ringbearers of The Lord of the Rings, Frodo and Gollum, and each of their struggles to give up the Ring. Since we’re talking about villains here, let’s narrow in on Gollum and his internal conflict.

After Gollum swore himself to serve Frodo, he experienced an intense inner battle with himself: the murderous, spiteful, despicable part of himself that loved the Ring, and the good hobbit of the River-folk who just wanted to be happy with people who loved him. During all Gollum’s long years of being distorted by the Ring after he was cast out by society, he likely lost hope of his humanity ever being seen again by anyone.

But when Frodo began to recognize Gollum’s humanity by defending Gollum from the suspicious Sam and calling Gollum by his true name, Sméagol, the hobbit began to emerge from within the twisted cave creature that was Gollum. Sméagol wanted to trust Frodo, but Gollum wanted the Ring. For a while, Sméagol was able to win Frodo’s trust and banish Gollum from his own mind.

 Unfortunately, due to what Sméagol felt was a betrayal on Frodo’s part (when Faramir captured Sméagol and interrogated him about the Ring), he welcomed Gollum back into his life and as a result, also welcomed the evil desire for the Ring.

This long-term inner back-and-forth between Sméagol and Gollum represented the pull between good and evil. The audience was left wondering which path Sméagol would choose in the end. Sméagol’s internal conflict between good and evil added a great amount of complexity to his character and made him one of the more intriguing members of the cast of The Lord of the Rings.

Try thinking of ways that your villains can face an internal struggle between good and evil. Have they been cast out and hurt before, like Gollum, so they are both desirous and distrusting of new loyalties and fellowship? Do they have a hope to be redeemed, but do they think that’s impossible for them now, after all they’ve done? Or are they too scared to leave their old ways for fear of reprisal from other villains?

3. Create Detailed Backstories that Make Them Three-Dimensional

You know how you strive to create a fantastic, complex backstory for your hero? You should be doing that for your villain, too.

Remember Syndrome from The Incredibles? He was a villain that no one saw coming, not even Mr. Incredible himself. He once adored Mr. Incredible but when he tried to help Mr. Incredible stop crime and was rejected, Syndrome was heartbroken and decided that all superheroes needed to be destroyed. Because of his detailed backstory, Syndrome became one of the greatest twist villains of Disney and Pixar Studios. 

Source: Giphy

Due to his interaction with Mr. Incredible, Syndrome’s motivation became even more complex than it might’ve been if he had just wanted to kill superheroes because he wasn’t one of them. Now, Syndrome wanted to kill all superheroes, not only because they were super and he was not, but also because he had been personally slighted by Mr. Incredible himself. Syndrome’s past interaction with Mr. Incredible added a layer of complexity to their hero-villain relationship that colored all their interactions throughout the rest of the story.

When you’re making your villains, be sure to write their backstories with as much care and detail as you put into writing the backstories of your heroes. Take all your villains’ past experiences into account when considering their current goals and use those experiences to make their relationships and motivations complex.

Think of what your protagonist would care about. Family? Friends? Their home? Their people? Their reputation? Their job? Then think of how you can work those elements into your villain’s backstory to give them a detailed history.

4. Give Them Sympathetic Motivations

If you can understand and even relate to someone’s motivation, you can understand the lengths to which they will go to achieve what they want. In this case, villains who want something believe that the end justifies the means.

So, if they have a family they want to support, as in the case of Lady Tremaine from the live action Cinderella (2015), they believe that they can and must do whatever is necessary to support them. After Tremaine was widowed, she was left with no means to provide for her daughters. Without a man in the family to provide for them, Tremaine and her daughters would live a bleak life with disastrous prospects for their futures.

At first glance, Tremaine’s goal to avoid this future and provide for her daughters might not look bad. Marrying Cinderella’s father didn’t make her evil, either. But after Cinderella’s father died, Tremaine’s abuse of Cinderella and her plotting to manipulate Cinderella and make herself the head of the royal household was wrong.

To use this in your stories, think of ways that your villain can have a sympathetic motivation. Perhaps they want to provide for their family, save their kingdom, or even save themselves from a life situation that was forced upon them. Think of ways that your villain can believe that the end (their goal/desire) justifies the means (the actions they take and the people they hurt along the way).

5. Have them Think they are Doing the Right Thing

This is something that most villains should already be doing, since it helps to make the villain a three-dimensional character similar to the hero, who also thinks they are doing the right thing.

In the case of Thanos from Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, the Mad Titan believed he was doing the right thing (even though it was obviously evil to any sane, moral person) by wiping out half the universe’s population. He believed he was doing the right thing so much that he killed Gamora, his favorite daughter, in order to accomplish what he thought was his life’s work, his legacy.

When Thanos was younger, his home planet, Titan, was fraught with overpopulation that threatened the lives of his people. He thought he came up with the right solution to their problem: to kill half the planet’s population. He also thought he was proved right when his planet died out because he did not intervene by killing half its population. Because of this experience, he believed he was right to pursue his goal to kill half the population of not just one planet, but the entire universe.

Source: Tenor

Thanos viewed himself as the suffering hero of a tragic tale, and because of his view, he became more than just the typical villain who wants to do evil things because they are evil. He wanted to do what he thought was the right thing, but got so caught up in his own arrogance and visions of glory that he didn’t realize it was actually the wrong thing to do.

In order to use this in your stories, think about your villain’s backstory. What happened there that twisted the way that they think? What happened to make them think that the wrong thing is the right thing?

Then, think about how they are acting out their beliefs during the plot of your story. Think about how you can drop hints about why they believe what they believe, why they are essentially insane, throughout your tale. This will add complexity to your villain and will keep your reader intrigued!

6. Use a Third Party to Force Them to do the Wrong Thing

Think of how heartbreaking it can be to see a character doing the wrong thing because someone else is forcing their hand. If a character is forced to do the wrong thing and become a villain, it can be painful to watch their descent into villainy because the audience knows that this character might not have chosen this life if the third party had not forced them into it.

For this example, let’s turn to Bucky Barnes in The Winter Soldier. Though Bucky was constantly opposing Steve, albeit under Bucky’s alias as the Winter Soldier, the same Bucky that Steve was friends with all those years ago was still there underneath all Hydra’s brainwashing.                                                                                         

The fact that the Winter Soldier was actually Bucky being brainwashed by Hydra, the third party, into doing the wrong thing added a huge layer of complexity to the Winter Soldier as a villain and changed the way Steve approached the Winter Soldier as an enemy.

When you are creating a villain, think of ways that you can have a third party force someone to become a villain, or simply do villainous things. This can either be through blackmail, brainwashing, or other means.

7. Have Their Goals Conflict with Other Villains’ Goals

You know how irritating it can be when a villain is evil just for the sake of being evil? Well, it can feel just as annoying when multiple villains do just that, but together.

Think of villains whose goals conflict with the goals of other villains, potentially enough that they would turn on each other to accomplish their personal goal. Villains can make alliances with one another, but unless they have the exact same end goal, they are bound to clash at some point over a conflict of interests.

In Avengers: Age of Ultron, Wanda and Pietro’s family was killed by Tony Stark’s weapons. Because of this tragedy, Wanda and Pietro wanted revenge, so they joined forces with Ultron, who appeared to want to exact punishment on the Avengers. Secretly, Ultron wanted to eradicate all of humanity from the face of the earth.

When Wanda discovered Ultron’s secret goal, she was horrified, since his goal did not align with what she and Pietro wanted. Together, Wanda and Pietro abandoned Ultron and eventually joined forces with the Avengers to stop Ultron’s evil plan from taking place.

When you’re thinking of ways to have your villains’ goals clash with the goals of other villains, think of your villains’ motivations. What do they truly want? How might their goals align with the goals of other villains temporarily? And how might their goals eventually tear them away from the villainous alliances they have created?

To wrap this up…

As always, I hope this has been helpful to you! Remember, there are seven ways you can add complexity to your villain (or your antagonist or anti-hero!), and they are:

1. To give your villain an external conflict. This conflict will force your villain to choose between what they love or care about vs. their evil goal.

2. To give your villain an internal conflict. This conflict will force your villain to face their inner battle of good vs. evil and will force them to make a choice.

3. To create detailed backstories that make your villain three-dimensional. Don’t forget to make sure you put as much effort into your villain’s backstory as you do the backstory of your hero.

4. To give your villain sympathetic motivations. Your villain might want to save their best friend or provide for their family, but if they are doing it the wrong way, then they will clash with the forces of good.

5. To have your villain think they are doing the right thing. Like Thanos, your villain might think they are doing the right thing because of an experience they had that they wrongly believe proves their point.

6. To use a third party to force your villain to do the wrong thing. They can be blackmailed or brainwashed, but they are still being manipulated by a third party into acting the part of a villain.

7. To have your villain’s goals conflict with other villains’ goals. Have your villains join forces, but only temporarily. Then, watch as their conflicting goals destroy their villainous alliance and they begin to fight amongst themselves.

Are you planning on writing a complex villain into your stories? What are the most complex villains you’ve seen in literature or movies? And what made them appear complex to you?