Villains have always been the backbone of the mystery genre. You just gotta have someone to hate – right? And no way will a simpleton do. No, in today’s fiction, the meaner the villain, the better. Readers have gotten pretty discerning through the years and they can tell right away if your villain is not up to par.
First, let’s examine a few famous villains.
How about in all those old movies, the silent ones, where the long-mustached Snidley Whiplash kidnaps the beautiful heroine and ties her to the railroad tracks to lure the hero (Dudley Do-Right) in to save her? That’s a villain. And a pretty fine one considering the era he was thrust into. Even the modern day Disney has a few, my favorite being Ursula the Seahag in The Little Mermaid. Of course, it is hard to top the mean Cruella Deville in the famous spotted dog story, either.
Some of my favorites are in the classics, like James Moriarty in the Sherlock Holmes mystery, or the mad (insane) villains of some of Agatha Christie’s books.
But why do we like them?
Is it their ingenious plot for world domination? Their cunning way of offing the victim? Oftentimes it is just the fact that they seem like a perfectly normal person. And that is why when we write the villain we must take into consideration the person-- man or woman—and who they are. Where did they come from? What turned them into the person they are? See, it is said that the villains don’t know they are villains. They just think they are like you and me, trying to do what has to be done.
The best way to capture that insanity on the page is to write the murder scene from their perspective. What better way to know why they were there? Why they felt the only resolution was to kill someone? What if it was a simple “in the wrong place at the wrong time” sort of killing? How will you bring that out on the page without being there in the villain’s head?
Here’s a little exercise for you: Write a scene where a man is tying up his wife and the whole time the reader thinks it is because he is about to kill her. In reality, he is about to kill himself and doesn’t divulge that until the very end. See what madness your villain will bring out for you. What has gone on before that brought the two of them to this point?
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