Writing a good story isn’t just about the worldbuilding, or even the plot. The characters—your protagonist and antagonist in particular—are a crucial component, because if you don’t love a character with all your heart, or despise a character with every fiber of your being, then where is the motivation to keep reading?
Characters need to be well written for your story to succeed. That doesn’t mean they need to be good, and that’s the sticking point: how do you write believable antagonists that your readers will feel some type of way about? How do you do a good job writing a “bad guy?”
I’m here to (hopefully) answer those questions by providing different things to consider when writing your villain/antagonist.
Let’s begin.
Give Them a Cause
Everyone is the hero of their own story. It’s very unlikely that you will find a (well-written) villain who doesn’t have a good reason for being the way that they are. There are exceptions to this, of course; some antagonists, like Jack Horner from Puss in Boots: The Last Wish or the Joker, are straight-up villains who relish being evil, and that’s what makes them great. In most cases, though, your antagonist will have a reason for being the way they are. They might believe they’re genuinely doing the right thing, or they might have something or someone they’re fighting for that makes them do unspeakable things.
The question is: what made them take the path they took? What makes them so at odds with the protagonist, and is it possible that they can have redemption if only they can see the light?
When I think of well-written antagonists, I often think of Killmonger from Black Panther. He’s the antagonist and clearly at odds with our beloved Black Panther, T’Challa, but we see and understand his perspective, even if his approach may seem extreme. He’s not evil. He’s not a monster. He just recognizes and has endured years of injustice and wants liberation for his people.
Try to put yourself in your antagonist’s shoes, and ask yourself what their motivation is and whether your reader can sympathize with it, regardless of the actions of the character.
Keep in mind, though, that just because an antagonist has their own perspective, their own reasons for doing what they do, it does not make it right.
Look at truly villainous, terrifying characters—usually horror characters like Jason from Friday the 13th or Freddy from The Nightmare on Elm Street. They are both pure evil. That’s their thing. They have no valid reasons for doing the evil things they do, but that’s part of what makes them so scary: their complete disregard for human life, and their single-minded thirst for blood, death, and misery. They are not just antagonists to our plucky teen protagonists—they are evil given form. They are villains.
Tangentially related, there was this TikTok trend I liked where it would go through a bunch of different villains in media and label them either “broken” or “pure evil.” It’s fun. Here, have some.
Remember That Antagonist ≠ Villain
Going off of the previous point, when writing an antagonist, remember that an antagonist is not necessarily the same thing as a villain. Not every protagonist is the “good guy,” and not every antagonist is the “bad guy.” The point is that they are ideologically, diametrically opposed, and the only difference between a protagonist and an antagonist is that one is the character we follow, while the other serves as the story’s greatest obstacle.
Think of an antagonist as an “anti-protagonist;” they are the person or thing most in the way of your protagonist achieving their goals.
The antagonist doesn’t even need to be a person. It can be any number of things (or people): a storm, a bear, the protagonist’s mom, maybe even the protagonist themselves.
For example, in Jaws, the main antagonist is…a shark. It’s just a shark. A very angry and very big shark, but a shark nonetheless. It isn’t villainous; it’s just doing what sharks do. And it’s doing it very, very well.
Hell, it’s entirely possible that your protagonist is the villain, and the antagonist is the hero trying to save everyone from their wrath.
Lately, there’s been a lot of fairytale retellings, and many of them are great examples of rewriting the story to give us the villain + antagonist’s perspective. In Heather Walter’s Malice, Alyce is not a villain, but her very existence makes her a target of the “good guys,” the archetypal fantasy heroes. These “heroes,” though, are not heroes at all, nor are they the protagonists. Alyce is.
Don’t limit your storytelling based on who you think has to be morally good or bad. Plenty of things can cause a conflict: misunderstandings, prejudice, ignorance…and all of these things make it possible for your antagonist and protagonists to do great good or great evil.
Give Them a Backstory
One of the biggest mistakes I see writers make is that they focus all their energy on giving their protagonist a complex and meaningful backstory, but they fail to do the same for the antagonist.
No matter how evil or villainous your antagonist may be, they got that way for a reason. You don’t need to give us a massive exposition dump detailing every sad detail about your antagonist’s tragic past, but chances are, if your antagonist has a reason for doing the things they’re doing (no matter how atrocious those things are), there’s something in their past that lets us know how they came to oppose your protagonist so strongly.
Or they’re just a bad person. Pure evil, you might say. If that’s the case, having their backstory is still helpful, because that way your reader has context that confirms that this person just really fucking sucks and deserves to get got.
Write Understandable Misunderstandings
My own experience talking to different people from different walks of life has meant that I’ve often been put in the middle of altercations. It’s like being a centrist, but less annoying.
As mentioned in Ruth’s Mottram’s excellent piece on the power of words, we all have our own subjective frame of reference for how to interact with the world. It’s intention vs. impact. All of our intentions collectively may be pure and well-meaning, but that doesn’t change the impact of the things we do.
Maybe both your protagonist and antagonist want to make the world a better place. They respond to the situation using their frame of reference, which may be drastically different. So even though they both have the same intentions, their actions and the impact of those actions may differ, causing wires to cross and the characters to clash. Because of those fundamental disagreements—not on the problem, but on the solution—both characters believe the other is out to destroy the world, not make it better.
You can have the purest intentions imaginable, but people will perceive you based on your impact, not what’s in your heart. Write a protagonist and an antagonist who both want to address the same problem. They might even have moments where they acknowledge the other’s good intentions, where they empathize with each other and perhaps consider burying the hatchet…but they can’t. Neither one believes the other’s approach is the right one. They can’t compromise on their goals or convictions.
Think X-Men’s Charles Xavier and Magneto, both mutant leaders who want to liberate mutant-kind from the oppressive humans who hate and fear them.
Their goals are aligned, but the former wants to achieve it by saving and appealing to humanity—prove to them that mutants are not monsters, just people—while the latter wants to achieve it by fighting back against humanity.
They were once close friends, and they still have those occasional moments of camaraderie because they know that, deep down, they both want the same thing. But Magneto believes Xavier is ineffective and weak for trying to appeal to the oppressor, while Xavier believes Magneto is going too far in trying to flip the script and build a mutant-centered world instead.
Intention vs. impact.
Let Them Show Weakness
Nobody ever wants to show weakness. People have started literal wars because of their pride, all because we live in a world where proving yourself a flawed human who can make mistakes is one of the worst things you can do, worthy of shame and ostracization.
I, for one, prefer a character who has flaws. Someone who is, deep down, a sensitive person who just wants to be loved and wanted. Even the worst, most despicable people you can think of probably have things they fear, things they long for, things they’re insecure about, things that embarrass them, things they’re ashamed of, things or people they have a soft spot for, and so on.
Show us those moments. Let the mask slip, even if just for a second. Let your antagonist/villain grieve, rage, do something embarrassing, make a silly blunder, anything that makes them seem like a relatable human.
