I’m trying very hard to suppress my anger over this.
“Gunmen dressed as police commandos kidnapped scores of staff and visitors in a lightning raid on a Baghdad higher education office Tuesday,”
Because, you know… educated people are the enemy of morality (re: fundamentalists).
I was just having a conversation last night with someone about the difficulties of crafting a smart villain. One of the biggest reasons why crafting a smart villain is tough, is because we associate intelligence with ‘good’ and qualities like ignorance and stupidity with ‘evil.’ Thus by creating a villain who is smart, we often end up with characters that are accidentally sympathetic.
It doesn’t help that more often than not, the ‘evil acts’ of the world are committed by very stupid or very ignorant people. So then how do you write a villain who exhibits the values of intelligence, without those values being overwhelmingly positive?
I have my own thoughts on that, but I’m going to hold back on them a bit for the sake of discussion. How do you, as a writer, get past the contradiction of a smart villain who does evil or stupid things?
Vanity is always a good blind spot for the super intelligent. Zeal also makes for excellent foibles.
Of course, I prefer my villains to be sympathetic. It makes the lengths they’ll go to in an effort to reach their goals all the more horrible when the audience has identified with them.
My villains are all extremely intelligent people who tend to be sociopaths. I find those people very scary.
Give them a human reason for doing an evil deed. Therein lies the rub.
I find the scariest type of villian is one that is intelligent. With the stupid ones, you expect them to mess up and be caught or whatever. The smart ones, you aren’t so sure and that is scary.
Crap! I just realized that my main villian in my NaNoWriMo project is not so bright.
One of the smartest villains would have to be Hannibal Lector.
I’m not so keen of writing about good and evil, black and white, I prefer shades of gray with opposing sides that do things for their own reasons, and can be interpreted differently by different people. I imagine evil things are often done by basically good people because they believe it is necessary. Jack Bauer from 24 might be a good example of this.
Villains aren’t dominant in my stories…but the times I write them I find I make them intelligent, but they have no or less of a conscious than my good characters.
They can be cunning and smart, ruthless and deceitful because they don’t feel guilty about their actions. A brilliant mind, smart and cunning villain is so much more fascinating in my mind.
Wow. Great question.
The most interesting villains have understandable motivations — even if you don’t agree with them (and often people don’t).
Looking at the Iraqi situation and other villains in history, the villains seem to be strongly attached to a very narrow world view. Those agreeing with them are safe. Those not are fair game. These villains lack empathy and feel justified treating others badly. They create their enemies. Overall, these types are inflexible and do not respond to reason.
It seems some modern-day villains are desperate, ignorant, and easily manipulated by higher-ups. They think they’re protecting their piece of the pie, but they’re really spoiling it for everyone.
Going back to the kidnapped Iraqis, apparently most have been released. Iraq’s premier has arrested a rival police chief for possibly planning and carrying this out. The Interior Ministry faction kidnapped the rival Education Ministry faction as a bid for power, to show everyone who’s boss (for now).
When trust is gone in a pre-civil war society, everyone is a potential villain.
And back to your question (I didn’t really answer it in previous comment).
Looking at what I wrote, I guess I don’t get past it. That they are smart and evil and/or stupid is one of the tragedies of villains like this. This tragedy becomes part of the story.
I like villains who have one redeeming quality about them (the murderer who loves his kids, etc.) I think it makes them more believable and less melodramatic.
I personally think the secret to writing really good villains is to write them as if they believe they are the hero/protagonist of their own tale.
There’s nothing wrong with a little sympathy for the devil.
I think sometimes the fear that a villain might upstage the hero in a tale indicates more a weakness in the hero’s character than a defect in the villain’s.
For example, there’s a reason why the Disney villain is usually so much more memorable than the interchangable Young Scrappy Guy trying to win the girl by bringing said villain down.