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No Villains
Posted by: cottreau
In my favorite stories, there are no villains. There is still conflict since all good stories require conflict, but that doesn't mean that anyone has to be a villain.
Imagine a story about war, you follow a main character through a snow-covered, European landscape. He's been separated from his unit and all alone doing his best to get back. He was originally a baker and he misses his wife and kids desperately and can't wait for the war to be over.
There is another soldier, who has accidentally parachuted behind enemy lines. He's just a boy, and has never been to war before. This is his first mission and it's gone terribly wrong. He's lost some gear when he came down in a lake and he's so, so cold that all he wants is to find shelter, somewhere warm where he can survive and find some comfort.
These are both sympathetic characters. I immediately feel for both of them, and want them both to be safe and I want them both to succeed. Neither is a villain and without saying more, they could easily be on the same side. However, one is "the enemy", depending on your point of view, but neither is the villain.
So often, it's so easy to just make a bad guy, without any sympathetic angle. Here are five typical villains. Try to think of some good reasons each why they might not be a villain at all, but might actually be a hero, someone you could pull for, someone whose death would make you cry:
1. A giant, mechanical spider that is chasing after a group of scared peasants
2. A demon who is trying to open a hole into our world so that he can eat all the children
3. The super-genius who is trying to take over the world and make sex slaves of all the women
4. The stalker who just can't let her boyfriend go, and sits across the street with binoculars staring in his windows
5. The president of a small, African nation who is selling drugs to fund his civil war
Take a look at your own villains and see if there is a way to make them more sympathetic. They were probably children once. What were their parents like? What was their first sexual encounter? Do they have anyone they look up to?
Adding depth to your "villains" can go a long way into making your story great. Think about it.
08 Jun 2007 22:37:38
Comments
On 09 Jun 2007 11:32:05 Cassie said:
I had been thinking about this myself lately, seeing as in the near future my MC is going to go on a bit of a revenge mission involving several deaths of some not so pleasant characters. I wouldn't call them villains though, they have their own (very reasonable) reasons for doing the things they are doing, even if how they go about getting what they want isn't very moral. On the other hand, how is my MC being moral by killing people? I love it when the distinctions between 'good' guys and 'bad' guys are blurred, and they all just become people with needs and wants.
On 11 Jun 2007 18:12:03 Travis said:
Hey cassie - I agree, which is the main reason that I wrote this klog.
Blurring the lines is the way to go, since who really needs a black and white, hero/villain line drawn in the story?
"Tigana" by Guy Gavriel Kay was one where there were no villains, and I actually liked the bad guy, as twisted as his decisions sometimes were.
"Princess Mononoke" is a manga cartoon that didn't have any villains either. Good for a cartoon.
You can find this stuff in interesting places.