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complexity is the antidote to camp
Your villain reads like a brochure. Threat assessment, vague trauma, monologue. Skip it.
A real antagonist has an actual case, one a reasonable person could partly nod at, and that's what makes them frightening. We walk through the Maven antagonist build, the three sentences you should be able to give your villain to feel humanized (without sympathizing), and the trap that turns most villains into wallpaper. The trap, briefly, is that writers want their villains to be unambiguously bad so the protagonist seems unambiguously good. Real life isn't that easy and neither is real fiction. We're going to give your antagonist a case, then we're going to refute it. That's what makes a villain stick.
The Maven antagonist build
| Component | What it adds |
|---|---|
| The Case | A real grievance the reader can partly understand |
| The Wound | A specific moment that justifies (to them) their methods |
| The Pride | The trait they refuse to soften, even when offered |
| The Doorway | A moment the protagonist offered them out and they refused |
| The Cost | What they've given up to maintain their position |
The three-sentence villain humanization
- Sentence 1: The thing they want that any reasonable person would also want.
- Sentence 2: The thing they did to get it that no reasonable person would do.
- Sentence 3: The doorway they refused that would have saved them.
A villain with no case is wallpaper. A villain with a case the reader can partly nod at is the kind that keeps the lights on later.
— L.A. Walton, The Book Maven
From the Maven Catalog
- Master Course — Writing the Antagonist
- eBook — Build a Better Villain
- Toolkit — Antagonist Workbook
- Planner — Antagonist Depth Planner
Write the three sentences. Build the case. Refute the case. The villain becomes the kind that lingers. Wallpaper falls off the wall. Real antagonists never quite leave.