When writing your novel, do you absolutely have to have a villain? Can the “bad guy” be society? Can it be the environment?
I went out of town a couple of weeks ago to go to a writing conference (had a wonderful time, saw many of my friends, made a number of new ones) and have been in recovery since then. Conferences are great fun, but they’re exhausting.
Nicole posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:
I just finished reading your e-zine article about villains. Thanks. Sort of. I don’t have a ‘person’ who is a villain in my book, I’ve just called ‘society’ my antagonist. I’m confused about whether I ‘need’ a person to thwart my MC, or…well, maybe I’ve missed the boat (it’s ok, only a first draft is done…loads of opportunity for writing in stuff during the editing process!). I have loads of conflict and disaster and whatnot (I DO pay attention to what you tell us!), but no ‘villain’. Do I need to make up someone in particular who causes pain? Thanks!
Randy sez: The short answer is no. You don’t have to have a villain to make a novel work. It’s perfectly OK to have society be the cause of all your lead character’s ills. It’s perfectly OK to have the environment be the “villain.” It’s OK to have your protagonist be his own worst enemy.
Having said that, let me suggest that evil becomes more Evil when it’s personalized.
It’s one thing for Katniss Everdeen to be battling the Evil System in THE HUNGER GAMES. But the heat goes up a notch when the Evil System crystallizes in the person of President Snow.
THE LORD OF THE RINGS would be a powerful story of the battle between good and evil if all the bad guys were orcs, wargs, trolls, balrogs, and dark-hearted men. But by personalizing Evil in the form of Sauron, J.R.R. Tolkien gave us a more intelligent and dangerous foe.
Likewise, the Death Eaters in the Harry Potter series are vile enough, but they are stronger Death Eaters because Lord Voldemort stands behind them. Destroying Voldemort then becomes the tangible goal that symbolizes the victory over all Death Eaters.
So Nicole, you don’t have to have a villain if you don’t want to. But your readers may find your story more powerful if you find a way to bring your evil society to a sharp point, in the form of one person who symbolizes all that’s wrong with your society.
If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.
I would add to that Stephen King’s comment (Memoires of the Craft) that it’s far more scary when the villain is someone you say, “Oh my goodness — that’s my neighbor!” So, in Harry Potter, for example, you have the big evil characters like Voldemort, but you also have him represented in the school by Malfoy. In King’s stuff, you often have a big-hairy-crazy Evil, but also Evil’s henchmen who appear normal in some respects, but are on Evil’s side.
I agree with Kathy. Evil that is close to home and makes us question the validity of our morality is effective.
Nicole, I can relate to your question because I was a little worried about the same thing. I remember reading on Randy’s site the importance of having an antagonist, or having a strong conflicting force, and I wondered if a somewhat oppressive “society” counted.
In the project I’m working on, society is the initial oppositional force in the protagonist’s eyes, but much later he finds that evil to be manifested in another character who is much like him. As a result, he finds himself up against an evil that–while being obviously damaging and oppressive–is also present to some extent in his friends, his society, and himself.
But yes, evil has the strongest impact when it is attached to another relatable character. What is more scary than someone (or something) that knows you? Fight Club changed from a potentially cheesy action film to a psychological suspense thriller when Edward Norton’s character began to realize that Brad Pitt’s character was always a step ahead of his attempts to sabatoge their plans for terrorism.
I agree with Randy when he says that your novel would benefit from containing an antagonist. While you can and should experiment with different forms of evil, nothing beats a living breathing conflicting single entity.
Most forces have human faces. If society is your enemy, who is that creates trouble? Is it the laws? Then you have the law enforcers. Is it culture? Then you have the people who press that.
If it’s a storm you have looters, panicky people (they might not be evil, but they certainly can make things worse), the idiots who stay even though they had warning. All depending on your story.
To have a human/humanoid face on your antagonist helps create conflict too. Because then you have similarities and differences between your protagonist and antagonist. And one person against society makes it pretty hard to win for the protagonist.
The novel I’m working on I first had my antagonist as a rebellion that needed to be stopped. I had one protagonist. OK, so one person against a big group of people all over the country. For some reason I couldn’t come up with ideas or conflict until someone pointed out that it’d be easier if I had one rebel against my protagonist and not all. That flipped the switch and coming up with ideas and conflicts are much easier.
Don’t forget that some kinds of stories can have an antagonist who isn’t necessarily an evil villain, like in romance. Unless the ex-mother-in-law is involved. In Romance, the Hero or Heroine often serve as each others’ antagonists. In a story that isn’t based on a showdown between good and evil, or in which good guys defeat the bad guys and explode perfectly good helicopters, the antagonist may be simply the person who stands in the way of the main character’s goal. What sez you, Randy?
Not all novels have a villain, of course. These stories have conflict and tension but not a villain. Novels where a natural disaster is the key ingredient are an example. Or it can be a character’s wrong decision: she’s not a bad person, she’s just mistaken about the big issue. Or it may be a singular personality flaw in an otherwise normal character.
A famous example is Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. Count Vronsky and Anna, the sympathetic lovers, aren’t villains. Neither is Anna’s husband, Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin, who is spiritless and stuffy but not evil. The story’s conflict arises from Vronsky and Anna’s own choices and their society’s pressures.
Another example: Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. There’s no villain. The Bluecoat who comes to Tara and tries to force himself on Scarlett is a bad guy—and gets gut shot for his trouble–but he’s a bit player, come and gone. Same with the carpetbagger who raises taxes on Tara. The conflict comes from Scarlett’s willfulness.
But most stories feature a villain The reason: villains often provide the conflict that is essential to a novel. The protagonist struggles against the villain.
I agree with you. It was interesting to read this because in my novel (a romance novel) it doesn’t have a clear-cut evil person trying to “steal” the main character’s love interest. On the other hand, he DOES have a group of friends who, of course, care about each other, but they create conflict THEMSELVES – the main character’s best friend is jealous and sometimes irritating, he gets beat up by his brother-in-law, he isn’t really that good at communicating with his love interest at first, his love interest herself is a little clingy and overprotective (not just to him, but to everyone)…it’s like that. He doesn’t need a villain, because friends and lovers are all he can take. Trust me…there’s plenty of conflict!
In my fantasy novel, the heroine, Akeela, never meets her enemy, Tzmet. Akeela is aware of Tzmet, but they never meet face to face. I know that sounds strange, but curiously enough, it works. There’s also Tzmet’s father, the dark lord, and Akeela faces him only at the end. I suppose it’s similar to TLOTR in that Frodo never faces Sauron, but instead has to deal with other antagonists (like Gollum) and even himself.
It comes down to this: what does the story require? Only you can determine that.
Of course you don’t need a physical villain, but at least a conceptual conflict that embodies the role of the villain.
I’m writing a story where the “villain” is society’s acceptance of torture-as-a-rite-of-passage. There’s the hero, and a movement of like-minded people (their existence is touched upon, but the hero doesn’t interact with any of them) who oppose this, versus…I guess the people who push for that rite and the people who blindly follow tradition. The best “ending” I can think of is an epilogue showing that the rite is no longer performed.
My editor suggested option B would have higher stakes: embodying in a villain for the heroes to defeat, and I came up with a guy who’s part of a conspiratorial group who wants to use a spell to force everyone in the world to go through the rite, but I’m not sure how he’d be defeated (the hero is aware that someone like him could exist, but they never meet).