COURSE DETAILS:

HOW TO WRITE VILLAINS

If your villain, antagonist, or bad guy of any species or gender is weak, unconvincing, or too easily beaten, you'll lose your reader.

Good fiction requires characters who overcome conflicts -- but not easily. Good heros of any gender have to start by being smaller and weaker than the obstacles they face. And that includes the enemies they face.

LESSON ONE: Understanding Evil and Villainy:

This seems like it ought to be pretty simple. Good guys do good things, bad guys do bad things, and villains do evil things.

But until you have a clear working definition for evil, and don't just "know it when you see it" but are able to point out exactly why an action is evil, rather than good or bad...

And can point out WHY someone is a villain, rather than a bad guy or even merely an antagonist...

You can't write villains.

In this lesson:

Includes:

• Downloadable PDF Lesson
• Conflict chart to determine the kind of antagonist your story needs
• Worksheets and Practice
• Private members-only student forum for discussions, questions and answers, demos and feedback.

 

LESSON 2: Creating Good, Bad, and Evil Characters

This week, you're going to do work with the differences between what people think, what they say, and what they do, and how you can USE these in fiction to show the reader what you want him to see while saving some surprises for later -- WITHOUT cheating him.

You'll be doing a lot of writing -- and seeing a lot of progress in your quest to get better villains into your fiction.

In this lesson:

LESSON 3: Sympathy, Empathy, and Villainy

This week, we're delving into sympathy and empathy, how to apply each to your villains (and why you might want to avoid writing villains empathetically), the three-step process for creating a sympathetic villain, the dangers when creating empathetic villains (the big one being a special-case appearance of that writing nightmare, You can't know what you don't know), and a trip through How to Break Your Sympathetic Villain and Make Your Reader Hate You, Too. 

You don't want to go there.

Onward...  

In this lesson, you will: 

• Create three sympathetic villains -- a Small Villain, a Big Villain, and a Monster. Post a poll for each to determine Sympathetic or Not Sympathetic
  
  
• Create at least ONE, and up to three, empathetic villains. Post a poll to determine Sympathetic or Not Sympathetic. 
  
  
• Select a Most Memorable Hero and a Most Memorable Villain, and determine why they hold these roles for you

Includes:

• Downloadable PDF Lesson
• Worksheets and Practice
• Private members-only student forum for discussions, questions and answers, polls, demos and feedback.

LESSON 4: Villain Roles in Fiction

This week we're going to look at all parts of the story villains can inhabit, and the viewpoints they can use to inhabit them.

We'll work on villains voices, and on moving your villain smoothly from backstory to foreground as you get deeper into the work -- and we'll cover how to move a main villain from deep backstory to main story over the course of a series. 

You'll be working with third person past and present and first person past and present, and learning when and WHY you use each of these voices -- and danger areas to avoid. 

And you'll be doing a lot of writing.

In this lesson you'll learn:

• The Evil as Whisper, Rumor, Ghost technique
• The Shape as Shadow in the Corner, as Footprint in the Snow technique
• The Knocker at Your Door with Thoughts Unknown techinque
• The Horror in Your Bed with Thoughts Whispering in Your Ear technique
• The Monster You Were Yesterday technique
• The Nightmare You Are Now technique
• How to advance your villain through these techniques over one book or the course of a series

Includes:

• Downloadable PDF Lesson
• Worksheets and Practice
• Private members-only student forum for discussions, questions and answers, polls, demos and feedback.

 

LESSON 5: Representing Evil: Science Villains & Art Villains

In this lesson, you'll be working on creating representations of evil that fit the world you've built. Evil in a magical world filled with elves and dragons looks very different than evil in a world filled with Artificial Intelligences and run by a Central Computer.

And there's a big difference between Evil as Art and Evil as Science.

So this week you'll be learning to how to recognize and define Science Villains and Art Villains, and then how to create both types, along with using techniques to shape your worlds to fit them.

In this lesson:

• You'll learn what Science-Flavored Villainy is
  
  
• You'll learn what Art-Flavored Villainy is
  
  
• You'll discover how to create both Science- and Art-Flavored villains, as well as...
  
  
• When to use each
  
  
• And what each kind of villainy can bring to your story

 

Lesson 6: Controlling Characters and Story

Villains will get away from you if you're not careful.

It's in their nature to take over things, to wreck things, to expand on their self-proclaimed mandate until their ever-expanding bag of supervillain tricks destroys your story.

So this week, we're going work through the ways that you can put your villain on a leash -- and still let him or her be the villain you need to keep your story tight and your hero's action meaningful.

THIS week, you'll be building a keeper villain -- one whose stories you genuinely want to write. You can pull him, her, or it from previous weeks and previous exercises, or you can start fresh.

But step up your own personal stakes by committing to writing at least one story (even a short story will count) with this villain. 

In this lesson you will:

WEEK SEVEN: The Come-Back Villain: When Readers are Reading Your Story for Your Bad Guy

Generally, you're hoping that your readers will love your heroes enough to want to follow them with you to the ends of the earth (or whatever place you're writing).

Sometimes, however, a writer discovers that while readers might like the heroes, they LOVE the villain.

If you discover this about your own work, first you want to understand why your readers love this character.

Second, you want it to be a reaction you both planned and built toward.

And then third, you want to make sure you don't break the character they love.

So this lesson is about getting all of that -- Understanding, Planning and Building, and Maintaining -- the Villain Readers Love to Hate, Love to Fear, or Love to Love.

In this lesson, you'll build the working pieces for...

Includes:

• Downloadable PDF Lesson
• Worksheets and Practice
• Private members-only student forum for discussions, questions and answers, demos and feedback

WEEK EIGHT: Dealing With Fallout from Writing Evil

There are three kinds of fallout you CAN get from writing real, honest-to-God evil:

• Fallout from your own mind, both conscious and subconscious (or You and Muse) 
• Fallout from family members, True Fans and new or casual readers who generally like you
• Fallout from folks who really DON'T like you

I'm going to cover these in order of importance, from MOST important to LEAST important. In other words, You, then Your allies, and finally Your enemies. This is a tough, important, and emotional lesson, and it will allow you to both write better villains and protect the joy and happiness and feelings of accomplishment you get from writing your fiction.

In this lesson:

Includes:

• Downloadable PDF Lesson
• Worksheets and Practice
• Private members-only student forum for discussions, questions and answers, demos and feedback

To Sum Up...

You get:

• Eight comprehensive PDF lessons. 
• Printable PDF worksheets.
• Diagrams and charts as needed.
• Private Class Forum for lesson work, help, and practice.
• Permanent in-version access, and all in-version upgrades free.

Holly Lisle

Novelist, Writing Course Creator