One of the most fascinating character in fiction is the cunning villain.
He is unique for a number of reasons that will be covered in this article, but with the popularity makes one wonder. Is it even possible to develop a formula for writing a character like this, no matter the medium? How does a person write a cunning villain?
If you want to know how to write a story, how to be productive in your story writing, and how to be consistent, then it will assist you in putting all of these into action.
After some snooping around, I’ve distilled it into this simple phrase.
To write a cunning villain, you must write a villain with hidden intentions to the heroes, which only become obvious only after the villain has manipulated the heroes to help him further his ends.
This may seem overly simplistic, but it is a technique that is far more valuable than you could understand.
First of all, it naturally portrays the qualities that make a cunning villain, while also showing the villains intelligence, and power. Finally, it gives the villain an aura of invincibility. This can be a problem for when it comes time to defeat the villain. We will show all that here.
Let’s get right into:
What Makes a Villain Cunning?
What makes a villain cunning is that ability to control the main character’s actions so that they further the villains aims, and they can control other characters in such a way that the villain gains.
The words most used to describe a cunning villain are:
- Savage
- Cruel
- Clever
- Ahead
- Cruel
What all these words have in common is they focus on the consequences of the villain.
The focus on how the villain always seems to be a step ahead of the their characters, and the heroes only arrive as the villain has already dashed of with the treasure, waving them off on his helicopter. But what really causes these consequences?
Control.
A cunning villain’s intelligence is shown through how he controls all the other characters in the story.
This shows their resourcefulness. It shows their patience. I mean, think about it. This means the villain spent many nights scrawling through their nemesis’ Facebook posts to understand them.
The point is, the villain knows stuff, and uses the stuff he knows to make the heroes do as he wishes, so he can gain.
The villain gains this control through controlling the flow of information the hero gets. Whether through direct information, leaving false clues, or spies, the villain always tells the hero what she wants them to know.
Now, how do you write such a character? How do you write a character with control?
How to Write a Cunning Villain?
1. Write a Character With Justified Ambitions
You need to write a character who would be capable of being cunning.
Now, the more obvious take here is that your character needs to be smart.
That will work. To have a character that has a high IQ and stuff. But if you don’t know me than allow me to introduce myself. Hi, I am fond-of-story-tropes-that-are-given-a-unique-twist, and who might you by?
Right, my precious student. So, let me tell you 2 things you can do to make your character cunning.
First
The first is that when I say make a character capable of cunning, I do not mean in general IQ ability.
I mean in terms of character goals. If you have not read my how to write a character article, I will summarize. In essence, your character is an extension of certain ideas, and their design, personality, and physical, are a representation of those ideas.
So, you character is composed of the themes, and the internal conflicts they face.
You cunning villain needs to be a character whose central conflict requires them to be cunning. Maybe they are physical weak, and must survive in the world (see? The idea of ‘What would happen if a physically weak person had to live in a world of able-bodied people’ made manifest).
Or maybe they are the lowest in the society where bloodlines are important, so they need to use their brains to catch up to the other characters born to wealth or high societies.
(The idea here is ‘how would a peasant take part in the affairs of the noble in a strictly stratified society’. So the character is born).
Then, you can make your character unique by giving them an uncommon sense of intelligence.
Example
A real life example would be Al Capone. Not bookish smart, but viciously intelligent in the crime world. The point is that a character who is an A student, and who is very obviously intelligent is a bit predictable.
Imagine instead we meet a character who is dressed not in a suit but in a safari uniform with those shorts, and he is coming up against our suited heroes. Then, this character somehow outwits our characters at every turn. The element of surprise here emphasis the cunning in the character an makes it seem new.
So how to do this unique intelligence?
Well, just avoid stereotypical intelligence signifiers.
From physical design. Instead of tall, and lean, maybe a pudgy, short character. Or tall, muscly type, to accent. A rougher lower class kind of accent, or maybe even a harsh unattractive foreign accent, to choices of entertainment for the character.
Instead of reading, maybe he likes partying all night, and sleeping with girls. Or he prefers to go out hunting, and seems rather careless, and even to their living station. Perhaps instead of a multi-layer single building maybe they live in a common rented apartment, in spite of having the money for a private apartment.
2. Write a Goal Worth Wanting For This Villain
To write a cunning villain, you must write goals that are worthy of the character.
So, now you’ve given your idea a physical manifestation (you made your character).
What follows next is fairly simple if you’ve finished that stage. You will give this manifestation of yours the exact type of goals that the manifestation would be interested in.
Example
For example, if your character was physically weak, then they’ve only ever received pity, contempt, or out right bullying. So, they will want respect, fear, and admiration. If your character was on the lowest rungs of society, they will want to have power, and wealth. They will want holdings.
Then, you know what the character wants. If you followed the how to write a character article, you will have known to give your character flaws, and real/fake problems.
A flaw in their perception of the world that will be necessary for their later defeat, but it also is why they are villains. Maybe the character’s experience makes them believe everyone is against them and the best way is to fight alone, and trust no one.
Or maybe their experience taught them the importance of having people around them, but they only think these people will be loyal to him if he has money or power. So using abiding to the flaw you gave the character, make them have their goal.
Then, give their goal a physical manifestation.
If it is admiration he wants, maybe the character wants a certain position. King or something. If it is power, and wealthy, maybe they wish to discover the treasure before the heroes do. Whatever it is, make sure that it is the same thing that your hero wants.
3. Hide the Villain’s Intentions
In order to write a cunning villain, you must make sure you hide your villains intentions, and the motivation behind their actions.
Now that you’ve done the warm ups, we finally get to what truly makes a cunning villain.
You will need to hide the villains intentions, and their motivation. There are 3 ways of doing this: 1 hiding the villains backstory, 2 hiding the villian’s true personality, and 3 misdirecting what they want.
Hiding the Villain’s True Backstory
Hiding the villain’s true backstory is the easiest and the most organic.
We never know where the character’s come from when we first meet them. So you can do the same here. Just write your character, and have them go about their lives, but do not show us their background. The best example of this is with Gus Fring.
We do not know where he comes from, his backstory, and as a result, we do not know what he is doing. It is not until we learn his backstory that his actions begin adding up, and we see how he really is similar to Walter.
Hiding the character’s true personality
The second method is to hide the character’s true personality.
This one is harder to do than in the first one, but it happens a lot. It even happened in that one Toy Story movie with Lotso. Basically in this technique, you show us the character as being a certain personality type, usually smiley, and extroverted, or playful in someway.
Then, every now and then, they stop smiling, and we see the true face underneath the mask. But only for a moment, then she is smiling again. This extremely unsettling, yes. But additionally, it shows that the character is willing, and capable of hiding their very personality.
One can only imagine what else they are capable of hiding.
Misdirection
Finally, the misdirection, my personal favorite.
With this technique, we may learn the character’s backstory. We learn the character’s true personality. We even go as learning the character’s motives. The trick of course is that no, we do not learn the character’s motives.
This one is the most complex of the three, as you need to align the character’s backstory, their personality, and their fake goals so that it seems like the character genuinely wants what they want. So that it looks like it makes sense.
But in reality, there is a truer goal that the villain wants. Consequentially, this one tends to be the most satisfying. There is nothing that readers like more than realizing that the story is a lot smarter than them.
Important reminder: The villain hides what he hides for a reason. That reason is control. They do not care if the hero judges them by learning their backstory, their personality, or their goals. They only care that the hero will be able to predict their next move, and stop them.
Make sure that your villain hides information that clearly assists them in getting closer to their goals, rather than random information.
Even better, make sure the villain shows information that will allow them to get closer to their goals. The most obvious example of this is when the villain can’t access a place so they tell the hero they want what’s in there.
The hero enters the place, believing he is stopping the villain, only to find out she made him open the place for her. Now, she is fleeing with the treasure.
So that’s the lesson here. Control.
4. Create Problems that Need That Cure
The next step in making a cunning villain is that you need to hint at the connection between the villain’s problems, and their cures.
Some writers can make it as far as this part in their writing.
But they may come across the problem of unbelievability. Basically if your villain’s hidden goal is to well hidden, the moment the villain comes out and attains their goal, it may look like the author is just trying to save their villain.
This is not what you want, and a simple way of doing this is by connecting the villain with their primary goal.
This can be done a number of ways.
Maybe a very subtle look at the prize from the villain. Or maybe the villain lists their main objective amongst a list of things. For example, the villain could be talking with the hero, and he jokingly mentions the treasure.
But this should only be done once, so it may seem like a genuinely one of thing.
The best way though is to connect the villain to the treasure through the stories context.
Maybe by showing a character who is going through the same problem as the villain, and he overtly wants what the villain pretends to not be interested in.
Example
For example, say your villain is poor, and wished to be wealthy, and famous.
To get this wealth, they need to get their hand on the lottery ticket our hero’s grandmother has, but only the hero knows where the grandmother left it. So the villain pretends that what they really want is to attain some plot of land somewhere, for religious reasons.
Then, you can have another character who overtly tries to go get the ticket and mention how this character actually comes from the same poor city as our villain.
This connection will allow the more analytical to realize that the villain, who has been pretending to be worried about religious things thus far, probably has similar ambitions. If you’ve done the hidden part well, this will be a genuine mystery, allowing for a more pleasing reading for them.
5. Give Your Villain Literary Weight
Another thing you must give your cunning villain is a weight in the story that affects all the people in the story.
Picture a bed for a moment.
Imagine there are objects on the bed, things like pillows, books, bottles, and the likes. Now, imagine gently placing a boulder on the bed. The weight of the boulder will make it sink into the bed such that it will create an indent so steep that the other objects will roll down to the boulder.
This needs to be your cunning villain.
Just like all the other objects on the bed, there are other characters in your story.
But you villain should be such a weight on the story (bed), that it causes ramifications (an indent) that makes all the other characters roll around the villain. This can be done through tying every epic moment that affects all the character’s in the story to the main villain.
Example
For example, say you have 3 characters. 1 wants to gain an army so they go to the party to negotiate with the captain. 1 wants to steal so they travel to the party with all these high rank officials.
And 1 is trying to break free out of their marriage, so they go to the party to find another partner. You cunning villain needs to be the one who set up that party.
6. Give Them the Stage
Then the next stage to make your cunning character is to give them the stage.
So far we have been speaking about the cunning character working in the shadows.
But of course, this must not last forever. After the literary weight of your villain is experienced by the other characters, it becomes a bit difficult for them to work in complete secrecy. This of course means it because difficult for them to hide their hand from the viewers, not the characters within the story.
Within the story, it could be that the other characters (outside of the main characters we are following), never learn about the masterminding of our villain. But the character’s in the story absolutely must.
You do this by having the main character’s lose.
They need to fail to reach their goal. or perhaps reach their goal, but they need to find out that all along their efforts furthered the main villains plans. This is easy to write if you have already created the character’s personality, their goals, and you’ve been trying to hide them.
Now, you give the villain the stage so that they can finally reveal their try intentions, and lusts. Or true personality. Maybe even true backstory.
The point is, the hero needs to learn that the efforts they’ve made to reach their goals have only assisted the villain, and they should learn how the villain manipulated them.
7. Demonstrate The Villain’s Power
Then, to make your cunning villain, you will need to show the amount of power they have within the world.
After having shown just what our hero is capable of, it will be easier for you to show the amount of power that the villain has. Remember, our villain needs to appear untouchable, and this is the best place to show them as such.
When the hero has learned the true intentions of the villain, they will attempt to stop the villain. But here, you will have the hero fail.
Show how the villain’s forward thinking was so deep, that it seems even foolish for the hero to attempt to defeat the villain. This will make your villain even more terrifying.
8. Give Your Villain A Climactic Fall
Then, you need to give your villain a fitting fall defeat.
Here, I am not necessarily referring to a punishment that makes up for the villain’s crimes throughout the story. I am instead referring to a defeat that maintains the villains reputation.
The cunning villain’s power stems from their intelligence.
If you have the villain defeated through being outwitted, it can potentially harm the villain’s prestige. Imagine a character whose power comes from brute force. This character defeated everyone placed before him.
Now, imagine in the end they are defeated by a middle strengthened person in an arm wrestling match. That will make all the previous characters who were defeated seem weak, and the villain will also seem weak. Above all, the story will seem inconsistent.
Instead, imagine the brute character is defeated through the combined force of all the characters, plus needing a building dropped on them. Then, they still walk out, and fall last. This is epic.
The same must be true for the intelligent character.
There needs to be the combined effort of a number of intelligent characters, who use what they learned about the main villain’s private history which he tried to hide to try to outwit him. But the villain is smart, and he manages to keep up with them.
Use the character’s hidden flaws, and emotional reactivity to finally defeat them. That’s why the most cunning character’s meeting their long lost family member, who knew their backstory.
9. Give You Villain A Fitting Legacy
“PICTURE 10”
Finally, in order to make your cunning villain legendary,, you need to give them a legacy.
Whether it be a physical legacy such as statues, or craters, or destroyed portions of the city.
Perhaps scars on our lead characters. You could even go on the psychological level, where the very mention of the character’s name makes people uncomfortable. Maybe some people still do not believe he was truly defeated, and it could be another of his elaborate plans.
Whatever it is, there needs to be some lasting impact of the villain on the world, and on the characters, showing just how much of a menace he had been. These all put together will allow you to be that much closer to mastering mastery.