How to make the reader root for the villains?

[Spectrum]

Hello.

I am writing a series in a very dark epic fantasy setting, bordering on horror. I have lots of focus on the villain (sometimes anti-villain) characters, with the twist that as often as not (or more), evil actually wins.

Now, it's somewhat misleading to say that "evil wins", since most of the time my story is not so much a conflict between good and evil as it is a conflict between various shades of black and gray, with more-or-less good forces caught in the middle or trying to influence the conflict.

The thing is, I want the reader to root for the villains and wish for their diabolical schemes to succeed. But how do I do this?

Here are some of my thoughts on the matter.

I've found that this is actually easier in bright fantasy than dark. Because a bright story tends to not show the consequences of evil in a way that one can relate to. I mean, it's easy to root for someone like Lord Zedd from Power Rangers, because he never really hurts anyone, and therefore comes out looking evil in a cool way, rather than evil in a petty and mean way. In contrast, darker stories tend to show the tragic fates of regular people in much more excruciating detail, thus making the reader sympathize with the victims and acknowledge that evil is bad (m'kay?).

So, one approach would be to be very conscious of how I portray the consequences of evil and what details I show. I mean, a Dark Lord who kills a single wet-eyed orphan is despicable, whereas a Dark Lord who nukes an entire Throwaway Country is cool.

Another method is by giving the villains plenty of screen time, since having the story told from your point of view automatically makes you more likable. I tend to find in many books that whenever I am reading a chapter that shows the villains, I find myself cheering on them. (The scenes with the Chosen in Wheel of Time are an obvious example.) I need to be careful with this, however, because seeing too much through the eyes of the powerful characters will detract from the mystery and the horrific feel, and may even cause Spikeification and Villain Decay.

Understand that I want the reader to like my villains not for being regular human characters whom they can relate to, with everyday weaknesses aplenty. No, I want the reader to love them for being badass Magnificent Bastards, Affably Evil and sometimes Noble Demons or Worthy Opponents. Some of my characters have a dark and tragic back story, but this must not degenerate into Wangst and Spikeification. Others are truly and thoroughly evil - by choice or by nature - and cool for that reason.

Not all my villains are likable, though. There are bad guys who are low, mean and petty and meant to be hated until their grisly end. But these are mostly little guys. The masterminds and Evil Overlords are meant to be admired.

Another trick is to make the "good guys" thoroughly unlikable, by letting them work for an allegedly good goal in the long run, while being jerks in their everyday relations with others. A very successful example of this is, again Wheel of Time. It's no doubt unintentional, but most of the good guy characters are so unlikable that I find myself badly wanting the Great Lord of the Dark to win. (All the women are horrible bitches and most of the men are wusses with dumb principles.) Now, obviously I don't want the reader to hate all the good protagonists, but still, it's a useful tool that can be used in some places.

In conclusion, I want to create a truly dark and evil story, but I don't want to leave the reader feeling depressed afterwards. Rather, I want to leave a feeling of: "Wow, that was refreshing and different. And the bad guy kicked butt!"

Does anyone have more suggestions? Thanks in advance.

PS: Yes, I like the TV Tropes Wiki.

 

[The Ace]

Evil is decided by the winners;

The RAF dragged our glorious Reich into a prolonged and ultimately unsuccessful war, thanks to its actions in 1940.

The United States' interference in Asia gave us no option other than to attack Pearl Harbour.

Both of the above statements are perfectly true, given the facts, just not from History's accepted viewpoint.

Rooting for evil characters is a problem because, in both history and literature, the evil side is the one that lost.

 

[chopper]

hmm.

are evil characters really, truly despicably evil, or just amazingly, selfishly self-centred? even the chosen in WOT seemed a lot more selfish and generally amoral than truly evil. warped, perhaps. do you want to get into a warped character's mind?

more questions than answers. i find i'm liking abercrombie's First Law books, where so far there seems to be less evil than absolute amorality, and i find myself rooting for characters i know i wouldn't normally want to read about.

s

 

[Urien]

I think very often the "evil" guy does not think he is evil. His/her actions are entirely justifiable to himself. They are not always out for domination and power just for the sake of it.

 

[Urlik]

the most successful way I've seen this done is in the Wild Card books (ed. George R. R. Martin)

the way it is achieved is by writing chapters from each character's viewpoint, sketching out their motives and plans, but not placing them in any direct confrontation with any other characters untill the stage has been set and the reader has made their decision about whether to like them before the conflicts start, based on the character.

the TV series Heros did something similar with all the confusion about which "side" all the characters are on and, as it progresses, finding out that the sides are subject to change as circumstances dictate.

 

[Aes]

To pull something like this off, you'll likely have to give up the concept of a main character, much like in the example mentioned by Urlik regarding Heroes. In most cases, people find themselves siding with the main character once he/she becomes established. I hate to use anime as an example, but if anyone's seen Death Note, the main character is all kinds of evil, but I still found myself siding with him over those who were against him.

You're in for quite the challenge, but if you can pull it off, more power to you.

 

[Spectrum]

hmm.

are evil characters really, truly despicably evil, or just amazingly, selfishly self-centred? even the chosen in WOT seemed a lot more selfish and generally amoral than truly evil. warped, perhaps. do you want to get into a warped character's mind?

Good question. I would say that I have examples of both. Let me try to give a run-down of a few of my major characters:

Ramiel

Ramiel is a Resphan, a race of human-looking immortals who might be considered angels or dark angels. His primary defining characteristic is ambition - some would say megalomania. He sees himself as a being of unparallelled worth and status and seeks ever to rise above his station. His desire is to rule the world and indulge in all pleasures for eternity. Ultimately, he aims to usurp his creators and assume his rightful role as the pinnacle of all creation.

He is not senselessly cruel nor sadistic, but he will sacrifice any number of innocents to fulfill his desire. He is also driven, at times, by hatred, and exacts terrible vengeance on those he deems to have wronged him.

Daggerrain

Daggerrain is a Banelord. The Banes are alien beings from another plane of existence. They are humanoid in form, but with black skin, inhuman hands and feet, and faces that are completely blank and smooth.

Daggerrain and his people have invaded the world of Mith because their race was in decline on their homeworld. They mean to conquer Mith and then use its inherent life-giving energy to empower their race, allowing them to evolve further on their road to "perfection". A prerequisite for this is the genocide of all native Mithians, save those that can serve as useful slaves and cattle.

Daggerrain is an alien being, so beyond his overall goal, his motivations are inhuman and incomprehensible. He is cold, emotionless, calculating and thoroughly... alien.

"Daggerrain" is not his true name, but was invented by the mortal mage that summoned him to Mith thousands of years ago. Among themselves, the Banes communicate by alien means that cannot be translated into spoken tongues.

Secherdamon

Secherdamon is an ancient Dragon, twenty thousand years old or more. The Dragons are native Mithians and view the Banes and Resphain as alien menaces that must be destroyed. His race has been declining since the great wars against the Banes those many thousand years ago. Secherdamon sees himself as a saviour to his people, having inherited this mantle from the ancient Draconic gods.

He means to eradicate the Banes, Resphain and all other invaders and their spawn and servants and enthrone himself as the rightful ruler of Mith. He is willing to commit genocide on even his own people, if they are unwilling to accept his rulership.

To Secherdamon, only the glory of the Draconic race matters. All humanoids are but pawns and slaves, their lives inconsequential.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

If you make readers feel sorry for a character at the beginning, it usually takes a series of genuinely heinous acts before they begin to withhold that sympathy.

The Gormenghast books by Mervyn Peake provide a very good example. When you first meet Steerpike (who falls somewhere between anti-hero and villain) he is so utterly downtrodden, sympathy is established early, and takes a long time to erode. In fact, for some readers it holds until the end.

Another example is Thackeray's Barry Lyndon. The main character has such miserable luck at the beginning, it's only when he's in more prosperous circumstances that his actions begin to appear mean and despicable.

 

[chopper]

Good question. I would say that I have examples of both. Let me try to give a run-down of a few of my major characters:

ok, they've all got rational motives - either ambition or survival. not neccassarily evil, as such.

strikes me you want people to empathise with characters who have strong, rational motives, yet they know they shouldn't like them and feel a bit guilty about it....

you just don't call them "villains"!

 

[Urien]

'E's a villain guv'nor."

Sorry seen a few reruns of the Sweeney recently.

 

[Spectrum]

ok, they've all got rational motives - either ambition or survival. not neccassarily evil, as such.

strikes me you want people to empathise with characters who have strong, rational motives, yet they know they shouldn't like them and feel a bit guilty about it....

you just don't call them "villains"!

Sure I do. My characters are villains, no doubt about it. And they don't feel guilty about what they do. Daggerrain and Secherdamon most certainly not. Ramiel might to some extent, since he is the only one of these three who undergoes any significant character development during the story. This is due to his having lost his memory (and with it, his power) and lived as a mortal human for a time.

But when he comes back, he's still evil.

To pull something like this off, you'll likely have to give up the concept of a main character, much like in the example mentioned by Urlik regarding Heroes. In most cases, people find themselves siding with the main character once he/she becomes established. I hate to use anime as an example, but if anyone's seen Death Note, the main character is all kinds of evil, but I still found myself siding with him over those who were against him.

You're in for quite the challenge, but if you can pull it off, more power to you.

You're right. I don't have a single main character, but rather follow several plot threads and characters over the course of each book. The structure of my stories is similar to that of Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen, which is, by amazing coincidence, also one of my main influences.

Death Note is a kickass anime, BTW. (Although I've only seen the beginning. Waiting till it comes out on DVD.)

If you make readers feel sorry for a character at the beginning, it usually takes a series of genuinely heinous acts before they begin to withhold that sympathy.

The Gormenghast books by Mervyn Peake provide a very good example. When you first meet Steerpike (who falls somewhere between anti-hero and villain) he is so utterly downtrodden, sympathy is established early, and takes a long time to erode. In fact, for some readers it holds until the end.

Another example is Thackeray's Barry Lyndon. The main character has such miserable luck at the beginning, it's only when he's in more prosperous circumstances that his actions begin to appear mean and despicable.

No, see, that's exactly what I'm trying to steer clear of. I don't want the reader to feel sorry for my villains. That beats the purpose of them. I want him to admire them.

I've never cared for "realistic" characters, wusses that I'm supposed to "relate" to. I would much rather see larger-than-life badass characters - perhaps Übermenschen. And that is what I am going for in my own writing.

 

[Spectrum]

BTW, I thought I'd give a run-down of another character, this one less evil.

Ishnaruchaëfir

Ishnaruchaëfir is a Dragon, the brother of Secherdamon. He is the great anti-villain of the series, who will later become an anti-hero and one of the relatively good guys.

See, Mith is torn by a bloody war between two factions: The Cabal, led by the Banes, and the Sentinels of Mith, led by the Dragons. This war has been raging for thousands of years and has destroyed entire civilizations. Where Secherdamon, Ramiel and Daggerrain are all in the war to win it, Ishnaruchaëfir instead believes in maintaining status quo. The way he sees it, the wholesale genocide and tyranny that would result if one of the sides were to win would be a worse catastrophe than the war itself. He instead believes in containing the war, limiting it to the "underground" as much as possible.

Despite being more moral and idealistic than the others mentioned, Ishnaruchaëfir is still very brutal and cynical and will sacrifice innocents for his goal. Once, in the distant past, he slew his one true love because she could not accept his vision of the future. (I still need to adjust his feelings on this matter: The exact right amout of guilt, without having him slide into wangst.)

Ishnaruchaëfir is inspired by Anomander Rake from Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen. Not in terms of motivation (because we know next to nothing of Rake's motivation), but in the sense that I want him to inspire similar feelings in the reader.

 

[ctg]

How to make the readers root for the villains? Pretty much same way you make them feel for the heroes, it's not that much different. Nevertheless, you might want to look how Hannibal Lecter has been portrayed in written form, or perhaps you might want to research on how people have written other famous villains (real or fictious).

What strikes me with your characters is that they all are mega-powerful, but does that make them more evil, then a man with a knife and bad intentions?

 

[Hilarious Joke]

Can I just say it all sounds pretty interesting, Spectrum.

 

[Lith]

No spoilers on Death Note! I'm not that far into it!

If you want readers to sympathize with their diabolical schemes, then you have to start, I think, with what you admire about their diabolical schemes. What are they hoping to accomplish? Are they tearing down a corrupt system? Constructing a new order?

Another thing is that if you take a character and play it light in the beginning, readers will feel more at ease with them, and their later atrocities will be more horrific, like the example Teresa provided (though I don't remember liking Steerpike at any point, but I watched the tv version, so perhaps it's different...). And because the reader has been betrayed, they will hate your characters even more.

Do you want your readers to actually sympathize with your villains, or be the type they love to hate?

Another thing you can do is introduce the character as very evil, and over time, start to examine how they got that way (Lost does this a lot). It's the same process as above, but presented in the opposite way.

And what about a character that does feel guilt, but still does evil anyway? There should be a sense of necessity about what they're doing, they feel they have no choice, whether because things get in the way of what they want, or because external forces limit their choices.

Take a look at Martin's treatement of the Kingslayer- I'll bet by book three, he's swung most of the audience around in his favor (if you don't want spoilers, skip this next bit!)- he does this by actually showing us a character that heretofore has only been mentioned in passing, but we actually start to see the character for who he is, with all his love of life and justifications for his actions, and have started losing sympathy for the people that hated him, through their actions. Also, he undergoes something of a redemption, incomplete though it is, so he sorta ceases to be a bad guy.

But you also can't make your readers love bad guys. There's a certain segment of the population whom those characters will never appeal to (but you probably aren't writing for that segment, anyway). But if the bad guys always win, what fun is that? It can get too depressing- why bother to tell the story? Unless of course you invert it, but then your bad guys are your good guys...

 

[Malloriel]

You could try asking "why is this character evil" of yourself. Is he evil because you just need evil, or is he he evil because of the perceptions of other people? I see a lot of stories where, and this is bright fantasy more often than any others, good is good because it's good, and evil is evil because it's not good and good needs evil to fight against. Oh, and there's some kind of balance cause good and evil can only exist as long as the other does, but good always wins. No greater reason than that. WoT, epic as it is, still has the Creator who is pure good, and the Dark One who is pure evil with no greater explanation than that it's what he is. No "how did he get here" business (perhaps he is the sentient sum of all of mankind's own evil thoughts given power by their beliefs, hmm?). He's evil, he must be stopped, and we're going to do it.

So if you can determine why your guy does what he does, and what EXACTLY makes him evil, you'll probably have an easier time of convincing people to root for him, because they won't see this random guy doing technically evil stuff. They see the why and how, and maybe they don't agree with his methods, but it's something that must be done, by golly.

 

[Malloriel]

The network is being fussy right now (not mine, Chronicle's), so I just lost the brilliant reply I had for you. It was essentially this: Ask yourself "why is he evil?" If you can answer that for yourself, then readers will find it easier to side with him. Is he evil because that's how people perceive him? Is he evil because of his actions? Or is he evil because of his reasonings?

So often, and it's more prevalent in bright fantasy than in anything else that I've seen, good is good because it's good, and evil is evil because it's not good. Even in WoT, epic as it is, the Creator is pure good, and the Dark One is pure evil (traditional colours even) with no greater purpose or motivation than he's evil. We don't get any details on the how or why of his evil-ality. He just is. Perhaps he's the sum of all of mankind's misdeeds and evil thoughts grown sentient and powerful because of man's own beliefs, hmm? Perfectly possible, and a little harder to hate the guy when you have no one to blame but your own race. And how do you defeat something like that anyway? Ooooo, twists and turns galore!

So give your readers something to understand about the guy. If they know why he's doing these traditionally horrible things, gruesome and vile and inhuman things, they'll be behind him. They may not agree with his methods, but they might find a place to say "well, it had to be done."

 

[Malloriel]

Post number three!!! I see now that my first attempt worked. Sorry for the repetition. ^_^;

 

[Hilarious Joke]

Interesting points Lith.

I'm reminded of the Pirate King Kennit in Robin Hobb's brilliant liveship trilogy. I constantly wavered between liking him and disliking him, but I did always admire him. Hobb did this by having Kennit do things that seem good, but are actually just part of his ultimate aim - for example, and maybe i should issue a spoiler warning here:




He captured slave ships and released the slaves - not to do a good thing, but so that he would have a navy comprising freed slaves. Add to this some complex relationships with his 'whore' and Wintrow, a young lad that reminds him of himself, and you have a character who is hard to judge, but impossible not to admire in his vision - even after he commits dastardly acts (one in particular involving Althea).

Just thought I'd throw my two cents into the mix.

 

[Hilarious Joke]

Also, I feel for you Malloriel for writing out that post twice! A most annoying thing to do! But it was a good post, both times!