On Writing: Villains [ Zuko l Joker l Watchmen l Vikings l Game of Thrones l Javert ]

hyssop URIs today's video is brought to you by the fabled and prophesied mysterion Legion over on patreon they helped me pick the topic and the villains that will be discussing if you like to support us link down below designing villains is fascinating and difficult so today we'll be taking an in-depth look at one element of designing them their motivation authors can have their valence motivated by almost anything greed love jealousy self-righteousness ambition power trauma revenge desperation or hatred of sand but whatever it is what's more difficult is weaving that motivation into the story in a compelling way I'll be using the terms hero and villain which have complicated literary meanings but for this video it'll be a simple way to describe the protagonists ik and antagonistic forces in the discussion we'll be breaking this down into five parts communicating the villains motivation connecting it to the hero's passive and active villain motives good go villains and save the world stories so how do you write the motivation to be compelling communicating the villains motivation to the reader is important but how the author does that is critical at its heart this comes down to the famous axiom show don't tell the whole villain monologue where they say and that's why I want to murder all the left-handed people because they killed my cat when I was six it isn't that interesting informal alchemist shall takas motivation is communicated to the reader when he murders his young daughter in a desperate alchemy experiment to protect his state funding this event communicates two things the values behind and the scale of his motivation that he values his position in the government far more than he cares about his family a shocking thing to realize and the scale being that this value is so intense for him that it would motivate him to kill his innocent and loving daughter demonstrating what they value their goal over can set them apart as the villain especially if it creates a sharp contrast with the values of the hero it's not the worst thing in the world to want to be powerful unless the author demonstrates that they value power over justice likewise showing the scale of their motivation reveals how much what kind of a threats they are what are they willing to do in contrast it can also make a villain more multi-dimensional by demonstrating something they are not willing to risk to achieve their goal this is particularly effective if the villain is shown to be willing to risk or not willing to risk something that the reader would usually care intimately about family friends or social acceptance per se rather than something like money in Avatar The Last Airbender we learned that Zuko is unwilling to risk his crew almost certainly dying in a storm to pursue the avatar giving layers to his motives it's also important to note that villains can have multiple goals and priorities in a story some more important than others and it can be interesting to have those goals conflict Zuko wants to be loved and accepted but he also wants is and those two things aren't always the same of course villains who are so motivated as to do anything to achieve their goal are exceptionally dangerous Nix Lee it's critical to understand the villains motives within the context of the heroes one way is to reflect the hero's motives in John troubies the anatomy of story he notes that you must see the opponent's structurally in terms of his function in the story a true opponent not only wants to prevent the hero from achieving their desire but is competing with the hero for the same goal find the deepest level of conflict between them ask yourself what is the most important thing they are fighting about underpinning this is one critical question which motive will best bring your villain into conflict with the hero in Ellen Moore's The Killing Joke the Joker and Batman aren't just fighting over the fate of Jim Gordon the Joker wants to prove that ordinary people are just like him if they have one bad day where as Batman believes that they can always choose they are brought into a conflict because the villains motivation fundamentally reflects but disagrees with the hero's motivation naturally bringing them into a conflict where only one of them can come out on top a second method is to shear the hero's motives in a way that brings them into conflict in The Godfather while there was a pretense of the conflict of rising around disagreements on whether the New York crime families should peel heroin the actions of the Tattaglia and Pezzini crime families were clearly motivated by value a family loyalty and a sin self-image full justice as opposed to The Killing Joke these values are shared by the hero but it's sharing them that creates a cycle of vengeance and violence that fuels the conflict of the story if the values that underpin the villains motivation wouldn't naturally bring them into conflict with the hero then it can seem a weak justification for their involvement in the story the story wouldnt work so well if the antagonists were motivated by greed but the protagonists didn't care about greed either having such different motives that it creates conflict or such similar motives that it creates conflict can be an effective way to ensure that the momentum of the story is firmly grounded in that relationship between the motives of the hero and the motives of the villain how passive or active your villains motivation is will help shape their role in your story the motivation of the villain usually exists on a scale between a passive motivation wanting to stop the hero from achieving their goal and be active motivation wanting to defeat the hero to achieve their goal one example of passive motivation is Bertha Mason in Bronte is Jane Eyre whose motivation is primarily to stop the hero from achieving their goal of marrying Edward Rochester this passivity of the villain makes the hero more interesting because it gives them more agency they decide the direction of the story and the villain responds to them the classic story of Snow White is an extreme example of active motivation of a villain the Queen's motivation to become the fairest in the land leads her to defeat Snow White in hopes to achieve her goal she becomes more imposing as a villain because the story's tension is based around her actions forcing the heroes to react Snow White doesn't even really have a goal in contrast and this is a continuum most villains it's somewhere in the middle between these two extremes for example Moriarty in BBC's Sherlock series he wants to both stop Sherlock from undermining his criminal empire but he also has a goal to personally destroy him deciding with your villain has a more passive or a more active motivation will help determine how your hero and villain are brought into conflict and where the agency of the story lies more active villains tend to feel more like a threat while more passive villains tend to give here as agency in this now I want to talk about a phrase that I commonly read in writing articles or here in writing videos that is that the most compelling villain is the one who believes they're the good guy or the hero but this isn't entirely true let's discuss this a little more closely this idea rose to prominence with the recent trend beginning with the grittier comics of the 1980s and 1990s through to the rise of dark a fantastic night Laurence's the prince of thorns and now what we see in the deconstruct of realism and stories like the last Jedi that is to set aside the binary morality of good and evil heroes and villains in favor of a grey morality that makes the audience respect or even agree with the villain from this comes the assertion that the villain must believe that they are the good guy and there's nothing wrong with having such a villain it can create incredibly compelling characters like even Lucifer in Milton's Paradise Lost who he makes out to be a sympathetic villain that the reader can understand this translate authors to explore the experiences that made the villains believe what they do to an extent that hadn't really been done before then Ellen Moors graphic novel Watchmen readers can relate to Ozymandias disillusionment with authority and anger at how humans fight one another seeing this play out in the Cold War was an experience that motivated him to take action the reason that the good guy villain motivation works is that it creates a more relatable and therefore more believable character which can give the impression of complexity and depth this is not only because their complexity often arises out of them taking a particular moral position on a nuanced topic that society is still discussing but because that complex moral motivation can easily be tied to human experiences love greed fear or anything else good go villains can also heighten the tension throughout the story in a way that other types of villains can't and I want to talk about another phrase that I commonly hear the best villain is the one that the readers cheer when they see them defeat it but this isn't true either in the TV series of Vikings which by the way has some of the best screenwriting I have ever seen go watch it king ik Bert and Ragnar are on opposite sides with it Bert technically being the antagonistic force for much of the series but the audience grows to understand sympathize with and love him to the point that they want neither Ragnar nor ik Bert to be defeated or kill good guy villains allow the writer to create a central point of tension with arena once neither the villain nor the hero to be defeated giving the story a distinctly tragic undertone one that Vikings masters another advantage to good guy villains is that it allows the author to more easily use their motivation to further develop a theme to continue with the Watchmen example dr. Manhattan's decision to kill someone to prevent the world returning to chaos helps the reader question the inherent value of truth justice and the concept of the hero theme is primarily explored by how the hero confronts certain challenges in the story but this exploration is often subtle and written between the lines per se in Victor Hugo slay moszer observe is motivation of an absolutist morality of law order truth and justice presents a sharp contrast to genre John's belief in Redemption and separating law from morality to the extent that Hugo used this struggle as a metaphor for the struggle between these two ideas the theme a morally grave villain motivation allows the author to explore theme in a way that evil villains cannot it more easily allows for a comprehensive discussion between multiple rational viewpoints creating a multi-dimensional hero a villain relationship that is not simply physical but ideological however one danger here is taking this a little too far in having the theme feel heavy-handed for the reader this often happens where the conflict is so clearly allegorical all the interactions between the villain and hero are so ideologically charged that they like any real character a core character experience to truly give them context they come across more like mouthpieces greetings villain I disagree with you on your Hobbesian position of the state of nature being a war against all and life being nasty brutish and short ah but hero you're lucky edition that the state of nature has the law of nature to govern it is clearly inferior to mine I suppose our philosophical disagreement can only be resolved by one of us dying rivers the death of either of our ideas quite right villain but none of this means that the villain must believe that they're a good guy people often do things that they know they shouldn't sometimes out of fear or addiction and it's common for people to believe that what they're doing isn't necessarily right but that it simply isn't wrong a great example of this is Tywin Lannister from A Song of Ice and Fire as leader of House Lannister Tywin orchestrated the mass murder of the rains of castamere along with three hundred men women and children but I would never viewed himself as either good nor evil really he was motivated by duty the survival of his house and he saw himself as consistent effective and a respected leader but reducing those concepts to good would be overly simplistic for his character and there are some few people out there who genuinely don't care if it's wrong or don't believe in such things as right and wrong for example Hannibal lictor in Harris's Silence of the Lambs these are each fantastic and compelling villains that don't believe they are the good guys forcing a villain to see themselves as either good or evil restricts how they can view themselves and their motivation to this binary morality when in fact motivation is far more complex this also risks undermining any themes associated with their motivation because very few thematic ideas can be reduced to conceptions of what is good and what is evil but let's talk about Tony Stark's weakened plans saving the world the villains int goal is intimately connected to their motivation and the magnitude of the villains goal necessarily impacts how the tension in the narrative is built villains have plans that range from murdering a cockney chicken with a proclivity for knitting to obliterating all life not just in this universe but every universe or reality one factor in building tension is raising the stakes in the story what could be lost throughout the story the stakes continually rise until the climactic point often described as the do-or-die moment where it feels like one wrong step could lose the hero everything in Stephen King's under the dome Barbie and Julia's pleading with the aliens too late the few dozen remaining people survive is one such moment and no point in the story previously was more at stake and it's here that an issue arises for save the world stories where the villain is motivated to destroy or take over the whole world that you've built the tension in the do-or-die moment relies on the reader's ability to believe that whatever is at stake could be lost but it is incredibly difficult to convince the reader that the world could be taken over or destroyed meaning deriving the tension solely from their possible destruction weakens any suspense for the reader because of this it can be effective in save the world stories to derive the tension list from the fate of the world and more from the fate of the characters and things involved one great example of this is the episode the waters of Mars in Doctor Who the fate of the world is at stake with the characters attempting to stop a terrifying virus reaching earth but that point of tension in the story is treated as secondary to the tensions surrounding whether the doctor can or should get ever and out alive and whether the virus will kill them each individually it does this in a few ways one the heroes spend far more time concerned with whether they or their friends will die then with whether the villain is getting closer to their goal of destroying the world - even though the danger the villain poses is on a worldwide scale its threat is primarily established by the danger it poses to individual people if the reader never sees the lives of real people at stake throughout the story they're less likely to believe that they can be at stake during the climax and three the obstacles that the doctor faces during the climax are not integral to stopping the virus reaching earth but stopping the virus killing people they actually establish very early on that they can blow up the base to kill the virus if they really need to where your villains motivation and int goal involved the destruction of the world as we know it deriving the tension from the fate of the characters or things involved can be an effective way to maintain tension it also helps with immersion because readers are typically attached to characters more so than they are to a world something they can't relate to personally so what have we discussed on villain motivation one showing the values behind their motivation help set them apart as a villain and showing the scale of their motivation helps demonstrate the kind of threat they pose beyond this villains can have more than one priority in a story and it can be interesting where those can flicked to finding the best motive to bring them into conflict with the hero is important two ways to do this are a having their motivation reflect but disagree with the heroes and be having them share the motives in a way that draws them into conflict three a more passively motivated villain tends to highlight the agency of the hero while a more actively motivated villain can appear more imposing for good guy villains can be more relatable for the reader give a distinctly tragic undertone to the story and allow the author to more easily develop theme however motivation is really ever as simple as good or evil and five save the world stories find it difficult to sustain climactic tension one way to deal with this is by deriving tension from the fate of those characters of things and evolved instead but that is all from me question of the day which is your favorite board game I am in love with Settlers of Catan but I've just started playing pandemic the more it is amazing let me know down in the comments below in the meantime I would love you to come follow me over on Twitter Facebook or email me stuff that you made in the adressing list in the description below I try to stay in contact with the community otherwise comes for me on patreon we've got a discord there sort of thing always fun I love you guys this was a really fun and difficult video to write to be move clear honest but anyways stay nerdy sup URIs and I will see you in the future

Channel: Hello Future Me

Views: 598,321

Keywords: how to train your dragon, avatar, legend of korra, legend of aang, the last airbender, atla, firebending, earthbending, waterbending, airbendering, night fury, toothless, dragon, zuko, villains, on writing, how to, write, books, novel, story, chapter, villain, hannibal lecter, the joker, batman, ragnar lothbrok, king ecbert, a game of thrones, song of ice and fire, tywin, lannister, tyrion, explained, theory, lore, les mis, jean valjean, the last jedi, star wars, doctor who, dlakes

Id: 16eJZmW_cGE

Length: 16min 38sec (998 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 07 2018