A Good Amount of Bad
Since I’m currently at work on Villains’ Code #2, I’ve been immersed in the land of villainy lately. Building this world has been a ton of fun, from the comic-book madness history to the wild array of characters, there’s so much to play with in this series I have to actively hold myself back. That said, it wasn’t smooth going from the outset. I’ve spoken publicly about reworking Forging Hephaestus a few times to get it to the final version, but one part I haven’t gone into much was one of the more difficult tasks: balancing the guild.
I don’t mean in terms of power, mind you. One of the features of the VC universe is that there is no power-balancing, it’s a wide scale and where you fall on it is often a matter of luck. No, the balance issue was one of morality, strangely enough. Writing about villains as the main characters demands walking a fine line; they can’t be so evil that the reader despises them, nor can they be so virtuous that they’re status as villains is called into question.
Today I thought it would be fun to dig into some of the process that went into building the guild and setting up those parameters, for anyone who’s got the itch to toss in some wicked main characters of their own.
One Crime is Not All Crime
Let’s get one thing straight real quick: everyone reading this is a criminal. I don’t know what your particular violation is, but I know you’ve committed one. Pirating music, speeding, even simply jaywalking; there are tons of smaller laws that as a society we tend to collectively go light on. That doesn’t mean they stop existing, mind you, only that we’ve largely chosen not to care unless the instances are taken to the extreme.
Villains’ Code functions off the same principle, only applied to those with a looser moral code. There are laws that they don’t consider to be worth caring about, yet they’re not slaughtering civilians for looking at them wrong either. While part of that is due to the guild’s code, it’s also because not every criminal who is willing to rob a museum is also a murderer.
That’s what I mean when I say that one crime is not all crime; a willingness to break one rule doesn’t signal disregard for all of them. I might go five miles over the speed limit, but I’m not blasting through a red light. It’s why you see different characters in the book pursuing different types of crime, and going about it in alternative ways.
Establish Some Limits
One of the most important world-building characters in all of Forging Hephaestus also gets the smallest amount of page-time: Kristoph. He’s an interesting one in his own right, hopefully all of that eventually makes it to the page, but for FH you only really see enough of him to know Kristoph’s deal: he butchers people who hurt kids. I realized pretty early on in development that the guild needed someone like him in the mix, for the sake of the reader.
Kristoph establishes a lot about the guild with his mere presence as a member. It tells the reader that these people do have lines they aren’t willing to cross, as well as assures them that no guild-character introduced will have inclinations that twisted as a surprise reveal. Moreover, the fact that the guild actively uses Kristoph tips off that they don’t even want to be associated with those kind of criminals, underpinning that this is not a place for monsters.
Past Kristoph, the titular villains’ code itself was immensely helpful in laying down parameters. Initially, it was a smaller piece of the story, however the act of building out an idea of morality for such characters made me grasp what a huge undertaking it would really be. I realized that it would have to be a foundational part of the guild itself, born at inception, and once that slotted into place it all started clicking.
Motivations Matter
I swear, if I see one more “because evil is fun/we’re all selfish” antagonist that thinks nihilism is somehow original or compelling, I’m going to spit. That is some of the laziest shit in story-telling, and I’m not sure what chuckle-fuck sold the idea that it’s more “realistic” because the truth is that crap is largely nonsense.
People do things for reasons. Not always good reasons, not always sane reasons, but they have reasons. Hunger, anger, jealousy, greed, desperation, defense, revenge, redemption, has this gone long enough to be comical yet? The vilest bastards walking this earth would sit you down and tell you, earnestly, how they believe what they are doing is right.
When writing a villain, motivation needs to be established very early on. This is probably not a life where things went to plan, generally people don’t start off aiming to be criminals living outside the law. What led them to this point? What are they hoping to get out of the future? What steps are they taking, or avoiding, to move in that direction? It’s the same as any other character, except perhaps you end up with someone who’s goal is to get revenge on the aliens who abducted him by firing a deathbeam at their secret base on the moon. Sure, to the rest of the world he’s a nutbar stealing lasers from across the country, but to him, all if it makes total sense. Remember, the reasons don’t have to be smart, or even sensical, irrationality is very much a genuine part of real people which makes it fair game for fictional ones. The notions only have to be consistent and logical to the character themselves. Humans are pretty adept at making ourselves believe whatever we want.
Ultimately, the best tactic I can offer for writing villains is to not fall into the same trap as the superheroes and see them only as their crimes. Build them as people first, villains second. Find their hobbies, and passions, and eccentricities. Make the crimes they commit only a smaller part of who they are overall and you’ll have a lot more complex, rounded characters to throw into your various capers.