User blog comment:LuluTDFan/What makes a good villain?/@comment-2021069-20131010015423

Personally, I think of each character in my story not just as a character but as a person. I think the main problem that Total Drama villains end up having is that they're too one-sided: they're senselessly evil, and we don't know them beyond the fact that they're schemers. Villains like Scott in season four, for example, didn't really seem to have any motivation behind his scheming ways, and really didn't have a lot of personality otherwise. That's why a lot of people favor Heather over other villain attempts. She's a character who started off being just a queen bee, but they ended up fleshing her out and giving her some likeable traits.

For me, Heather is the ultimate Total Drama villain, because her evil tactics weren't just because the show needed a villain. She was a villain because it was in her personality- she was a snob and truly believed she was better than anybody else, and she was smart, so she tried to strategize and knock people out of the game. She wasn't pure unexplainable negative behavior like Scott, or pure strategy like Alejandro.

In my story, I didn't have just one villain, and that's because I didn't want somebody to be labelled as "The Villain of the story." I try and think that even my characters who are villains have some redeeming personality traits, or at least they have some motivation as to why they act like they do (which, more often than not, ends up just being because they think they're better than everybody else).

So, unless you're trying to make your villain the literal devil incarnate, try and give them some personality! Make them a villain because they're a snob, or because they're jealous of others, or because they had a bad homelife. Make them hate people but love animals, or be sinister but have a normal hobby. Unless you want them to be as stereotypical as possible, don't try to confine your villain into one of the categories you listed- make them a combination of a few of the archetypes, or even try to make them something new! Chances are, they might naturally end up falling into one of those categories, and that's totally fine, but don't think "oh, I want my villain to be a bully, so they have to do this!" You can make your villain a bully who uses a mix or tactics and has a backstory if you want.

One thing that I find redeeming about a villain character is if they genuinely have a friend. Even if they end up using them in the end, seeing them have positive interactions with somebody really steers them away from just being a big bad and a big bad only. Even if you want your character to be pure evil, as heartless as somebody is, it's hard to believe that they're just evil all the time, so not every line or action that they have has to be because they want to eliminate somebody.

I don't think there's a straight answer as to "a good villain is ___." It's just what you're comfortable writing. For me, I prefer that as many bad characteristics as my villain has, they have a personality beyond just tactics. But if you want your villain to be the pure evil anti-Christ, then go for it! I hpoe that helped a bit!