Perhaps not entirely relevant, but I think that taking a look at recent animated movies and live action Disney remakes might add an interesting perspective to your work. Whereas in previous animated Disney movies the villain was usually a one dimensional flat character (Maleficent, Lady Tremaine, the Red Queen, Shere Khan...), in more recent adaptations the villain has a more profound psychology, they are no longer evil for the sake of being evil, but as a consequence of some previous trauma or hardship. Furthermore, movies are being made about villains-turned-heroes, such as "Despicable Me" and "Megamind". Villains are recently being humanised - there is no such thing as pure evil.

An interesting idea, Michael. Thank you so much for the thoughtful comment.

This bibliography can be useful for you:

Alsford, Mike. Heroes and Villains. Waco, TX: Baylor UP, 2006.

Giovannelli, Alessandro. "In Sympathy with Narrative Characters." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 67.1 (2009): 83-95.

Markovits, Julia. "Saints, Heroes, Sages, and Villains." Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 158.2, Proceedings of the 2011 Bellingham Summer Philosophy Conference (2012): 289-311

Shafer, Daniel M., and Arthur A. Raney. "Exploring How We Enjoy Antihero Narratives." Journal of Communication 62.6 (2012): 1028-046.

Regards!

To me, the paradigm of the villain turning an hero is in Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris (I don't specially like), with Quasimodo, the villain, awful, almost stupid, that turns human for the love of Esmeralda. One of the most vertiginous fall outside of humanity is awfully and clinically described in Pascal Duarte's family, from Nobel Prize Camillo José Cela. The villain narrator of Voyage au bout de la Nuit, from Louis-Ferdinand Céline evolves from soldier of fortune to doctor of the poor, revealing the most atrocious cynical canvas below generosity and the worst is he is not convinced by his late vocation but finds a kind of closet where he can calmly lock in. Healing the poor and miserable turns a kind of very Christian Purgatoire for such a cynical character. Chronicle of an announced death, from Nobel prize Gabriel Garcia Marquez, shows us the villain's irrepressible (and satisfactory) degradation, relating the last days of whatever dictator. It seems very often, villains can't evolve but by paying their bill. Maybe readers would not be keen to enjoy a villain succeeding in being villain and managing to be more villain even. Also, a villain that just want to be villain does not build a story and may be plainly boring. To build a story, conflicts are necessary to make the story evolve. This lead us to the real questions: is villain a static role? Is evil a forever damnation? Does evil last longer and tougher than good?

Villians! Interesting

I've been working for a while on the transformation of evil/villain characters through different adaptations and media platforms gaining new characteristics with every adaptation, as they gain new depths to their characters which sometimes reach heroic positions, becoming the main characters, romantic protagonist or "cute" children cartoon. The attached poster includes a summary of the discussion of four figures of evil: The Cyclops, Dr. Faustus, Frankenstein's monster and Dracula. Poster Constructing a Metadata Model to Display the Deconstruction ...

In Aristotelian character descriptions, the figure we often describe as the villain is called the antagonist, a much more nuanced word. The antagonist blocks the road of the protagonist, for whatever reasons s/he has. Since Freud we have been ascribing psychological motivations to this character, just as we do to the protagonist and the more complex these motivations and the actions they provoke, the more satisfying a "good" end to the story. As actor friends of mine who adore playing villains say, "Find the love."

Kathleen, Yes, I know about the antagonist and the antihero. For this question before an international audience, I choose to use more simply language.

I am interested in nuanced "bad guys" Who have a back-story and rationale for being the way they are. I have a particular project I am working on now, but I don't want to detail it because I don't want to be "scooped." :-)

Michael's ideas are on track. The problem is that formula and character (villain or hero) development are incompatible. To create a nuanced human villain you need to start from scratch. She or he must be an individual and have motives, even if they don't justify his/her actions. .

In shAkespeare you have shylock . In lord of the flies you have the character of jack .

Perhaps not entirely relevant, but I think that taking a look at recent animated movies and live action Disney remakes might add an interesting perspective to your work. Whereas in previous animated Disney movies the villain was usually a one dimensional flat character (Maleficent, Lady Tremaine, the Red Queen, Shere Khan...), in more recent adaptations the villain has a more profound psychology, they are no longer evil for the sake of being evil, but as a consequence of some previous trauma or hardship. Furthermore, movies are being made about villains-turned-heroes, such as "Despicable Me" and "Megamind". Villains are recently being humanised - there is no such thing as pure evil.

Obviously, there is Ebenezer Scrooge.

Why is Scrooge a villain at first?

In the opening do we get a back story to understand what brought him to this cold and uncaring state? Dickens reveals as he passes the ghost by Scrooge his past. Each ghost carries backstory, what is going on now, and the future.

How does the character evolve? Is the evolution from outside--ghosts--or from inside--self? Both?

What has changed in terms of character? Is Dickens obsolete in today's world?

Would this way of character evolution be possible or even desirable today?

Why or why not?

If obsolete, is this an advance or a regression in terms of human potential?

Does Scrooge embody enlightened self-interest as we see it today or other virtue or deficit?

As in many of the questions posed in this format, it strikes me that there is a problem with definitions. Characters may be likeable or unlikable according to the emotional and social reactivity of the reader or listener. The idea of a villain seems to spring from the dichotomous thinking patterns of Western culture, where if you have a hero or protagonist it becomes dramatically necessary to have a villain or antagonist.

The issue seems to be that one person's villain can be another person's hero. I think we see this with the current US President, who seems to be a hero to about a third of the population, and a villain to about half of the population, with the remainder being undecided, i.e. he may be a criminal, but he is good for the economy.

I like the examples being discussed by some of the women, who point out that as society becomes more aware (woke?) that we get more backstory on villains, which makes them more understandable, if not always more sympathetic. he issue is creating a character as opposed to a villain. In my attempts at fiction I refuse to write characters who are villains. My protagonists must deal with each other, including foibles and trauma, and they often stand in opposition to the dominant culture, which creates conflicts, but I don't like much of contemporary literature which is villain dominated. For example, i am sick of troubled but complicated serial killers. This is a Western fantasy. This also forces culture towards the idea of generic villains, of which zombies seem to be the flavor of the decade, although even there we see attempts to present the backstory of a few zombies.

Part of this is because I tend to identify more with Indigenous cultural traditions, which tend not have villains, but suites of complex characters who represent more or less realistic perspectives. In Indigenous stories, what might be regarded as a "villain" in a Western story are considered as tricksters, i.e. individuals who are conflicted and often do unacceptable things, but possibly for good reasons. As an example, in the Numic traditions of the American west, wolf is a creator, and coyote, wolf's alter ego or brother or sibling, is the trickster figure. Wolf comes across as very idealistic and perhaps a bit naive, whereas coyote is much more realistic in its attitudes. In a Western tradition coyote would be seen as a "villain", simply because it opposes naive idealism, yet to the people who tell these stories coyote is as important as wolf, but you have to be more careful in dealing with coyote. I could go on in this vein, but I think I will pause for now and see if anyone responds.

In the theory of narrative structure Vladimir Propp states that there are 31 functions and 7 actions. Propp analyzed 100 Russian stories and discovered things that remained about the functions and actions. The seven actions are: (1) villain or criminal action environment, (2) donor, provider or donor action environment, (3) helper or helper / helper action environment. (4) The princess and the father or the environment of action of a princess and her father, (5) Dispathcer or intermediate action environment (6) hero or hero action environment, and (7) false hero or fake hero action environment.

If you look at this, the emergence of criminal figures is indeed needed. Evil characters appear as a comparison to hero characters. Like the character of a hero, the villain's character continues to develop. Building a villain character is tantamount to building a hero character, that is, by developing a character that is influenced by the setting of the place, time, and social background of the character. Good and bad choices depend on the author for the whole story.

I think that James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confssions of a Justified Sinner what be very useful

Dear Colleagues Pierotti, Isnendes, and others,

This is a fascinating discussion and you are making it spark with your varied insights. So happy new year and keep on sharing.

Colleague Pierotti, in many folk tales there is no character development. They are more like our allegories in western culture. Coyote starts a trickster and ends as a trickster. I know Coyote well here in Tucson, AZ. My Navajo colleagues talk about him and also other peoples of the region.

So how do we talk across cultures about this? Have you been following the recent writing here in the SW United States by Navajos, Hopis, and other groups? I think I have read some stories that now allow character development for figures like Coyote of that place Coyote in Urban Tucson. Sherman Alexie, though not a Tucson indigenous writer but a Coeur D'Alene from the northwest US, shows character ambiguity in "The Toughest Indian in the World" where eternal values clash with contradictory pressures in urban life.

One story that plays with the traditions and the view of Anglos of Native culture is Byrd Baylor's _Yes is Better than No_. The native culture around here evolves and young Tohono O'odham, Yaqui, Navajo, Hopi, and other people do not wish to be forced into a traditional mold. They do something different. They use tradition but shape it in ways that address the current day. Baylor is non-native American but her novel views some of this use of tradition in ways that serve urban Indians.

In the recent novels, writers tend to present evil or what thought to be evil characters with a humanist side hust like the depiction of vampires in Meyer's Twiligh. Such kind of depiction is more realistic since they are human beings having good side even if it is little. No man can be totally evil.

I think there is no answer outside a definite cultural model. If you take Asian classics, the notion of "villain" becomes highly problematic, as most in most novels, there are no "good" or "bad" heroes as we see them in the West.

I don't see any difference between constructing "good" or "evil" characters. The key is not seeing them as evil, but rather keeping in mind that every character is the hero of their own journey. Construct the protagonist/hero with their very specific objective/goal/target, then spin around and do the same for the antagonist. The better formed the antagonist, the better the "match" for the protagonist. I think the second you see the antagonist as "evil", you naturally start shorting him. Another consideration is remembering a character is nothing more than the actions they perform. Unlike a novel we can't see inside their minds (though that's where actors often get tangled up). This isn't to be confused with knowing who your protagonist is--you (and we) must know whose journey we're on and what that journey is.

Campbell's work noted that the hero's journey is found in all stories. That it's how we tell and understand stories--whether you believe it comes from a religious source or from within the brain. A fun challenge with students is to have them pick any movie (the wilder the better), then have them identify at least the first 5 steps of the hero's journey.

For pure villainy, Iago is unbeatable, so that Coleridge described him as "motive hunting of motiveless malignity." The very presence of the good, the innocent and the magnanimous excites the villain negatively, who distinguishes himself by a propensity to lie, a monumental ego and a meanness of mind unimaginable to the virtuous. One can learn a lot about villains by studying the Fallen Angels of Milton.

In my opinion, regarding a formula for creating an antagonist and or villain in fiction writing, there isn’t one. An antagonist or villain persists as a reflection of the main character, or protagonist, whose characterization is greatly varied and is tailored to each individual story. This is true for the antagonist as well, since he or she is often the opposing side of the same coin of the protagonist. But it is more often than not that the plot revolves around the protagonist’s journey to overcome the conflict of a story, rather than the antagonist (though an intriguing story can be built around either character). There are even various dimensions to archetypes in villains, so the issue of formulizing a quantitative anecdote for villains is difficult at best, but likely non-existent in my mind.

However, if you’re writing a tale that centers around an anti-hero, be certain to not mix up the character traits and roles of an anti-hero to that of an antagonist / villain. An anti-hero is the hero but doesn’t contain the typical characterizations of a traditional hero who is mainly admired for a wide range of human characteristics that are admirable or out of the reach of human abilities (which strays into the superhero category). A villain, on the other hand, can range from a “typical” villain who simply helps to create conflict for the protagonist, or she / he may be the main character of a work. Still, even in this circumstance, the depiction of an antagonist often relies heavily on who the protagonist is or vice versa, depending on the plot. Now, think of some of your favorite antagonists and what they wanted, what the characterizations of these antagonists are made of, what their motivations are, as well as their “development, change, or growth,” as you pointed out. I think you will find that most antagonists are essential to the conflict that drives the motivations of the protagonist, whether they are the starting point of that conflict or a response to the protagonist actions to resolve the conflict of a plot.

Whenever I find myself researching characterizations of fictional villains, I am reminded of the wide range of protagonists that literature has developed since the early Mesopotamians constructed The Epic of Gilgamesh, to this very day. However, it is Gilgamesh that I usually rely on for inspiration because he is inarguably the prototype for all categorizations of literary heroes, anti-heroes, and villains to date. In a nutshell, he depicts all three since he begins as an antagonist in the context of actually being a villain at the start of the tale, then an anti-hero who gradually develops into an archetypical hero by the end of the work. Still, in Gilgamesh, there is also an array of antagonists that stand in the way of the main character’s journey, from Humbaba to Death itself. They are considered the villains of the story. Yet, the true antagonist in The Epic of Gilgamesh is Gilgamesh himself since he is the one thing standing in the way of his own journey to conquer death, which is to accept his own mortality. It is through his journey to conquer death that Gilgamesh finally accepts that he will one day die, thus, transforming him from anti-hero to hero, or a changed man who chooses in the end to serve his people instead of antagonizing them as he had before his journey began.

So, who is the real antagonist of this story? What are the antagonist’s characterizations? As the prototype of the hero / anti-hero / villain in literature, can those characterizations be formulated to create a quantitative methodology for producing a typical villain / antagonist in modern text? If not, are there other stories that follow a typical practice for producing villainous behaviors, personalities, or actions? I would say no because the villain’s character is either centered around the main focal point of a plot, the protagonist, or that character’s actions are the plot itself (from fictional characterizations of serial killers to slasher books / films).

In short, the villain is either part of the plot that surrounds the hero, or he is the plot itself. But what he is not is a characterization of a list of typical evil traits that humans admire as a collective, unlike the traits of a good hero (humble, smart, a moral compass, a willingness to fight for others, and so on). So, there is no formula other than a villain’s atypical attributes that reflect conflict with the protagonist or his evil doings that a unique plot surrounds.

I would recommend that you research what you consider the best of modern-day heroes in contemporary works, who are reflective of your own writing genre, then study the best of their counterparts, the villains. Create a list of what appeals to you most about these villains and why. However, these characterizations will not reflect those of your own antagonists or villains, nor will they formulate a list of characteristics that a villain must possess since they are not reflective of your own invention(s), in my opinion at least.