Thread: cheesy villain

I am working on a villain and am capable of coming up with good villain, but I want to make one that sticks out. I have a villain that wants to essentially make humanity into sociopaths because he thinks humanity would be better off if people did not care about each other. I also want to make this villain scary which I somewhat find scary, but have tested on others and they said it was not. So could people give me some advice and opinions on this?

Your main character (hero) is the Readers Eyes. Through him, the reader views the story world. If the villain is frightening to the Hero, then the villain becomes frightening to the Reader.

what is a good villain from a bad villain?
villany is usually an act out of spite and I can't see how a villain canbe a good or bad or cheesy?
I can think an example. Robin Hood , you could that call that ''a good villain according to what is myth or stories made him to be.''
I personally cannot get my head around Robin Hood and his cheesy motives.
first his name is Robin as in robin' from the verb to rob/steal.
then you hood which implies ''the core essential of aperson'' because hood is associated with childhood parenthood, a garment cap also is a hood.
and so I think the act of his villany stealing, is never jutified. the fact that robing had stolen from the rich and given to the poor is still stealing. no matter what you think.
so as far as I amconcerned robin hood is dimissed as the villain doo gooder.
who needs this typo who misleads and think they owe a living daylight out of anyone let alone the rich.

and so the combination of Robin Hood means it takes away from you the soul andheart of a being which is not an act to be redeemed or celebrated.

so coming back to your villain ''whowants to make everyone a sociopaths because he thinks humanity would be better off if people did not care about each other''
is not a believable concept. I would not personally grasp or even believe this is possible.
it is goes against loigic.
a sociopath is already scary. think of the Silence of the Lamb, that is a socioapth.
theidea is not going to be credible is that a sociopath is already deranged and therefore he/she would lack the social skills, the means, the will to convince anyone to do anything. It is a weak person and therefore wouldhave problems convincing me for example.
bear in that people are clever,bright,strong, religious and his socipathic mind is going to be slightly edgy lacking directions.
whatI mean he would eventually drive himself to his own grave is my opinion.
sorry if this did not help.

It would help if you could say more about the setting and the story. A scary villain from one story isn't necessarily so scary in another story. And it might also be related to how you introduce and how you tell the story about the villain, not necessarily the villain itself.

I think in some of my writing I have managed to make some scenes scary when I didn't intend to. Like KyleColorado says it is a lot to do with how your main character responds, how the build up to the villain is presented. Darkness is usually good if you want to go for ghosts or vampires etc. But if its psycho stuff then show the character as insane but do it subtly so the reader gets fearful by their own imagination.

Originally Posted by Robdemanc

I think in some of my writing I have managed to make some scenes scary when I didn't intend to. Like KyleColorado says it is a lot to do with how your main character responds, how the build up to the villain is presented. Darkness is usually good if you want to go for ghosts or vampires etc. But if its psycho stuff then show the character as insane but do it subtly so the reader gets fearful by their own imagination.

to be honest the closest I got to be scared of is coming close to mad person.
THAT is really scary, nothing like it I can tell you.
anything else after that is not,not even a ghost/vampire.

Originally Posted by Nacian

to be honest the closest I got to be scared of is coming close to mad person.
THAT is really scary, nothing like it I can tell you.
anything else after that is not,not even a ghost/vampire.

Yes. People are very afraid of people who show signs of insanity. One thing that works well is when a character thinks they are losing their sanity.

Originally Posted by SixPence

It would help if you could say more about the setting and the story. A scary villain from one story isn't necessarily so scary in another story. And it might also be related to how you introduce and how you tell the story about the villain, not necessarily the villain itself.

It is the far future on another planet and human traits physical or emotional as well as psychological can be taken in and out like lightbulbs.

Originally Posted by Robdemanc

I think in some of my writing I have managed to make some scenes scary when I didn't intend to. Like KyleColorado says it is a lot to do with how your main character responds, how the build up to the villain is presented. Darkness is usually good if you want to go for ghosts or vampires etc. But if its psycho stuff then show the character as insane but do it subtly so the reader gets fearful by their own imagination.

Yes my villain is a scientist who used care about humanity, but humanity never seemed to care about him so he snapped and wants to take away the ability for humans to care about each other and thinks humans will be better off that way.

As for concrete examples:

Maybe you could have your villain getting fired from his job at the beginning of the story (or through a flashback) because, as a scientist he does something completely unethical like completely removing all the morality from a test subject to the horror of all his co-workers. He doesn't understand their reaction; he feels like the person's new mental state is an improvement.

Maybe he manufactures elaborate scenarios involving his "demoralized" test subjects where one person lets another one die, or kills them to obtain something they want, just to test whether or not he's accomplished his goal of making them into sociopaths.

I don't know how much violence/blood you are intending to have in your story, but what if you had a flashback scene where the villain is rejected for the last time after a lifetime of rejection, and so he cuts into someone's brain in an early, crazed attempt to remove the part of their brain that makes them have empathy for other people? You could have him royally botch the job and the person becomes mentally impaired or a vegetable or something. He covers this up somehow and then over time gains the scientific know-how to actually successfully perform the procedure. His original victim could even be someone in his family or his wife.

Originally Posted by VanishingSpy

As for concrete examples:

Maybe you could have your villain getting fired from his job at the beginning of the story (or through a flashback) because, as a scientist he does something completely unethical like completely removing all the morality from a test subject to the horror of all his co-workers. He doesn't understand their reaction; he feels like the person's new mental state is an improvement.

Maybe he manufactures elaborate scenarios involving his "demoralized" test subjects where one person lets another one die, or kills them to obtain something they want, just to test whether or not he's accomplished his goal of making them into sociopaths.

I don't know how much violence/blood you are intending to have in your story, but what if you had a flashback scene where the villain is rejected for the last time after a lifetime of rejection, and so he cuts into someone's brain in an early, crazed attempt to remove the part of their brain that makes them have empathy for other people? You could have him royally botch the job and the person becomes mentally impaired or a vegetable or something. He covers this up somehow and then over time gains the scientific know-how to actually successfully perform the procedure. His original victim could even be someone in his family or his wife.

Yes that was helpful. I may include something like the botch scene you were talking about although I would prefer to avoid being gory as well since this is more action than horror. Although adults could probably handle it do you think teenagers could as well since they are partly my target audience as well?

Originally Posted by Nacian

to be honest the closest I got to be scared of is coming close to mad person.
THAT is really scary, nothing like it I can tell you.
anything else after that is not,not even a ghost/vampire.

i agree. and there's so many different plots and motives a writer can flow with in creation
of "the madman". kind of off-topic, but kind of not......my 2 year old is in the other room
watching "willy wonka. the old version with gene wilder. i love the movie.....but willy wonka
has to be one of the most psychotic sociopaths ever on film. i just sit and laugh at the
completely psychopathic dialogue coming from this character. he's likable though, and
he's a candyman. a think a "villian" needs a certain amount of likability, no matter how
insanely ruthless he is.

I'd be more scared of a villain if I didn't know his intents. Fear of the unknown

A scary villain? Try to use FEAR
False
Expectations
Appearing
Real

Basically, if the villain creates connotations to scary things, he'll be scary. Like if you ealked into a dark room - the darkness isn't scary, it's what goes on in your mind. I have a main villain who is spontaneous, so that whenever he appears the reader has no idea what he will do. One m oment, he is making an intimidating but almost friendly speech. The next, he asks a question. After that, he kills someone. He isn't disjointed, but he doe not have a singular personality. Thus, the reader is scared of him, not because of how I describe him each time, but how his general character presents a feeling of the unknown. Like what Helium said.

Also, try to avoid cliches. They make your reader instantly recogise your intentions with the villain, and thus divert focus from his character. Black is really overused... scary laughs are just funny now. I find that a white villain is the most scary; he's the most audacious person whenever he waltzes into your story, and his choice of apparel really contrdicts his character.

It can sometimes be better not to even have a stable villain; the enemy might change because of events. That adds even more fear - anyone could become the villain. Even the main character! (although, that can be predicted often)

Those are just my thoughts on the matter.

Originally Posted by dale

i agree. and there's so many different plots and motives a writer can flow with in creation
of "the madman". kind of off-topic, but kind of not......my 2 year old is in the other room
watching "willy wonka. the old version with gene wilder. i love the movie.....but willy wonka
has to be one of the most psychotic sociopaths ever on film. i just sit and laugh at the
completely psychopathic dialogue coming from this character. he's likable though, and
he's a candyman. a think a "villian" needs a certain amount of likability, no matter how
insanely ruthless he is.

I agree about Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka. I hated Johnny Depp's version, though... he was creepy in all the wrong ways: Gene Wilder was like a secret psychopath; Johnny Depp was like a closet pedophile.