FIVE KEYS TO CREATING BELIEVABLE VILLAINS

By Venita Bonds

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My elderly aunt never speaks ill of anyone. When I joked that she could find something nice to say about the devil himself, she said, “Well, he does have a good work ethic.” 

Few people are 100% evil—and this includes bad guys. Mystery writer DP Lyle says, “Everyone is the hero of their own story.” While it’s tempting to make your villain bad to the bone, you have to make him “human” enough to be believable. Villains need at least one fault, frailty, or soft spot that makes them vulnerable. 

Key 1: Humanity and Vulnerability

Think of Boyd Crowder in Justified. He’s a bad guy we hate to love, but we love him, anyway. Why? Because he’s charismatic, intelligent, eloquent, and funny. He’s also untrustworthy and prideful. His human flaws make him vulnerable and often self-destructive.

The cannibalistic Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs is impossible to love, but his brilliant intellect and odd sense of decorum make him believable in a terrifying way. FBI Agents Crawford and Starling think his only weakness is his huge ego, which makes him vulnerable to their attempts to use him to track down a killer. We’ve all known people with the human qualities of pride, ego, and intelligence. Hopefully, they’re not hungry.

Keys 2 and 3: Justification and Backstory

Humans believe we have the right to act as we do. We try to justify our actions, no matter how heinous. Villains are no different. They often use their backstory to justify their deeds. Something in their past explains their rotten behavior—at least in their own mind. 

One caution: Think of backstory as salt sprinkled into the mix with a lean hand. While backstory is a necessary ingredient for you to understand your villains and what motivates them, feed it to your readers only a grain at a time, and never in your beginning pages. 

Your villains do not have to be killers to need backstory and justification. They can be anyone who exerts power: lawyers, preachers, politicians, medical personnel, or company CEOs. 

Alabama native Richard Scrushy drove a cement mixer for a living. In his rags-to-riches backstory, he went from hauling cement to becoming the CEO of a multibillion-dollar corporation. Possessing an ego the size of his bank account, he ruled his executives through threats and intimidation. When the Department of Justice indicted him on 85 counts of conspiracy, money laundering, and securities fraud, the company’s stocks crashed. Scrushy justified his actions as those of a philanthropic visionary whose only sin was trusting his accountants.  

Florida prostitute Aileen Wuornos murdered seven johns. Her backstory? Sexual abuse from childhood. During her trial, she highlighted her past to make jurors see her in a sympathetic light. Her justification for murder was that all men were a threat to life and limb. She claimed she acted in “self-defense like any human would do.” She made herself believable enough to garner a fan club. 

Key 4: Body Language

The human body speaks louder than words. We can control what we say and might even pass a lie detector test, but our body language can be a dead giveaway. Even the most duplicitous villain reveals the truth through “tells” that leak out of his movements and mannerisms. To create believable villains, let their bodies do the talking.

Example: 

Her left eyelid twitched. Poker players know that micro movements can reveal a person’s thoughts. I was a lousy poker player, but I’d known Elsa Bea all my life. I saw her tell.

Another example: 

She locked onto my eyes without blinking. Liars do that when they want you to believe they’re telling the truth. Unfortunately, she was bouncing her left leg as though keeping time to a drumbeat. Legs don’t lie. 

Key 5: Secondary Characters

Use your secondary characters to increase your villain’s believability. Like my elderly aunt, secondary characters can provide backstory and justification for a villain. In this scene, a housekeeper is defending a doctor suspected of poisoning elderly women. 

“His primary practice is anti-aging— hormones and hydrogen peroxide infusions,” Geraldine said. 

“Is that what he’s giving Mother?” 

She shrugged. “All I know is that it’s made from plants, so it’s all natural.”

“Poison ivy’s all natural. Rattlesnake venom’s all natural.”

“He’s not poisoning her!” 

“How do you know?”

She threw up her hands in exasperation. “He went to Cambridge. Would the Ochsner Clinic employ him if he weren’t an excellent physician?”

Turn the Key

The most important key to creating believable villains is you. The greater your understanding of human behavior and communication, the more realistic your bad guys will be. Just don’t turn your back on one.  

Suggested Reading and Viewing 

Books

Six-Minute X-Ray: Rapid Behavior Profiling by Chase Hughes 

How To Analyze People: How To Read Anyone Like A Book by Madison Taylor

Confidential: Uncover Your Competitors’ Top Business Secrets Legally and Quickly—and Protect Your Own by John Nolan

Websites and Videos

Thebehaviorpanel.com features educational videos on behavioral analysis, communication and elicitation, deception detection, and interrogation. Participants are: 

Mark Bowden: truthplane.com

Chase Hughes: chasehughes.com
www.youtube.com/@chasehughesofficial 

Greg Hartley:  greghartley.com

Scott Rouse:  scottrouse.com

Scott & Greg:  bodylanguagetactics.com

Television and Movies

“Invisible Monsters: Serial Killers in America” (2021 Miniseries) 

The Serial Killers of “Invisible Monsters” | A&E (aetv.com)

“Monster” (2003 movie about Aileen Wuornos starring Charlize Theron)

“American Greed” (TV documentary series for students of human nature and behavior)

“Catch Me If You Can” (2002 movie about a con man)

Weston Smith’s HealthSouth video on the largest health care fraud in US history:  
https://youtu.be/rjgLRRoc_JU?si=FrfYJsN8WRHDd__2

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Venita Bonds is a retired RN with a background in intensive care and psychiatric nursing. She taught adult writing courses and worked for a defense contractor training human intelligence assets for deployment. The author of four historical novels, she now writes Southern Gothic mysteries and short stories. She was a Killer Nashville 2025 Claymore Award winner. She can be found at www.venitabonds.com.

Character as a Haunted House

By Aimee Hardy

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Establishing engaging and relatable characters is one of the most important parts of storytelling. Characters should have compelling backstories, relatable flaws, and fulfilling character arcs, but one of the best tools that I’ve learned about creating characters is to think of them like a haunted house. 

Each house has a facade that everyone sees. This is usually the most complimentary view of the house. Passersby can admire the paint, the sweeping porch, and the manicured lawn. Everything is usually neat and tidy, and all its secrets are safely locked away inside. Even haunted houses look best from the outside. 

Similarly, everyone sees certain aspects of a character. This is the image they present to society. It’s the suit jacket worn for status, the combat boots worn for protection, the high heels worn for seduction. It’s the gruff voice to establish dominance or the motherly coo to show nurturing, the helping hand they give when on the train or the kind words said at the gas station. These are the outward images that we must establish from the very beginning because they show how the character would like to be seen from the outside. 

Friends are allowed access inside the house, however. Acquaintances are invited in and can see the common rooms. Those rooms are still cultivated, yet they are a little more intimate. As acquaintances become friends or loved ones, they are invited further inside the house. They see the dishes that have been piled in the sink, the laundry that is overflowing, or the tub that is in need of a good scrub. In a haunted house, we can see the evidence of ghosts. We can hear strange footsteps, feel cold spots, and see apparitions, but we can’t quite determine what is haunting the house. 

Just as with houses, our characters will reveal more intimate details about themselves (and their own ghosts) as they make bonds with other characters and as we (the reader) get to know them in the story. We can see that they are kind by the way they treat their loved ones but that it hurts when no one says thank you. We can see that they are jealous of an adversary, but we can also see that it’s because they were never given the same opportunities to be great. We can see that they are smart but that they are terrified of losing their top spot. They become nuanced–both kind and resentful, jealous and righteous, smart and insecure. 

Then, there are rooms in this haunted house that are so scary that the main character would not dare to enter. These rooms contain the worst secrets that will not leave us alone, and with characters, these rooms contain their deepest fears. The kind and resentful mother might fear that she isn’t worthy of being loved. The jealous and righteous bully might be afraid of being weak or controlled by others. The smart but insecure scientist might fear they are useless. The main character is haunted by these fears and can’t move on until they confront their ghosts. 

So, when I write stories, I always ask what is haunting my main character. If they are worried that they have no identity, maybe they fill their “rooms” with collections. They might appear to know a lot of things in their search for their identity and might even adopt different identities as they interact with different characters. On the outside, they might overcompensate by wearing elaborate costumes or may even be so insecure that they only wear black. However you design your character, keep in mind that their house is haunted, and that in the end, their ghosts will have to come out. 

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Aimee Hardy is a writer and editor in Birmingham, AL. She is the author of Pocket Full of Teeth (September 2024 Running Wild Press). She has been published in Stonecoast Review, Running Wild Press’ Short Story Anthology, Havik2020, Bluntly Lit Mag, Adelaide Literary Magazine, and Lost Pilots Lit and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2020. She has a B.A. and M.A. in English from National University. When she’s not writing or editing, she enjoys going on hikes with her husband and two kids or curling up with a good book and a hot cup of tea. For more of Aimee’s work, please visit www.aimeehardy.com.