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.

Police and Bribes

By D.L. Williams

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Chances are you’re going to write about a dirty cop if you are penning mystery or thriller stories. Graft is, heartbreakingly, an ugly reality of police work, and it certainly merits attention from mystery and thriller writers. We write conflict, after all, and there are few things more controversial than a cop willing to take a bribe. 

In my honest and broad experience, corrupt cops are in the significant minority. Most officers are conscientious, ethical people who do good work, but some cops are worse than a suspicious rectal polyp. Taking dishonest officers to task through your writing is one way to fight against corruption, so I encourage you to dive in. Let’s talk about it.

When I was twelve years old, I secretly borrowed a book off my father’s shelf. The story I chose was entitled Serpico, a decidedly R-rated book, not intended for juvenile audiences. Dad didn’t realize for years I’d read that book. Alas, it changed my life.

Serpico is the story of a real police officer by the name of Francesco Vincent Serpico who worked in New York City during the 1960s and ‘70s. NYPD was awash in corruption during that period, and Serpico rose to fame by his refusal to ever take a bribe or even a free meal at a diner. His colleagues distrusted him because he wouldn’t play along, and this led to him being set up for murder by fellow officers. He survived, through the bullet that blasted his skull hastened the end of his career.

I was mesmerized, and I admired Serpico’s courage so much I decided before turning the last page that I would one day be an honest cop. He is the reason I went into police work, and I hope I’ve done honor to his legacy. 

I don’t know a single officer on the job for more than a few months who hasn’t been offered some type of bribe. This is anathema to the honorable spirit of professional policing, but the offers do come. Over the years I’ve been offered piles of money, sex, concert tickets, and cars. On one occasion, a fellow I’d arrested for driving while intoxicated offered me a villa complete with a maid and lovely garden in Mexico, my name free and clear on the title, if I’d let him out of my squad car and let him walk home. 

Turned out he had plenty of money to do that, and he really did own a little house on some acreage south of the border. It was his sixth arrest for DWI. The judge had told him he’d go to prison if he ever got caught driving drunk again the last time he was in trouble. He was terrified of going to the actual “big house,” and I think he would have gnawed through the inside of my squad car if he thought he could escape custody. I’ve occasionally wondered about that little house, but I never considered taking him up on the offer. 

The first time I was ever offered a bribe was during the traffic stop of a middle-aged Hispanic man driving an old pickup truck. I can’t recall why I stopped him, but I have a vivid memory of him holding a $100 bill in his left hand as I approached the driver’s side. The message was clear: take the money and leave me alone. 

I’d venture to guess that one-hundred-dollar bill was about the only money he had in the world, probably his payment for days of labor. He was shaking in fear, and I felt sad that he believed his first action upon being stopped should be to bribe an officer. How pitiful that a laborer just trying to feed his family was so panicked about being pulled over by a cop that he offered me his grocery money. I gave him a warning and sent him on his way. 

Two weeks later, a patrol officer working in an adjacent town just north of where I’d pulled over that laborer was arrested for taking a bribe. The State Police had gotten wind that he was shaking down Mexican workers for cash, so they set up a sting with Hispanic officers dressed like farm workers driving battered pickup trucks. The crooked officer took the bait and went to jail. Fantastic! 

Which makes me wonder if that fellow I stopped had already heard about the corrupt officer working that area and assumed I was in on it. Corrupt officers harm us. They make good officers look bad in the eyes of the very people who need their help most of all. 

Sex is also offered more often than you might imagine. I lost count of the number of times a woman (and every so often a man) suggested coyly, “Is there anything I can do [to avoid arrest or citation]? Some were even more overt, casually offering variations of sex if I would let them go. 

For the record, no. 

Temptation is always lurking around the next traffic stop, and I’m not so naïve that I don’t realize some officers cave. I can simultaneously understand why and scorn them for it. Lust and greed are listed among the deadly sins for a reason, and weakness exists even among the toughest out there. 

Corruption in police circles tends to start on the low end of the sinister spectrum. Maybe it’s taking the offer of free food at a restaurant or accepting access to a private hunting lease for the weekend in exchange for letting a speeding motorist off with a warning. 

You could say, “No big deal,” but it is. Those freebies are like a gateway drug, and at some point, the officer who took one “hit” will rationalize doing it again. 

Humans must be the best animal on the planet for rationalizing acts we know to be wrong. We can talk ourselves out of going to the gym two weeks after the newest round of New Year’s resolutions. We can justify that second piece of cake or that “just one more” drink. One of the things we’re best at legitimizing is taking something that doesn’t belong to us.

This is especially true when someone is in financial straits. Those credit card bills keep mounting, the mortgage and car payments are overdue, your kid had to go to the ER last month, and the after-insurance invoice is a whopper. Desperation is the destroyer of ethics, especially when it comes to money.

Corruption among police officers is analogous to the dynamics of white-collar fraud. Those cases always involve three elements: Access, trust, and an ability to rationalize a deed unworthy of that trust. A hedge fund manager who embezzles from his clients has access to the funds, the trust of his clients, and an ethical platform built on dry sand. 

The same holds true for officers who take bribes. They have access to a person who can provide something they need or want such as cash, sex, or entry into a lifestyle they only imagined before. They have the general trust of the public and supervisors. And, if they have turned to the proverbial dark side, they’re able to justify their actions so they don’t feel like the dirty cop they’ve become. 

Cops aren’t paid what they’re worth relative to exposure to danger, the job requirement that they make critical decisions for strangers based on inadequate information, the hate they endure on a daily basis, and all the PTSD-inducing moments they experience over the course of a career. Here’s the thing; they know they’re not paid what they’re worth, and this starts to chafe souls after a while. It’s a great career, and I am so glad I was able to do it, but I never believed my fellow officers and I were being paid for the true value of our work. 

This sense of being undervalued creates a danger zone; cops grind their teeth and lose sleep over bills, all while knowing they’ll suit up and jump back into a societal fire for which society will never truly appreciate them. It gnaws on some officers, bending their morality until they can no longer remember that they swore to protect and serve the public, and that they vowed to do so in an honorable fashion. 

Think of all the emotions you would experience if you were driven to shoplift. Shame comes to mind, but so does the thrill of being naughty. Add to that a sense of indignation: “They should have hired more security guards…added more surveillance cameras…not placed something so valuable right by the exit doors. Shame on them.” 

It’s the embezzlement triad all over again: Access (not enough security precautions and a thing of value placed where it can easily be stolen), the basic trust every store operator must have for customers, and rationalization of the act (e.g., “That company is so big, they factor in petty theft to their bottom line.”) 

Writers shouldn’t defend corrupt officers, but knowing how and why such bad acts occur should be part of your creative palette. Perhaps your dirty cop wasn’t always corrupt. Showing your readers how and why he came to take bribes is an extraordinary tool in character building. We all talk about not creating one-dimensional characters. Here is an opportunity to create more dimensions and, thus, more compelling personalities. 

Dirty cops have betrayed the badge and no longer belong in the ranks. Ethics and honor are everything in a profession where a big chunk of the job is confronting others who have lost their ethical way. Such officers are hurting, and they’ve bent to the pressure. I get it, but I will never abide a fellow officer succumbing to temptation. Having sworn officers simultaneously taking bribes and arresting people for doing unscrupulous acts is untenable. So, write about police corruption, making sure you offer your readers characters who are flawed, multi-dimensional, and deliciously bad. Onward. 

Twists and Reveals: The Art of Keeping Your Readers Guessing

By Claire Cooper

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An interesting plot and intriguing characters are key ingredients to keep readers turning the pages of any work of fiction. But if you’re writing thrillers, crime, mysteries, or suspense, twists and reveals can be the secret sauce that turns a good story into a great one.

The two terms are often used interchangeably, but twists and reveals are quite different things. What are they? How do you construct them? And most importantly of all, what needs to be in place for them to work well?

The difference between twists and reveals

A reveal is just what it sounds like—new information that answers an important question. 

It might be the central question of the plot (who’s the killer?). Or it could be a nugget that brings the reader closer to solving the mystery (that dodgy guy who’s been stalking our heroine is her long-lost brother).

A reveal is essential to any whodunnit. Lucy Foley’s The Hunting Party is a classic example—there’s a cast of characters, one of whom is the murderer. The set-up has readers poring over every word, searching for clues to the killer’s identity. When it comes, the reveal is beautifully satisfying.

And while that happens at the end of the story, there are other, smaller reveals along the way. They keep things interesting, provide clues, and allow the reader to form theories about what’s happening. 

Like reveals, twists also impart information—but that’s not all. That information turns everything the reader previously thought they knew on its head.

That creates an exciting reading experience. And it also means readers will recommend your book to all their friends, because they’ll be desperate for other people to talk to about it.

Gone Girl is perhaps the most famous example of a twist in a modern psychological thriller. At the start, it reads as a well-written but conventional mystery: a woman has gone missing, her husband is under suspicion. Has he killed her?

But halfway through, we’re presented with new and shocking information. Everything we thought we knew was wrong. And we’re faced with a different set of questions to keep us reading.

Twists appear in classic crime, too. Agatha Christie’s After the Funeral has one of the most brilliantly constructed twists I’ve ever read. No spoilers: if you haven’t read it, put that right ASAP.

What is it that makes some twists and reveals work so well? And what goes wrong when they fall flat?

Writing a great reveal

Both twists and reveals play on the contract between author and reader. Some people refer to this as the “story promise,” the set-up that tells the reader what to expect if they decide to read the book.

Reveals honor that promise. Twists are an unexpected bonus (although the prevalence of twists in modern fiction means they’re not always unexpected—more on that later).

The reveal in The Hunting Party works so well because it offers readers exactly what they wanted when they started reading the book: they find out who the killer is.

Other reveals along the way answer some questions while posing others, keeping the tension high throughout. At the end, everything is resolved—and crucially, it fits together and makes sense.

That logic is essential. Part of the delight of reading a whodunnit is trying to work out the answer for ourselves. With the best books we fail, whilst knowing we could have succeeded, if only we’d spotted all the clues.

When a reveal goes wrong

When reveals fall flat, on the other hand, it’s often because new information comes out of the blue. There’s no way a reader could have worked it out. And there’s no pay-off for our concentration because nothing we’ve read until that point is relevant. We feel cheated.

The same goes for a reveal that feels implausible. While it could happen in real life, it feels too unlikely to be satisfying. It doesn’t fit comfortably with the world as it’s presented in the book.

Classic reveal fails can be guilty of one or both of these sins. Revealing that a character has an identical twin, say, or that a huge chunk of plot has been a dream—both feel like the author isn’t taking us seriously.

Yes, we know that identical twins exist; and yes, people dream. But if we haven’t been given any clues about what’s going on, the author has essentially been wasting our time. And even if the clues have been seeded, it’s hard to feel that the writer hasn’t taken an easy way out. 

The key to a successful twist

The same rules apply to a twist. It has to make sense. It has to be plausible. And it has to tie into what’s been presented before.

But with the twist, that final criterion is especially difficult to pull off. As writers, we need to lead our readers in the wrong direction, while still playing fair. Our characters can say things that aren’t true—they can be unreliable narrators. But we ourselves can never lie.

In Gone Girl, the twist is set up by the way we’re persuaded to think about the two main characters. One character reveals they’re lying to the police—they must have something to hide. We hear from the other in a context that makes it seem impossible that they’re lying.

That belief colors our interpretation of everything else. When it’s flipped on its head, we realize all our preconceptions are wrong.

The twist here works at a meta level, too. It changes our whole perception of the kind of book we’re reading. The story promise we thought we were being presented with at the beginning is something else entirely. 

That’s a risky approach. But with Gone Girl, it works because it’s so exciting. You thought you were getting something good—but you’re getting something even better.

With Agatha Christie’s After the Funeral, the twist is set up so subtly you don’t notice it’s been done. Not only are we misdirected, we congratulate ourselves for having worked something out for ourselves. What we don’t discover until right at the end is that we got it completely wrong. 

And Christie achieves that while only presenting us with the facts of the story. It’s a masterclass in misdirection.

The role of planning in constructing your twist or reveal

I’d argue that planning is essential to constructing both twists and reveals—even if, for pantsers, it only kicks in at the editing stage.

That planning starts with a clear story promise, the question that will be answered by the end of the book. That gives you the substance for your big reveal. 

To get there, there’ll be other questions that need to be answered. And those mini-reveals should pose new questions, too.

Also crucial is to decide what to reveal when. A good rule of thumb is to release important information at the last possible moment, only when readers need it to make sense of what happens next. Reveal it too soon, and suspense will leak away.

If you’re including a twist, you need to walk a tightrope. On one hand, your reader needs enough information that the twist will make perfect sense. On the other hand, you need to disguise that information in a way that doesn’t allow your reader to spot what’s coming.

There are lots of different ways you can do that. Here are a few:

• Have a character tell the truth, but make them appear so untrustworthy that your reader won’t believe them

• Have a character who lies but appears honest 

• Include red herrings

• Slip out crucial facts alongside revelations that appear more important, so your reader focuses on the wrong thing.

Finally, think about where you want your twist to appear. The only rule here is not to have it happen too soon: you need your reader to have developed a clear (and wrong) idea of what they think is happening for it to have real impact. 

The role of the twist in book marketing

Once upon a time, a twist was a relatively rare thing. These days, in genres like psychological thrillers, it’s almost expected. 

That presents some challenges. If readers suspect a twist is coming, they’ll be on their guard. And some people complain that blurbs mentioning a twist distract them from the story, diverting their attention to trying to spot it. 

It’s a fair point. But it’s also true that a great twist can be the thing that gets readers talking about a book. That, of course, means more sales—and what marketing department or indie author can afford to ignore that?

If savvy readers looking out for a twist are wise to the usual tactics, it’s up to us as authors to respond. Either we find ways to execute those tactics so brilliantly that we still bamboozle our readers, or we come up with new tactics altogether.

That’s pretty daunting—but it’s exciting too. I for one can’t wait for the next book with a “mind-blowing twist!”

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Claire Cooper grew up in a small village in Wales before moving to London as a student. She was a civil servant for 17 years, but hung up her bowler hat when she discovered that she much preferred writing about psychotic killers to Ministerial speeches. She lives in London with her husband and a pond full of very cute newts, and also writes as C. J. Cooper. Her latest book, "The Elevator" is set in New York, Bristol and London, and includes lots of reveals (and maybe one or two twists!). It was published on August 25th.