KN Magazine: Articles
FIVE KEYS TO CREATING BELIEVABLE VILLAINS
Believable villains aren’t built on pure evil—they’re shaped by humanity, vulnerability, justification, body language, and the people around them. In this craft article, Venita Bonds explores five essential keys that help writers create multidimensional antagonists who feel disturbingly real.
By Venita Bonds
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
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.
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