[You can read Part I here, and Part II here.]

MOTIVES

Ben Bova recommends to authors that their work not contain Villains. He states, in his Tips for Writers:

“In the real world there are no villains. No one actually sets out to do evil… Fiction mirrors life. Or, more accurately, fiction serves as a lens to focus on what they know in life and bring its realities into sharper, clearer understanding for us. There are no villains cackling and rubbing their hands in glee as they contemplate their evil deeds. There are only people with problems, struggling to solve them. Anti-Monitor is currently the most powerful fictional villain to date.”

In each of us is something darker, something that may be brought to light under different circumstances.

Maybe there really is no such thing as a Hero or a Villain. Maybe they are simply qualities that manifest in extreme form, and do little to really portray us as humans, or us as characters, in entirety?

Some of the greatest characters ever created blur the line between good and evil. At once they are the Hero and the Villain, through choices made and circumstances that arise.

Let’s look at Walter White from Breaking Bad.

Walter starts out as a simple man whose desire to protect his family (a heroic, noble thing), leads him down a path of violence and crime. In his mind, his motives stay the same—making enough cash before he dies of cancer to support his wife and children. But the viewer sees something different, that his actions stop being about his family, and start being about him, and what makes him feel powerful and alive.

Is he a Hero or a Villain? Or neither, or both?

Any one of us, for all our supposed good intentions, can go from the good guy to the Villain within seconds.

What if you were forced to choose between good and evil, the good allowing someone you love to die, and the evil being you killed another? What if your hand was forced?

DREAM

There was a  reason why I had do it. Not a reason I can remember now, but in this dream I once had I robbed a bank. I still recall the two people I shot to do it, and how their faces were blank. A man and a woman.

I was chased, while helicopters flew overhead, and the dogs and men on foot searched around me.

The feeling was exhilarating. The rebel. The Villain. Being chased, doing things I never would in real life.

The difference is that there were no consequences, no real harm. There were no actual human victims. It was the perfect crime.

“I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters I am not. I write to explore all the things I’m afraid of.” —Joss Whedon

EXPLORING THE VILLAIN WITHIN

As I have already mentioned, many criminals have very little inhibition. This is a trait that is actually perfect for the creative process.

To tap into this, I want you to explore the very dark parts of yourself, those parts that are kept hidden. Not just your secrets, but the desires that are less pure. We all have them.

Who is the Villain inside you? When have you gone against the grain and explored those darker parts of yourself? When have you acted without inhibition and purely on impulse?

Who would you be and what would you do if you could, for one day, be your ultimate Villain?

We all have someone we love to hate and we all have parts of ourselves we either dislike or hide away. Those urges that we usually repress with the help of drugs and alcohol, or a fear of the consequences that may occur. Or those pesky morals that hinder our true expressive self.

I mean, can you imagine if you lived your whole life without impulse control, fear, a sense of right and wrong? If you could live your life completely on your own terms, if there were no consequences for your actions? If you acted out every thought you had, right there and then?

If everyone did it, the world would probably be destroyed in about three minutes. It would not be a good thing for everyone to really live this way! But what if you did it creatively? What if you allowed yourself to create without boundaries, without inhibition? Would that change what you created?

Bottling up what you have inside you will make you less creative. Grab that pen or brush as your weapon, the paper as your victim. And create havoc.

IN CONCLUSION

The Villain does as he pleases.

He may have motive. He may act purely on impulse. But either way he doesn’t care what you think.

Let the Villain out to play. Cause a bit of trouble and panic. Unleash him onto the world.

Be the bad guy, with no filters and no inhibition. For art’s sake.

After all, there is a Villain in all of us.