The villain is often viewed as a necessary evil in our stories. They’re created for the sole purpose of messing up our hero’s life and don’t have much of a role beyond that. Sometimes we even create a villain without any redeeming qualities so our readers are naturally attracted to our heroes. Writing our villains this way can feel forced or boring as we ignore their character development and shape them to fit our plot. 

But what if I told you that villains were more than just antagonists and had deeper, more complex roles? In fact, the villain is one of the most important characters you’ll write because they drive the tension, plot, and growth of our heroes. Without the villain, your hero isn’t a hero.

So how do you write a villain you love? A villain that’s interesting, engaging, and maybe even likable. They exist to inspire your plot instead of filling the holes, and sometimes they’re more fun to write than your hero. Here are some ways to write a villain that you and your readers love. 

Give your villain someone to love (who loves them back) 

Nothing humanizes a character more than showing love for someone. Just knowing that a character cares for someone else demonstrates their vulnerability and humanity. It also provides that character with depth so they’re not one-dimensional or a cliché. 

Giving your villain someone to love can also provide context for their goals, motivations, or actions. It can help readers sympathize or relate with the villain if they understand they’re driven by love for another person. Or it can provide a source of conflict or tension if the villain and hero love the same person. 

Once you give your villain someone to love, consider setting that character up to love your villain back. If someone else loves your villain, they become a more sympathetic and intriguing character. It’s similar to the concept of social proof—the psychological and social experience where people mimic the actions of other people in order to exhibit the “correct” behavior in a given situation. If readers witness another character showing affection towards your villain, they might be more inclined to appreciate your villain. 

If you decide to go this route, I recommend giving your villain someone or something animated to love. A villain who loves their family or a pet is more interesting than a villain who loves money or a philosophical idea. The person or pet doesn’t need to make an appearance in the story; they can be an offscreen character that your villain reflects on or thinks about. They can even be a major component of the villain’s backstory. 

Include their backstory

Villains are individuals and while they drive tension and conflict, it doesn’t define them. They have their own thoughts, habits, memories, weaknesses, pet peeves, etc. They’re also influenced by events in their past that inform their emotional, physical, and psychological responses. 

To help reveal these past events and give context to the events in your story, it’s important to develop your villain’s backstory. This can include defining moments from their childhood, an encounter with the protagonist, or their life before the main action of your story. These moments can help you develop their thoughts, feelings, actions, motivations—pretty much everything! Their backstory is also the key for why they’re antagonizing your hero. 

I recommend sketching out your villain’s backstory as if they’re the protagonist of their own story. Creating them as an individual character, not just a foil for your hero, can help unlock their inner workings and avoid clichés. Develop your villain without thinking about what you need from them in order to make your plot work. Let their personalities reveal where potential conflicts may arise. 

It’s the writer’s choice on how and when you want to include a villain’s backstory in the larger work. Be careful not to include their full backstory as this could slow down your pacing or detract from your hero’s story. Instead, gradually reveal their backstory throughout and use it to give context to certain events. Try to show, rather than tell, the villain’s backstory through dialogue, memories, or keeping the action in the current timeline. 

Mirror your hero

One technique to help create a compelling and well-developed villain is to have their journey parallel the hero’s journey. Some of the most interesting villains in literature have the same goals as the hero, however they’ve chosen a different way to achieve them. A classic example is Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. Both are powerful characters that can wield the force, but have chosen different ways to use their gift. 

That’s the key though—they choose to achieve their goals and use their gifts in a certain way. Darth Vader’s journey is a reflection or prediction of Luke’s fate if he chose to use the force differently. 

Here’s where you get to have some fun when writing your villain. All of the things that you love about your hero you can exaggerate or intensify in your villain. For example, maybe your hero loves to read, however would stop short at stealing an ancient tome from a library. Your villain could also love to read but chooses to steal the book instead. While your hero may need to practice restraint for the good of the story, you can let your villain run wild and see where it takes them. 

An unrestrained villain holds up a mirror to your hero and shows them the consequences of their choices. Your hero may see themselves in your villain and worry they could end up the same way. This could give your hero motivation to make certain decisions or avoid certain actions. Meanwhile, giving you room to explore what it looks like on the other side with your villain.

Ginnye Lynn Cubel is a writer, podcast host, and coffee enthusiast. She is working on her first novel Ophelium, a dark and magical take on the story of Ophelia and the repercussions of insanity. You can follow along on her website or on Twitter and Instagram.

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Plenty of kidlit books show kids disobeying, or even being straight-up subversive. In general, kids eat these books up and ask for more.

This desire can make the adults in their lives very, very nervous.  “We shouldn’t be teaching our kids that it’s okay to misbehave,” they say.  Some parents prefer to keep those books out of the hands of children at all.  Even writers might avoid creating child characters who are wildly and unapologetically disobedient because they are afraid of giving kids “bad role models.”  Numerous books have caught a lot of flak for that very thing.

But if all our bad characters suddenly became accommodating and sweet, that would be a loss for our children. There is a reason these books are so appealing.

Why Kids Love Bad Kid Characters

Have you ever stopped and really listened to what children hear so much of their day?

No, don’t eat your peas with your fingers.
Put that bug down and wash your hands.
Stop poking your sister’s arm. For the hundredth time.

Life is a veritable flood of no’s.  And yes, it’s often for their safety (and our sanity), but through literature, children get to experience the thrill of defiance–and thus independence– safely, without paying the price of it.  The very kids who love these books so much, in fact, are often the ones who would never actually do any of the things in the story.  And that’s the point.

Bad Characters Serve Many Purposes

In Horn Book Magazine, the article, “Doing the Crime without Doing the Time” emphasizes that this desire to explore disobedience is developmentally normal and states, “So rather than try out naughtiness, children turn to book characters who actually do what they themselves have only dreamt about. Living vicariously is the perfect alternative” (Angotti  96).

Furthermore, adults who read about these “bad” characters with their children or students have a great jumping off place for discussions (not lectures!) about why the characters made the choices they did and what the child readers thought about it. The conversation can include what kind of consequences occurred and sometimes, if the book is realistic, the answer might be: none.

Bad Characters Have Wide Appeal

Besides, bad characters don’t just appeal to children. Think about your favorite characters.  How many of them are villains?  My friend named her dog after Dexter. Another friend had a life-sized Darth Vader poster on her door for years. Dracula has spawned how many books about vampires, sparkly and otherwise?  And millions have loved Scarlet O’Hara with her unflinching and unapologetic hatred of the kind and gentle Melanie.  I sure did.  Scarlet was fascinating.

So why should children’s books be devoid of interesting characters?  Frankly, characters who always do what they are told are boring, no matter how old they are. There’s no conflict, and thus, no story.  If all our children’s books had titles like Everyone Shares so Nicely! would kids love bedtime stories so much?

Want to Write a Bad Kid Character?

This is tricky to do well, so it might take several tries to hit the right balance. Let me state up front, if  characters like these really get on your nerves, don’t write about them.  The reader will pick up on your distaste and it will reflect on their impressions of your character.  But if you want to give it a shot, first of all, observe some children. This sounds obvious, but it’s painfully clear that not all writers do this.  Kids are smart.  There is usually some kind of logic behind their “bad behavior.”  It might be that someone took something of theirs.  It might be that they know if they don’t hide the evidence of their candy gorging, they will lose TV for a week.  Or maybe they woke up early and missed nap—adults get cranky when they are hungry and tired, too.  So there are actual reasons why kids misbehave and you need to help your readers understand why this child is acting this way.

In a similar vein, keep the character sympathetic in some way, even if it is just the kid needing a hug at the end of the story. The children in Captain Underpants have to deal with a truly obnoxious principal. If the principal had been a super cool guy who loved kids, we would not be cheering for the boys who trick him. So we’ve got to have some reason to root for the character or like them or understand them, at the very least.

Finally, it’s critical to read a lot of the books with these kinds of characters. Just like with any writing venture, you need to know what’s been done, so you can do something fresh and unique that only you could write.

Take a Risk and Try Some Good Bad Kid Stories

So take a deep breath and try one of these books for kids with protagonists who aren’t afraid to get in trouble:

Picture books:

• No, David! by David Shannon. This modern series of picture books are adored by young children everywhere. (Speaking of Dracula, David’s teeth look absolutely vampiric, I think.)
• Where the Wild Things Are by the brilliant Maurice Sendak. For his bad behavior, Max gets sent to bed without his supper. Does he sit in his room and cry? Not our Max.  Instead, he goes on an amazing adventure and becomes King of the Wild Things (and still gets his supper, in the end.)  A classic that upset many people at the time of its publication and helped change the face of children’s literature.
• 11 Experiments That Failed, by Jenny Offill and Nancy Carpenter. Food dissolving into shoes; bottles flooding the toilet: Curious George meets Ramona Quimby in this fun science sleuthing story.

Middle Grade, listed from younger to older audiences:

• Bad Kitty–As advertised, this cat created by Nick Bruel disobeys repeatedly (and hilariously), but the stories end on a sweet note. If you aren’t sure about this whole let-them-read-bad-characters-idea, this is a good book series to start with.
• Captain Underpants—This graphic novel series was the top challenged book in 2013 and 2012. (Read about all the hubbub here). I admit I don’t love the potty humor or the boys’ attitudes as they manipulate their caveman of a principal, but children do—and they read and reread this series.
• Calvin and Hobbes—Yes, the comic strip. The precocious-but-perpetually-in-trouble little boy with his wise tiger has caught the hearts of every generation since he was first created.
• Harry Potter—Before you accuse me of blasphemy, consider that Harry breaks rules all the time and rarely suffers negative consequences for it. He may not be the traditional “bad character” but if you want to throw stones at characters for lying, cheating or defiance, you have to consider Harry does it all. In fact, just try to count how many times you see the phrase “Harry lied.”  And then keep reading.

Bad characters help kids explore their world. But aside from all the psychology, they are also just fun, entertaining stories.  They get kids excited to read.  That’s good enough for me.  Feel free to enjoy these books with your kids or students!

Mischief managed.

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Work Cited:

Angotti, Jessica. “Committing the Crime With Out Doing the Time.”  Horn Book Magazine, Mar/Apr2010, Vol. 86 Issue 2, p92-96, 5p. (Article), Database: Literary Reference Center

All other books and articles referenced are hyperlinked within article.

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Amy holds a Masters of Library Science along with a certification in school librarianship.  She is a former reading and English teacher, mostly for 6^th-8^th graders.  Her debut book, FAIRY KEEPER, is an upper-middle-grade fantasy, now available from Curiosity Quills Press.  She currently lives in Germany with her family, though they still call Texas home. Her daughters are 9 and 11 years old. As you might imagine, middle grade books are a hot commodity around their house.

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