Writing Female Villains

Not every book has a villain. This is especially true of picture books. But novels, and especially genre novels, often have villains. And young adult novels especially are great places to find strong, engaging villains. Books like An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir and Half Bad by Sally Green make use of evil parent figures which can be especially scary for teens. What do you do when the worst thing in your life is your parents?  In An Ember in the Ashes, the choice of the mother as villain is especially effective because it flies in the face of the view of mothers are nurturing and supportive. At the same time, the evil parent is relatable for most teens as well. What teen doesn’t think their parents are evil once in a while?

Dodging Stereotypes 

Strong villains often turn long-held stereotypes inside out. That doesn’t mean all female villain choices are automatically good ones. Beware the easy villain choices: popular girls are evil, big girls are bullies, ugly girls are sullen and full of hate, and pretty girls are smug and sneaky. These kinds of villains fall in two ways. On the one side, they assign goodness or badness based on looks, which is always a shallow and unfortunate choice. And they tend to be easy, and in writing, what is easy doesn’t tend to be either effective or interesting. Stereotypical villains are often one note. They lack believable motivation. Why are popular girls horrible? Because they have power! Why are big girls violent? Because they can! Boiling a villain’s motivations down to such simple things make for weak, easily forgettable villains. And we don’t want anything about our books to be forgettable. 

Why do writers fall for these kinds of bullies? Partly because they’re easy and therefore tempting to the writer who wants to focus on the hero, not the villain. And many of them harken to vague memories from the writer’s background, or from things they believed were generally true when they were young. Say you’re writing a book set in a school. Who would be the villain? Writers tend to lean on people who weren’t part of their group when they were young. They tend to lean on people who hurt their feelings or didn’t include them (surely for nefarious reasons). And many of us grew up in fairly clique-leaning schools, so we both admired and distrusted the popular kids when we were in school. Why not make them the shallow villain now? It’s either that or the mean teacher who made our lives hard. Or the rough looking kids who were probably never talked to at all, but they looked scary. As adult writers, we need to think about our characters with a more nuanced perspective, not the black-and-white thinking of adolescence. 

Nuance and Depth 

One way to create a really strong female villain is to think deeply about her and her motivations. Her motivation for each act committed in the story needs to be more than just being a terrible person. That kind of motivation leads to over-the-top responses that simply don’t feel believable. As an example, I’m going to go to a scene from outside books; let’s take a look at Stranger Things. In this series, there is a scene where the popular kid villains pick on the main female character, Eleven, simply because they can. She’s new, so she offers a new target for pointless, unmotivated cruelty. Probably the episode writer was scared of popular kids when they were in school. 

© Netflix

At any rate, the popular kids learn Eleven’s dad is dead and that he died saving people, and their reaction is to laugh at that and pick on her more. The scene falls flat because it’s simply not believable. These kids are kids. They aren’t robots from Mars programmed to act in evil ways. Real kids admire heroes. Real kids feel bad when someone’s dad dies. These kids were psychopaths, but psychopathology is not so common that you would get a big group of them at one school, and they’d hang out together. The point of the scene was to make us hope Eleven did something awful to these awful kids without thinking too much about it. 

But as writers, we need to think about it. We need to create characters who do things for believable reasons. Now, obviously, you may not spell out every element of your reasoning behind the character’s motivation. But if you don’t know those reasons. If they aren’t in your head. Then you’ll craft characters that feel fake and act in unlikely ways simply because it’s convenient for the writing goal you have for the scene. And that’s a writing fail. 

Villains who are simply terrible people feel flat and unbelievable. Morality is complicated and your villain can reflect that. To that villain, her choices need to feel perfectly reasonable and valid.  

Deeper and Deeper 

A great villain will have backstory. Again, we may not learn all of the character’s backstory. Marissa Meyer’s fantastic villain Levana has reasons for her evil deeds. We don’t agree with what she does, but we recognize that she’s behaving from a place where her life has thrust her. She’s known bullying. She’s bears scars. She’s been called ugly. She feels unloved and unlovable, and she uses magic to give herself what she feels she’s been robbed of. We can understand that even if we don’t accept it as right. 

Another fantastic villain, Queen Katharine from Kendare Blake’s Three Dark Crowns has been badly mistreated. She wants revenge. And we can understand why. That doesn’t mean we like what she does. But it feels motivated by the combination of what she’s been through and the power she’s ultimately given. It feels true to her. 

Engaging In Their Scenes 

If you want to create a villain that readers will remember, think of ways to make your villain engaging. Readers should enjoy reading this villain, even if they are also cheering for her downfall. Some of that will come through dialogue. Great villains often have great dialogue. They may be funny. They may be quick and smart. They often have lines that are memorable such as, “off with her head!” along with “and your little dog too.” The best villains don’t sound like anyone else in the story. They are totally unique. 

Often a good villain’s words can seem almost reasonable until you match them with their actions. Consider the Other Mother from Coraline. She might seem nice at first, but with everything she does and everything she says, you can feel that slightly off quality. And eventually it becomes very clear indeed. 

© Mouse Circus, Neil Gaiman

Consider the line: ‘And then we’ll all be together as one big, happy family,’ said her other mother. ‘Forever and always.'” On the surface it sounds lovely. It’s exactly what a child who is feeling neglected and unloved wants to hear. But what real, healthy mother tells her child they’ll be together forever? Real parents know children will grow up and move on, but not the Other Mother. She isn’t offering love. She’s offering confinement. 

This kind of slight twisting of a good thing is a great way to handle dialogue with a villain who is pretending to be good. For one, it gives you a place to go with the character. Don’t use up the maximum villainy right away because a good villain has a kind of arc, just as a good plot does. Start them off with room to grow in their villainy, but also, even when they are supposedly “good,” be sure to give them a dash of “not quite right.” Too much of a good thing is a huge red flag for readers, even if the characters don’t get it. When readers hear of a house made of gingerbread and candy, it sounds good, but maybe too good. So, when the kindly old lady comes out to coax the children inside, readers are already saying, “No, don’t go,” before the oven door is ever opened.  

Build Your Villains Wisely 

A good female villain grows on you as you create her. At first you may think you know her, but dig deeper, imagine more. Craft backstory, not so you can feed it to the reader, but so that this villain becomes real to you. Give her a voice, one that is unique, compelling and consistent. And ask yourself constantly if this person would do this thing in this moment, so you know your villain is grounded in who she really is. Do that, and your story’s villains will have the kind of strength and depth that makes them worthy of the page. And who knows, maybe she’ll be in a “wicked” cool musical some day! 

Related Articles for Engaging Characters

• Middle Grade Characters: Beyond Likeability
• The Forge for Your Characters
• People Aren’t Perfect – Your Characters Shouldn’t Be Either