5 Ways To Make Your Villains Really Frightening

In the realm of storytelling, heroes and villains illustrate the contrasting light and darkness in our lives. They are equally powerful and play an important in our daily lives so we can categorize events as being either good or bad. These concepts are personified via hero and villain characters in our screenplays.

 - There’s more to villains than a simple good/bad dichotomy

Villains are also a way to help us cope with the dangers, fears, and uncertainty in the world. Some villains we can subdue and some we have to accept and avoid them whenever we can. They are a way to unite us against a common enemy and allow us to discover the depth of our strength and resolve to combat danger.

Heroes and villains are generally represented as different characters in films and televisions shows. However, on a deeper level, they are frequently manifestations of opposing and conflicting aspects of the main character to enrich the story. They exist on a continuum as a character evolves, but also side by side.

 - Villains represent the corruption and loss of morality, purpose and goal the heroes initially had

Villains therefore come in different levels of badness. Many audiences are attracted to supervillains because they are the embodiment of evil. Their relative lack of morality and remorsefulness make them really frightening. And therein, lies their allure because there is little chance of rehabilitation or compromise. They are confident and determined. They embrace their evil and have dismissed good as a weakness.

Writing terrifying villains can be deceptive, because they can come across as flat since they exhibit only a small core group of traits. Making your villains scary isn’t a license to write them as one-dimensional. Although they appear to have fully embraced the dark side, they must still have a tiny glimmer of hope in them – a hidden ounce of humanity – no matter how unlikely.

Think about what characters like LOKI and Michael Myers were like before they hit that critical juncture to dedicate themselves to evil. After all. the devil was once an angel – banished from heaven.

We’ve previously written several articles on writing villains and how to make them more understandable, sympathetic, and acceptable to audiences. These can be referred to as “tainted” villains – characters that can be reformed once they see the flaws in their thinking. But there are some villains that embody pure evil and chaos for the sake of it. They are truly scary because they only serve to scare and taunt audiences into submission.

Here are some ways to make your audience cower in fear:

1) Reputation

Villains have generally established a reputation for themselves whether it be through a palpable trail of death and destruction, or a legend as in the case of rarely-seen monster or curse. Consider the super threat of a villain like The Terminator. “It can be stopped. It cannot be destroyed. It cannot be reasoned with.” Some beasts can’t be tamed.

You can also prime your audience with a villain’s reputation by giving them a taste of things to come. Show your villain fooling around with a scaled-down version of the mayhem they are about to release as a prelude to their power.

You may also initially present your villain as a mild-mannered individual like Jeffrey Dahmer to make it very difficult for the other characters to believe they could ever perform such atrocities – except for the one that knows the truth.

2) Capability

Villains need to demonstrate that they can deliver on their promises and are more than an idle threat. They need to have the wherewithal and expertise to execute their plans. This can be shown in your stories by describing the highly-destructive weapons they possess in their cadre as well as their track record. We need to know their past actions will lead the way to future actions.

Writers must also demonstrate that a villain is one step ahead of those that might stop them by evading capture on numerous occasions.

We also need to understand how they interact with their allies to be convinced that they have an army big enough to carry out their plan. They can promise them great things irrespective of whether they can deliver on not. Will they betray them or will they share their power as promised?

3) Complete Control

These villains generally hold the upper hand most (if not all) of the time. They instill a sense of hopelessness in the other characters so overcoming them becomes increasingly impossible.

Villains have spent a long time planning their actions and have accounted for every conceivable obstacle, so the hero has to constantly play catchup to formulate a plan to defeat them.

They must also always be at ideological loggerheads with the hero, so any compromise is unlikely. Both sides fight to the bitter end.

Writers must also demonstrate that the villain knows the hero’s weaknesses and secrets and how to best exploit them.

4) Ruthless

Being ruthless is more than act of survival for a villain. They don’t simply meet an opponent with commensurate force to win. They use gratuitous and cruel force to assert their sadistic strength and dominance and act as a reminder not to challenge them.

Apart from not showing any remorse, your villain should enjoy watching the main character suffer needlessly. They might taunt, punish, and torture them to appreciate the danger they’re in. Sometimes, villains let heroes watch them torture their loved ones for an extra sting with a sinister laugh. TV shows of warring drug cartels are prime examples.

Not only do villains ignore normal human emotions such as pity or compassion, their delight is directly proportional to the damage they inflict.

5) Face To Face

Make your come physically confront the villain after a prolonged period of searching for them. Their first meeting must be terrifying so writers could give the villain a frightening look, sound, and stature. Up until that point, you may have only seen portions of your villain such as a menacing hand or a long shadow to conceal the real nature and level of threat.

Relish the buildup leading to the great reveal where their true motives and power are unleashed.

Villains often have inner rage which may not always be expressed in angry outbursts. Consider the calm, erudite villain who inflicts pain and suffering with a smile on their face and spring in their step without a major showdown such as Hannibal Lecter. It’s their worldview and belief system more than their actions that make them even scarier.