("because if I see one more war criminal with a sad diary entry get a redemption arc, I’m gonna throw my laptop.")

Here’s the thing: your villain doesn’t need to be redeemable. But they do need to make sense.

And I mean sense beyond "they’re evil and they monologue about it." Or “they have a tragic past, so now they do murder <3.” Or “they were right all along, the hero just couldn’t see it 🥺.”

Let’s fix that.

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🧠 STEP ONE: BUILD A LOGIC SYSTEM THAT ISN’T OURS Your villain shouldn’t just be wrong, they should have their own internal system that works for them. Morally flawed? Absolutely. But coherent.

Ask yourself:

What do they value more than anything? (Power? Order? Loyalty? Vengeance?)

What do they believe about the world, and how did they get there?

What fear drives them? What future do they think they’re trying to prevent?

The villain doesn’t need to know they’re wrong. But you should.

Make their logic airtight. even if it’s awful. Give them cause and effect.

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👿 STEP TWO: STOP GIVING THEM THE BETTER IDEOLOGY Listen. I love a “morally gray” moment as much as anyone. But if your villain is making all the good points and the hero’s just like “no because that’s mean,” your arc is upside down.

If your villain is critiquing injustice, oppression, or inequality, make sure their methods are the problem, not their entire worldview.

✖︎ WRONG: Villain: “The ruling class is corrupt.” Hero: “That’s not nice.”

✔︎ RIGHT: Villain: “The ruling class is corrupt, so I’m burning the city and everyone in it.” Hero: “So you’re just… committing genocide now?”

Your villain can touch a real issue. Just don’t let them be the only one talking about it, or solving it with horror movie logic.

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🔪 STEP THREE: GIVE THEM POWER THAT COSTS THEM The best villains lose things too. They’re not just untouchable horror dolls in sexy coats. They make bad choices and pay for them. That’s where the drama lives.

Examples:

They isolate themselves.

They sacrifice people they love.

They get what they want, and it destroys them.

They know they’re the monster, and choose it anyway.

If your villain can kill a dozen people and feel nothing, that’s not scary. That’s boring. Let them bleed. Let them regret it. Let them double down anyway.

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🧱 STEP FOUR: MAKE THEM PART OF THE WORLD, NOT OUTSIDE IT Villains shouldn’t feel like they were patched in from another genre. They should be part of the world’s logic, culture, class system, history. They should reflect something about the setting.

Villains that slap:

The advisor who upheld the regime until they decided they deserved to rule.

The noble who’s using war to reclaim stolen legacy.

The ex-hero who thinks the system can’t be saved, only reset.

The priest who truly believes the gods demand blood.

They’re not just evil, they’re a product of the same world the hero is trying to save.

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👁 STEP FIVE: SHOW US THEIR SELF-JUSTIFICATION You don’t need a tragic backstory™. But you do need to show us why they think they’re right. Not just with exposition, through action.

Let us watch them:

Protect someone.

Choose their goal over safety.

Justify the unjustifiable to a character who loves them.

Refuse to change, even when given a chance.

A villain who looks into the mirror and goes “Yes. I’m correct.” is 1000x scarier than one who sobs into a journal and says “I’m so broken 🥺.”

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🧨 BONUS ROUND: DON’T MAKE THEM A HATRED MEGAPHONE Especially if you’re writing marginalized characters: don’t let your villain become a mouthpiece for slurs, abuse, or extremism just to make them “evil enough.” That’s lazy. And harmful.

You don’t need real-world hate speech to build a dark character. You need power, consequence, and intent.

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TL;DR: Good villains don’t need to be right. They need to be real. Not a vibe. Not a sad boy in a trench coat. Not a trauma monologue and then a sword fight. They need logic. They need cost. They need to scare you because you get them, and still want them to lose.

Make them dangerous. Not relatable. Make them whole. Not wholesome. Make them make sense.

—rin t. // thewriteadviceforwriters // villain critic. final boss consultant. licensed chaos goblin

P.S. I made a free mini eBook about the 5 biggest mistakes writers make in the first 10 pages 👀 you can grab it here for FREE:

Introversion vs. Extraversion

This post is going to be a bit shorter than my other analyses of the Big 5 Personalities because much is already widely known about these personality types. Essentially, an introvert is someone who is energized by time spent alone and an extravert is someone who is energized by time spent with others. This does not mean that an introvert is necessarily shy. They can be talkative—but generally they need time after being social to recharge for the next event. They can get lonely, but it usually takes longer for an introvert to get lonely.

An extravert is someone who enjoys being around people. This does not mean they can’t be alone or can’t enjoy time alone, but they find themselves fueled by being with people and socializing. They often have several casual friends and can hang out with multiple groups, but introverts generally find themselves comfortable around a smaller, close-knit group of friends.

Now as it relates to terms of success for the introvert vs. the extravert, an extravert is more likely to obtain success in one’s life as it relates to the business world. This has a lot to do with networking. If an extravert is frequently at social functions or chatting with all sorts of people, they are more known to people. When opportunities arise, often these people are considered over their ‘quieter’ counter-parts. Sucks, but true. The squeaky wheel gets the oil after all. In life, this should be a tip to all my followers. Don’t forget the quiet workers you haven’t seen all day if you are in management. Chances are, Mr. Extravert was possibly running their mouth all day instead of working and Mr. Introvert might be more qualified and produce better outcomes than the loud mouth. Just saying.

Also for my introverts out there, although you don’t want to go to that office party, it may behoove you to buck up and do it anyways. You might keep your nose to the grind stone all day, but if Treece down the hall is chatting up the boss man, you might get overlooked for that promotion. It is good to keep up those social skills even if they feel oh-so miserable.

Now, how does this relate to your characters? Is your MC a King Arthur character—always at the party, always knows what to say? Life of the party? Or are they a behind the scenes Merlin character full of magic but mainly behind the scenes? You can turn this into a character arc as well.

Perhaps because of your character’s high levels of neuroticism and low extraversion, they hang out at home all the time until dwarves breakdown their door and insist on them joining their party to go defeat a dragon. Suddenly, their quiet life is thrust into a world of never being alone where they have to rely on their friends for survival. Although at their essence, the character will probably remain an introvert, they will still find themselves stretched by the experience and grow a lot.

When I developed my main character Jared, I wanted him to be the mirror image of Midas, the main baddie. Introversion wasn’t one of those things that I set out to make Jared be, it sort of just happened. He experienced a trauma and walled himself off from his friends. Interestingly enough, introversion and extraversion became the primary difference in the personalities of Midas and Jared. The primary determining factor between how these two respond to situations is hinged on this one factor, so don’t under-estimate its value.

I don’t mean active vs passive personality-wise (though having a completely passive character can definitely cause some similar issues) I mean active on the plot. Your character needs to at least play a role in driving the story forward.

Why? Why can’t a story be completely plot-driven? 

Because. It’s. Boring.

Openness

If you are a regular patron of my blog, chances are you are high in openness, which is the next of our big five personality traits we are talking about today. This is part four of a five-part series on the Big Five Personality Traits. As a refresher, the Big 5 are a scientifically tried and true way of mapping one’s personality. When I write, I use each of these five personality traits to craft a character that is real to life as possible. Once I have their personalities down, I can map out with ease how each of my characters would react to various situations.

As a refresher, I want to remind you that each of the five personality traits are part of a spectrum. A person can lie anywhere on the spectrum. The Big 5 personalities are agreeableness, neuroticism, extraversion, openness, and conscientiousness. A person who is high in agreeableness is more likely to be kind, polite, and compassionate. Someone low in agreeableness would be generally considered harsh, cold, and aggressive. For more information on the Big 5 personalities as a whole, be sure to check out my first post of the series, conscientiousness.

What does a person with trait openness look like? Well, an open person is generally interested in learning and getting involved in new ideas. They tend to be highly creative and are open to trying new things. Open people are often more willing to be flexible and react well to change. Openness is also linked to IQ. A person high in openness is more able to abstract information and make connections than a person who is less open.

So what is a closed minded person like? Generally, they are the opposite. They are not as open to change, are less interested in learning new ideas, and like to keep things the same. They are less creative and like routines.

Whenever I talk about these two categories, I immediately think of two different types of people that I know. The 9 to 5 business man or factory worker who likes their life to be exactly a certain way, and a person like Elon Musk who dabbles into just about everything and is very open to a wide plethora of ideas.

Of all the Big 5 personalities, this is probably the least modifiable in your characters. Now, that’s not to say that factory person above can’t be an open person stuck in a rut who finally breaks free. Let’s take the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty as an example. If you haven’t seen this movie and want to, warning as I talk about spoilers.

In The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Ben Stiller plays a guy with a dull job and is constantly daydreaming adventures for his life. Then when his job is on the line, he goes on his own adventure and gets to live the life of his dreams. As you can see, the story arc of this character has less to do with his openness, but is instead to do with his conscientiousness. He had spent his life being responsible and safe doing a job that was boring while his high level of openness was calling him to freedom.

Consider this story in contrast to Flowers for Algernon. In this story, they take a gentleman with a low IQ who is low in openness and increase his IQ. His interest in topics and various pursuits increases rapidly. Things he would never have hoped to dream of learning come to him, enriching his life. This is a change in trait openness. It did not come about through normal means of a story arc, but rather through the intervention of scientists. It is relatively easy to lower a person’s trait openness through disease or injury, but it is not easy to raise it.

And of course there comes up the storyline of a person from a certain culture slowly becoming more open to another way of thinking and culture, but once again, I would link this back to conscientiousness and the pursuit of orderliness. For an example, a person who believes races should marry within their own races has an issue with orderliness. Keep in mind that there are pros and cons to every personality trait.

So what is the problem with too much openness? Well consider a person who is extremely creative—they might be so creative they have trouble categorizing their ideas. The idea could be a revolutionary—thing—that would ease the lives of thousands of people, but they first have to be able to explain what said thing is. Many novelists run into this problem. They write a unique work of fiction that is a little bit sci-fi, romance, part-heroes journey, and a murder mystery. Then they try to sell it to a publisher, but the publisher doesn’t know where to set it on the bookshelf. It’s too many things. Many creatives live in anonymity with loads of talent but no financial gains.

There is also an illness associated with people high in trait openness—Bipolar Disorder. This is because during a manic state, a person can become very fluid with their creativity and create all sorts of things. Ever heard of a tortured artist? This is linked with trait openness.

Being creative and having a high IQ does track well for success as compared to those who are low in openness, but all things come at a price. So, how open are your characters? Are they creative? Or do they prefer things to be the same? Do they think outside the box? You can create a large range of colorful characters with this one trait.

My character, Jared, in my story SURVIVING MIDAS is a child genius and very high in openness. As a slave, he stands out among his peers as being clever. This also makes him dangerous as he is more likely than the others to escape. Most of the conflict surrounding the story rides on this one personality trait. In a normal society, Jared would thrive, but here it’s likely to bring about his doom.

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Character development plays an extremely pivotal role in storytelling, acting as the cornerstone upon which narratives are built. Engaging characters breathe life into a story by fostering emotional connections that keep them invested from beginning to end. Moreover, characters serve as the vehicles through which themes are explored and conflicts unfold. Furthermore, character development serves…