A good villain intro scene should include two elements. First, they should cement the villain as someone formidable and memorable for the audience. Second, they should tell us as much about the type of villain they will become. Let’s first look at the example of Darth Vader, who is first introduced to the audience in the Star Wars film A New Hope. An epic fight scene ensues between the stormtroopers and the rebels onboard an all-white spaceship interior. Then, at the tail end of the fight, this masked figure cloaked entirely in black struts onto the ship, theme music playing beneath him. After a brief scene with R2D2 and C3PO, Darth chokes and kills a rebel trooper. This introduction not only uses color very strategically to make this villain immediately stand out, but the audience immediately sees him senselessly kill someone so they already know he is a formidable opponent.

Another great example of a villain introduction is The Joker’s introduction from The Dark Knight. Going into creating this scene, the writer and director know that their audience knows this character and it’s just about introducing this iteration of him in a fun and memorable way. The introduction scene involves a bank heist with men all wearing clown masks. As they expertly begin the process of robbing the bank, they speak about how they were hired by the Joker and what he’s like. As the scene unfolds, the heist becomes less and less seamless as the clowns begin to take each other out as they complete the steps for the robbery, citing that the Joker had asked them to kill each other so there would be fewer shares to divide amongst themselves. By the end of the robbery, there is only one clown left: The Joker.

This scene works well to get the audience excited for this villain for a few reasons. One, the bank robbery element establishes the Joker as the Gotham-style Batman villain that he always is in every iteration. Two, the fact that he turns his own men against each other establishes him as someone who isn’t just interested in a certain goal. If he wanted to assure that he got the money, he would’ve made it as easy for his men as possible. But instead, he made sure they all died in the process which means that he was more interested in creating chaos than the bank’s money. Finally, the quick pace, the sheer amount of death, and the callousness he displays shows that he is not only the type of person who likes to create chaos but that the violence we just saw wasn’t even a big deal to him. This fact makes him even more frightening.

Writing Prompt: Create a villain, this could be the antagonist in a story you’ve already created or one you make up for this exercise. Once you have a clear picture of them in your head, write a scene that introduces them into a story. This could be a scene from the POV of your protagonist, from an innocent bystander, from a victim, or even from the villain themselves (though the last would be the trickiest). Use the scene to tell the reader as much as possible about your villain and their motives up front. Also utilize the scene as a means of cementing your villain in the reader’s mind, making them both memorable and frightening to the reader.

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I’m going to kill that man.

Revenge stories are a very specific sub-section of the thriller genre. And, similarly to the ‘hero journey’ in a fantasy novel, they follow a tried and true formula.

The Cast

To start any epic revenge story, you need to put together your cast. Obviously, your story will consist of many characters with varying degrees of significance, but the main cast of a revenge plot involves three players: the hero, the villain, and the victim. Your hero is the character who is exacting his revenge on the villain of the story. The law has failed to hold the guilty party accountable so your hero needs to take matters into their own hands. The hero can be varying degrees of good or bad or morally gray or an antihero–there are many options you can play around with as far as their degree of morality. The important thing is to make your hero likable; otherwise, your readers will be rooting for the villain, and who wants that?

Next, you need the villain or the antagonist of your story. This is the person who has done the act that has gone unpunished. The act itself can have varying degrees of severity and the hero could identify the wrong villain in the beginning of your story- only to find out the truth later in a shocking twist. But you’ll need someone at the beginning to which your protagonist assigns blame. Finally, the victim who exists to elicit sympathy from your readers. The victim should be connected to the protagonist in some meaningful, emotional way. It could be a friend, a family member, or even someone who went through a similar experience to the protagonist. Ultimately, they’ll need a strong enough connection that would justify your protagonist’s journey of vengeance.

The Crime

The next step to the ultimate revenge story is to choose and execute ‘the crime’. The more monstrous the act you choose (whether it be murder, rape, torture, terrorism, etc.), the more justified your hero will be in exacting their revenge on the perpetrator. Typically you want to present the crime as tragically as possible. You see cop dramas all the time where the victim’s family talk about how he or she was ‘so young’ or ‘such a good person’ or in the prime of their lives. That’s the same feeling that the crime you create should give your readers- that your victim was so pure and undeserving of the horror they were put through. A revenge story can still work if the crime is committed prior to the beginning of the story, but portraying within the pages will make the journey much more emotional and visceral for the reader.

Hero Turned Tracker

The third stage of your revenge thriller is the tracking portion. This will likely take up the most space in your book as it’s the section where the hero tasks him or herself to track down the villain of the story with the goal of exacting the proper punishment. This stage will involve research, looking for clues, and meeting a series of individuals who will lead your hero to the villain by the end. If your story involves more than one villain, the hero will start to exact their revenge on the various guilty parties in this section- culminating in the villain they deem most guilty. In addition, to add an extra layer of conflict, you can also use this section to introduce a party who is trying to stop the hero from exacting their revenge. This could be anyone from a law enforcement official to a close friend of the hero– but it’s someone who doesn’t believe the hero’s methods of justice are righteous.

The Final Confrontation

As you could likely infer from the title, this is the part of the story where your hero and your villain finally go head to head. If you choose to have your hero mistake the villain for someone else, this is also the part of the true villain of your story is revealed. There are three potential outcomes from this point: success, failure, or peace. If your hero succeeds in exacting their revenge, the question of your ending becomes ‘Was the revenge worth it? Did it give your protagonist the satisfaction they craved?’ Though your audience will likely be most satisfied if your protagonist succeeds in their quest, you can also choose for them to fail which would culminate in either their defeat, the villain escaping, or their death. Finally, your protagonist could reach the point of exacting their revenge only to realize that revenge truly isn’t the answer, thereby finally gaining the peace they needed all along.

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Give them a motivation

One of the biggest cop-outs is when you see a villain whose motivation is that ‘he’s just crazy’ or he/she has an inexplicable psychotic desire to gain power or kill people. Sure, that may be the case for some people, but that doesn’t make for a compelling villain. In order for your villain to really stand out, they need to have a true and understandable motivation for their actions. For example, take Thanos from the MCU. His goal is to wipe out 1/3 of the world’s population with the infinity stones, not because he inexplicably relishes in destruction but because he believes overpopulation causes people a lot of problems for the world. While his actions won’t make sense to people, his motivation for his actions does.

They’re not fully right or wrong

Though it would be easier to write villains if this weren’t the case, the world simply isn’t just black and white. People aren’t either totally good or totally evil. No one wants to see a protagonist that never does anything wrong just like no one wants to see a villain that is pure evil. It may seem easy to simply write a villain that wants to burn the world to the ground, but it’s much more interesting to see a villain/protagonist relationship where you can kind of see both sides as valid.

One of the greatest examples of this is Killmonger from Black Panther. His goal is to share Wakanda’s technology with African American people around the world so they can rise up and defend themselves from the oppression they face. While you aren’t in favor of his ultimately violent goal, you do understand him wanting to help people in his circumstances and it makes you even question Black Panther and view him as a little selfish for keeping the technology confined to Wakanda and not helping others. This morally gray dichotomy makes for an incredibly compelling story.

Make them truly formidable

Another way to heighten your villain is to make them feel impossible to defeat. Whether they simply be a school bully or a Thanos-level supervillain, the more hopeless the situation feels for the protagonist, the more formidable the villain will feel and the more rewarding the defeat will be. For example, let’s take the Vicious series by V.E. Schwab. The villain of this series, Eli, gains the superhuman ability of immortality. So that leaves the reader wondering- how do you kill someone who is un-killable? Or how do you defeat someone who can’t die? Whether it be superhuman abilities or simply making them have strengths where your protagonist is weakest- make your villain feel impossible to defeat.

Give them a history

Just like the character work with your protagonist and main characters, you’ll need to do thorough work into the history and backstory of your villain. The last thing you want is for your villain to feel like they exist purely as an opposition force to your main character. You want them to feel like they’re their own person with their own life and struggles who happened to form a contentious relationship with your protagonist. In addition, including the character history of your villain in your story is an excellent way to allow them to appear more three-dimensional, relatable, and interesting to the readers.

Give them positive qualities

As we said earlier, people being one hundred percent good or evil is boring. Your villain can be cruel and sadistic, but maybe they’re also incredibly smart? Maybe they’re charming or funny? Maybe they have a family member they love and want to keep safe? You want to create the type of villain that people will think ‘it’s such a shame they’re evil’ because they have such a confusing balance of good and bad qualities. Those are the most fascinating villains.

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