LESSON Playing the Villain

[Diana]

Our last exercise was Designing a Villain, where you pieced together an antagonist! For this exercise we're going to practice playing the villain. Differentiating between villain characters and every other character in your roleplay or story can be tricky. You want people to KNOW this is a bad guy, but you don't want to cram it down their throats with the same-old tired villain cliches. (Unless, that's what you're after! 8D)

When playing a villain, it's all about the word choices. If your villain is a serial killer that's trying to hack people to pieces, you're not going to use soft and gentle words to describe their movements or their dialogue. If you are playing a smooth, seductive asshole, you want them to speak like they know what they're doing.

For this exercise, write out a scene where you are displaying your villain's evilness as they interact with a hero or a victim. Pay special attention to using different kinds of words for your bad guy vs your good guy.

Some Stuff of Note:

• AVOID OVER-USED WORDS! Smirked. Amused. Doom. Droll. Meddling. Evilly. Sadistically. Once or twice is no big deal, but it is super lame to see a villain "smirking" every three lines. Shake it up a bit!
• Words set a tone. When your write out your scene, take a look at the words in your villain parts and see if some words can be replaced with better words. Saying "He gave an evil smirk." doesn't sound near as interesting as "He gave a malicious sneer."
• SHOW your villains wickedry through some action, rather than just telling the reader. Saying "He is a bad guy because he kills babies." will not have as much impact as having your villain kill a baby right there while talking to a hero. Having your villain go through a long monologue about how evil he is, won't be as cool as him actually doing those evil things right there to/in spite of the hero.

 

[Jae- The nonexistant]

((I'm gonna use Jake and Kate from Designing a Villain =D))

Standing above the trembling child, he gleamed, showing his radiant, razor sharp teeth. "Well hello, who are you?" he drawled. The child just whimpered, causing Jake to snicker. He picked the child up, letting his claws rip into the child's velvety skin. "Why don't we see how you squeal?" He chuckled, throwing the child into a wall and listening to the -CRACK- of his head and the screams of agony released from the puny form. "Useless." He said, walking away. He'd only taken a few steps when a young girl jumped onto his back.
"Not today Jake."
He growled. "Really? Huh, little sis, I didn't think you were so tough!" He threw the girl on the ground, suffocating her with the heel of his spiked boot. She choked, grabbing his leg and flipping him before checking on the small child.
"It's okay little one, go find mommy." She helped her up, sending her to a woman across the street who embraced the child in a healthy hug and warm tears. Then, Kate turned to Jake. "Leave them alone."
"Aww, but why? It's fun to listen to the scream in terror, drink their pain." He gave a malicious cackle, charging Kate who swiftly dodged. "Come on, have some fun, loosen up!" Kate shook her head, landing a few blows on Jake's head and sending him sprawling. He shook his head. "You'll pay. I'll get my revenge on you, all of you! You will pay!" He turned tail and fled, leaving Kate in the black of midnight. She shook her head.
"One day, one day he'll turn good. I'll get that ring.." She mumbled, leaving the streets.

 

[Zizikitty]

"For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt return." His deceptively calm voice spoke melodically. "I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee." The lycan Kezan spoke as his vampire brother Ziear stared in disbelief. He'd rushed to get here, even in these day light hours which could kill him. He had to, to save his daughter. But she was not here. Only his brother. Standing in a shaft of sunlight, covered in ash. An insidious chuckle settled in the room as Kezan looked at something in his hand.

A pile of ash smoked in his hand, his lips curling into a cheshire cat like grin. He chuckled again, the sound cutting deep like needles into the vampire's spine. He watched the lycan pull his hand closer, the ash drifting away from the motion. Suddenly his eyes darted to meet his brothers, eyes burning amber. Searing into the vampire as if they burned with the sunlight. "I huff, I puff, and I blow you world down." He gave a gentle blow and the ash scattered from his breath. From his dark corner protected from the light, Ziear dropped to his knees as tears streamed from his eyes.

The ash blew away to reveal his daughter's gold necklace dangling between his clawed fingers. Kezan gave the object a deep animalistic sniff, a wolfish snarl escaping his lips as he did so. Another disconcerting chuckle left him, echoing around the room and reverberating in the vampires ears. The wolf licked his lips, his wide grin showing his pearl white fangs. "Can you still smell little Victoria dear brother? She smells of aged wine and honey. Her heart..." He groaned almost sensually as he licked the black vampire blood and ash from his fingers. "Her heart tasted divine dear brother. I wonder... Should yours taste the same?"

"You... Son of a bitch! You k-killed..." Ziear choked on the tears shed for the murder of his daughter. His eyes bleeding red with vampiric rage. "You wait on nature's mischief. Come, thick night, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell that my keen knife see not the wound it makes. Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark to cry 'Hold, hold!'" Kezan snarled wickedly as insanity and desire burned in his amber eyes. Desire to rule all, both vampire and lycan kind. "You are too weak to hold your crown dear brother! Do put up more than a fight when I take it from you!" The lycan instantly shifted into his wolf form, a dark bone chilling howl erupting from his throat as he bolted forward to kill Ziear. "You've gone too far! I'll drain you of every god damn drop!" The vampire gave a deep painful war cry as he collided with his brother.