Plausible Villainy

I think I just learned what's been bothering me for a while about Professor Moriarty in the BBC Sherlock and also The Master in Dr. Who. As well as several other stories you'd find immediately recognizable. The problem is that I find their villainy implausible.

I have a high tolerance for implausible. If my family suffered and died at the hands of some criminal, I might seek vigilante justice in a manner that resembles Charles Bronson in the Death Wish movies. Nevertheless I don't begrudge Batman or Spiderman their spandex.

And I don't begrudge the Riddler his question-marked spandex, because I understand his motivation. He wants to rob a bank or something. Nothing wrong with ill-gotten gain as a motive for villainy--unless you scale up the size of the payday too high. Does a thief ever steal more money than he can possibly spend in a lifetime? I'd expect a big-time thief to use the lolly to fund some hard-to-hide legitimate enterprise/purchase. And that will point the finger of blame at him. "Where did you get the money to buy Microsoft, Mr. Penguin?"

An interesting story is generally a contest of equals. If you create a super-detective Holmes, you need a super-villain Moriarty. And if you create a super-villain Moriarty, you have to give him an understandable motivation for his villainy. Money works, but only at the beginning of the villain's career. I suppose you can use the "thrill kill" motive, but that's hard to do believably.

I recently started reading a story about an asteroid-mining operation that comes under attack by some Greenpeace-like environmentalist nuts. (No, Greenpeace isn't filled with nuts. The story was fiction and the bad-guys' organization said things that reminded me of Greenpeace.) There's a satisfying space-battle with good guys and bad guys shooting it up in and around a moon-base. And the bad-guys manage to steal a space-ship--the flagship of the asteroid-mining company's fleet.

I quit reading.

I can imagine a nation-state summoning the resources to put men on the moon. Same goes for Google, Apple, or Microsoft. I can't see Greenpeace doing this. Same goes for Al Qaeda. It is just not plausible to me. Yes, those sorts of people can hijack airliners, or operate pirate ships on the high seas, but they are just too small an organization to have a space program.

And if their malevolent design is to crash an asteroid into the Earth, why not use whatever means they used to insinuate their agents onto the moon base. Suppose you smash the Earth with an asteroid, you kill a bunch of people, and you destroy civilization. What's the payday in that? Oh, but humanity is despoiling Gaia and must be punished. Dude, you're going to despoil Gaia a lot more with your asteroid.

I don't buy it. It's not plausible. I jumped off the train.



So, I've uncovered another Writing Mantra just now: the villain must be plausible with a plausible motivation.

A Few Bad Men

I've griped about how I think Dr. Who and BBC Sherlock failed when it came time to depict their protagonists' nemesis. In the case of Dr. Who, it is another Time Lord called "The Master," and in Sherlock Holmes's case it is Professor Moriarty. Every Batman needs his Joker and every Superman needs his Lex Luthor.

Thinking through your antagonist is as important as your protagonist and his/her love interest.

My complaint with BBC Sherlock is that Professor Moriarty seemed exactly like The Master who seemed like a nasty schoolboy. True, nasty schoolboys personify evil, but they needn't be taken that seriously. (Unless putting one over your knee and spanking him is not an option.) I guess that's my complaint: If the villain is just like someone you've spanked, s/he falls short of being taken seriously.

Likewise, fellas with monocles and long-haired cats don't work for me. But instead of enumerating what's wrong with other villains, I'd like to say what I think is right with one. I seek a Specification for Antagonist Design.

In one sense, anything that's to your hero's advantage should have a corresponding advantage in your villain. The Doctor is special because he's a Time Lord. Then the Master is a Time Lord, too. Sherlock has mad deductive skillz. So does Moriarty. But they needn't be the same sorts of advantages. They can be formidable, but different. Maybe your villain cannot shoot webs from his wrists, but he has robotic arms coming out of his back instead.

In World War II, the Japanese Zero was a superior aircraft in several key aspects. Nevertheless, the Americans learned how to avoid its strengths and exploit its weaknesses. Avoid a turning fight against a Zero, and if you can't, get outta Dodge. That's how conflicts work in real life and that's how your stories should work.

Stories without conflict suck. And where conflict is concerned, it takes two to Tango. Thus you want to think carefully about your protagonist's dance partner(s). The best villains have several admirable qualities about them. Sure, Gabbar Singh is evil, but he's got a sense of humor and irony and he loves to laugh--before he shoots them. Darth Vader was a sensitive soul easily disturbed by his co-workers' lack of faith--before he choked the life out of them. The Operative was motivated by his faith.

Most Westerners share a cultural heritage of the Greek/Persian conflicts of antiquity. We relate to the independent-minded Greek hoplites who are vastly outnumbered by a host of Persian slaves, but win because they are free men who can seize the initiative on the battlefield while their opponents await the commands of their masters. Thus your story will resonate better with Western audiences if you have a feisty band of Rebels outmaneuvering the giant Empire.

The circumstances needn't be martial. You can write the same conflict between Preston Tucker versus the Big Three automakers with the same asymmetry.

Because companies are generally larger than readers, it's common to make some Corporate Type the villain. Given the amorality of common corporate governance, this is not a stretch. But Big Labor and Big Government work just as well in the role of Persians waging a war of attrition. And since the only good politicians in Washington are Whigs (and long dead) you can show bipartisan villainy. If you want to make Big Religion the villain, choose one that is not in the habit of chopping people's heads off.

That's where I'm at right now. I'm putting together a villain who's motivation is money. He won't blow up the world, because that would destroy all the shops where he spends money. He won't kill everyone, because then there would be no one left to be minions. He doesn't feed his minions to sharks, because it reduces minion-morale. However, his minions are well paid, they have full health insurance with dental, and a generous 401k matching plan.

In other words, he's exactly like me, but with a few billion dollars.

Well, he's different from me in one regard: I'd waste time in the third act gloating about the details of how my nefarious plan works. This villain would just kill the hero and move on to the next item on his Things To Do Today list.

Solzhenitsyn said the line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man. This means you should show the stuff on the good side of the line in the villain's character. Once upon a time, that might have meant being a pious, church-going man, but the Hollywood stupid tax has made religion a telltale of villainy.  In choosing the good you put into a villain, you risk making him more sympathetic than your hero.

So, what good attributes do you think should inhere within the character of a villain?