Five Pitfalls to Avoid When Developing Your Antagonist

By Savannah Cordova

It’s been said that every good story needs a villain. While that villain doesn’t have to be another character — it can be something more abstract, like a supernatural force or even fate itself — this “person-to-person” conflict is often what’s most compelling for readers.

But just because you’ve landed on this form of conflict for your story, doesn’t mean everything will naturally fall into place; far from it! An antagonist in this sense must be just as carefully developed as your protagonist, and it’s crucial to avoid the classic traps that people fall into when creating villains.

Here are five pitfalls to avoid when developing your antagonist, with illustrative examples to help you along the way.

1. Making Them Completely Unsympathetic

You’ve probably heard this one, but it bears repeating: if your villain has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, their journey — and their relationship to the protagonist — won’t be terribly exciting. Readers might be glad to see them get their just desserts, but they’re unlikely to get invested, and won’t remember much from your story beyond its generic “good vs evil” arc.

This doesn’t mean readers must have equal amounts of sympathy for your hero and your villain; it does, however, mean that the latter needs some grounding, realistic traits and goals. Think about their core motivations in your story. Why are they opposed to your protagonist in the first place, and how does that tie into their personality?

A low-stakes example: say you’ve established that your protagonist is a schoolteacher, and their nemesis is a grouchy school principal who thwarts the teacher’s ideas and initiatives at every turn… but why? Maybe the principal has been burned by bureaucracy and is disillusioned with the system; maybe they’re trying to prevent the teacher from getting promoted and leaving the school; maybe they’re jealous of the teacher’s good ideas and work ethic, etc.

Remember, these motivations don’t have to be flattering, but they do have to have to be comprehensible. Even if the reader wouldn’t take the same actions as your antagonist, they should be able to grasp their reasons for doing so — basically, a good antagonist doesn’t require total reader empathy, but they do require some sympathy and understanding.

2. Failing to Consider Their Backstory

In conjunction with that first point, don’t just stop at your antagonist’s immediate motivations re: your protagonist! If you really want to develop a worthy opponent, you must consider their entire backstory: their childhood and formative experiences, their turn to the “dark side” (whatever that means in your story), and other aspects of their life beyond the page.

Indeed, unlike the sympathetic elements to include in your story, your antagonist’s backstory may not be fully revealed to readers. If you’re familiar with the “iceberg theory” of fiction, that’s the technique to employ here; the details you divulge should only be the tip of an “iceberg” of backstory. The rest remains beneath the surface, largely unseen, but adding meaningful subtext to the details you do mention — and ready to be deployed in future books if needed.

Think about one of the most famous villains of all time, Voldemort from Harry Potter. One reason why he’s so effective as a character is because we know just enough about him to see him as a legitimate threat… but plenty about him also remains mysterious and frightening.

Over the course of the books, we learn more about Voldemort’s family trauma, orphaned childhood, and fundamental misconceptions about things like love, power, and immortality. Through this process, we see how his backstory has subtly informed his character all along. And when he and Harry have their final confrontation in Book 7, we’re invested in the outcome partly because we know both characters intimately now, not just Harry alone.

3. Barely Letting Them Interact with Your Protagonist

Speaking of final confrontations, another surprisingly common mistake with antagonists is to not ever let them encounter the protagonist until the very end — if they interact at all!

Some authors might think this creates a sense of mystery and narrative suspense. But while this tactic might work well for a short story, it starts to feel tedious and flat-out strange in a novel. A few times I’ve gotten well past the halfway point in a book and thought: “Okay, but when are these two going to meet?”

One popular novel I read a few years ago (I won’t mention the title) was particularly guilty of this, with chapters that alternated POVs between the protagonist and the antagonist. The villain kept trying to meddle with the hero in roundabout ways, but the hero didn’t really understand what was going on, so it was frustrating to keep going back and forth. The two never metuntil a climactic battle at the end of the book… at which point the story had already lost a lot of steam.

So don’t take this approach to your own villain’s arc. Instead, try doing the opposite — that is, intertwining your protagonist and antagonist’s paths as early as possible. Another novel from a few years ago (which I will name), Vicious by V.E. Schwab, does a brilliant job of this: the two main characters, Victor and Eli, are college roommates and friends before they turn enemies, and their established relationship and history makes their dynamic all the richer.

4. Having Them Do Stereotypical “Villainous” Things

This is another one that seems obvious to avoid, but comes up surprisingly often! It’s unfortunately true that even once you’ve rounded out your antagonist with backstory and strong motivations, you can still find them slipping into stereotypical actions. These include: delivering evil monologues at the protagonist, laughing the quintessential “mua-ha-ha” laugh, shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die, etc.

You may be more susceptible to this issue if you write fantasy, horror, or any sort of “epic” fiction in which the hero and villain have an archetypical relationship. But just because your genre can occasionally get trope-y, doesn’t mean you’re doomed! Really, the best way to combat this pitfall is just to stay aware of it. Try to remain meticulous as you write your villain’s scenes — and when the time comes to edit, do so with fresh eyes and a staunch intolerance for clichés.

Alternatively, depending on what kind of fiction you’re writing, you could try subverting or lampshading certain stereotypes… but you need to have a lot of confidence in your satire in order for this to land! As a result, I’d generally advise to simply steer clear.

5. Creating Multiple Antagonists Who Are Very Similar

Finally, this piece of advice is for those writing a series, particularly if you have the same protagonist from book to book (which, to be fair, not all series have).

Basically, if you remove or kill off a villain in one book, don’t bring back a nearly identical villain in the sequel — not just in terms of looks (though best to avoid that as well!), but in terms of key motivations and personality. It might feel natural to have similar antagonists — especially if your protagonist is defined by a worldview that their enemies always oppose — but remember that the majority of a villain’s character details should be unique to them.

This is what makes villains in media like the Batman comics so vivid and memorable: though Batman’s enemies are united in their criminality, they all have different motives for their crimes, different modi operandi, and certainly different personalities (just think about the Joker vs the Penguin, for example). If you happen to be writing a series of books or even stories, you should strive for the same degree of differentiation.

With that, I do wish you the best of luck in creating your own iconic antagonists. If you avoid these all-too-common pitfalls, you’ll be well on your way to character dynamic success!

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Savannah Cordova is a writer with Reedsy, a marketplace that connects authors and publishers with the world’s best editors, designers, and marketers. In her spare time, Savannah enjoys reading contemporary fiction and writing short stories. You can read more of her professional work on Litreactor and the Reedsy blog.