Villain Backstories

​Backstories are a powerful writing tool because they intrigue and hook readers, investing them in a world or character with quick glimpses of history or motivations. However, there must be a balance; too much backstory threatens to drown out the current action. Too little backstory can leave the characters wooden or unsympathetic. So, I’ve created this series on how to write backstories to help us bring just enough of what is hidden onto the page. 

In my Villains series, I’ve covered why your villains need a motivating backstory and how to develop one. So here, I will review ways to reveal the villain’s story naturally. 

Info Dump and Leave

You know the classic scene – the villain has the hero tied up or incapacitated with a sword of hanging. Then, the villain tells his whole backstory and subsequent evil scheme and leaves the hero alone to die, which she does not. You should have a goal to avoid this trope unless you’re trying to be cheesy, and then you should pull it off compellingly.
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Slowly reveal your villain’s background throughout the story to dodge the bouncy info dump. Even if it’s a surprise villain because your story is a mystery, you can still give your villain an entire backstory while using solid plotting to keep their true nature or motive a mystery. The best backstories are revealed one piece at a time anyway. 

Villains as Puzzles 

Speaking of pieces, you want to employ a puzzle strategy to help pace your villain background reveal. A similar strategy works well for antiheroes. It can also work for heroes, but only in situations where you need to keep true motivation or inciting incidents a secret.
For the puzzle method, I suggest working backward in your writing. In your notes, write the whole character's backstory and the personality traits or motivations that resulted from the formative moments in the character's life.

​Then, as you’re telling your story, when one of those traits or motivations shows up, you can use dialog or flashbacks to show the origin of the character aspect. I wouldn’t do this every time there’s a focus on the villain or antihero, but enough so that all the puzzle pieces are in place when it’s time for the big reveal or culminating event. 

The Big Reveal 

​Villains, and sometimes Antiheros, often have their true nature or motivation hidden for plot reasons. In this type of plotting, it is necessary to do a “big reveal,” wherein you let your audience in on the last piece of the backstory that brings it all together. It’s essential to do this in a way that doesn’t make the reader feel tricked or flat-out lied to. It’s okay for the other characters to feel this way, but you have to use those puzzle pieces to, at the very least, give your readers a chance to know that something is awry, even if you don’t provide them with everything, they need to figure out the villains entire secret. 

Great Villain Reveals in Literature 

In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, we know a villain named Mr. Hyde is roaming the streets of London, and we know that Mr. Jekyll is an overworked and secluded doctor. The fact that they are the same person may be well known now, but it was a big reveal. This is an excellent example of giving the reader everything they need to solve the mystery but not letting them solve it. No one can say that Mr. Hyde’s identity clues weren’t there.

In the graphic novel Watchmen, Ozymandias is supposed to be one of the “good guys” in a world where even the good guys are bad. He ends up being the worst of all of them. Not only is he the murderer in the book’s central mystery, but he’s also planning the biggest mass killing in the history of humanity. This revelation may blindside readers because (at the time) we barely know him, but when combined with his revealed backstory, Ozymandias’s actions make sense.
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In a master class in puzzle piece backgrounds, The Prisoner of Azkaban’s author gives us all the information readers need to suspect Scabbers while diverting our attention elsewhere. Scabbers’s image in the newspaper prompts Black’s escape from prison. When the escape becomes public knowledge, Scabbers gets sicker and sicker, worrying himself into illness. Also, Crookshanks, a proven clever animal, does everything he can to neutralize the fake rat. 

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Other Blogs in This Series:

Intro to Backstories
Where do Backstories Come From
Hero Backstories