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Bonnets

is “villain” the best word to use in a scene description or a dialogue prompt between characters?

since I came across this poll and gave my little opinion on the matter there, I thought I would make a separate post about it too.

now what I’m not gonna do is tell my fellow writers what to do or what not to do. however, if I may, I hope you’ll allow me to give you my advice.

writers — especially those who write about superheroes, fantasy, etc — you may have used the word “villain” in your works before, and you may have thought nothing of the word itself; I mean, it fits best, right? a bad guy in a story where characters have superpowers is a villain.

I mean that’s the word for it. because for us, these are fictional works about fictional characters.

but…

for those characters in your work, the world you created for them are real for them. I mean… your characters don’t know they are fictional characters in a fictional world, correct? (unless you specifically write a story in which the characters know they’re fictional characters in a fictional world).

therefore you might want to ask yourself how realistic it is for these characters — who have no idea they are fictional characters and think they are real people — to call bad people “villains”

how realistic it is for us — real people — to call real-life criminals “villains”

what are the chances of us reading the news with the headline “two villains caught and in custody after a robbery attempt”?

the word “villain” just… doesn’t sound realistic in real world.

ask yourself how realistic you want your stories to be, as a writer who created a world in which the characters don’t know they are fictional.

how realistic it is for your characters (who think they are real people) to say, “there’s a villain around. we have to go.”

for your characters, they aren’t fictional characters, they are real. and these fictional worlds are real for them. if we’re not calling real-life criminals villains because they are real people to us. would your characters call someone who were real to them villains because they were bad?

now ask yourself how realistic you want your stories to be, as a writer — of course, a story where characters have superpowers or the one where characters live in a fantasy world aren’t so “realistic” for us, but if, as a writer, you want your readers to feel as though they live in that world you created while they read your work, you might not want to subtly remind them they’re reading a fictional work by directly referring to the bad guys as “villains”.

the key to professionally writing a story is that you make your readers forget they are reading a fictional story.

the key to professionally writing a story is that you make your readers feel as though they actually live in that world you create and are a part of that story.

there’s a reason most (if not all) superhero movies we see don’t include a scene where the hero refers to the bad guy as “a villain”. and that reason is that, for these characters, what happens in the movie is real to them. and also because the studios want their audience — us — to feel as though we actually live in that world. they don’t want to keep reminding us that “hey, this is a movie, it’s not real” by having the hero call the bad guy villain.

reminder: the world you create are real for those characters, and it should feel real for your readers to.

words to use instead of “villain”

murderer

monster

bad people / bad person

killer

son of a bitch

dick

cunt

dickhead

convicted

abuser

prick

dangerous (person / people)

predator

rapist

violent (person / people / man)

manipulator

traitor

unreliable

liar

troublemaker

troubled

unstable

corrupted

psychopath

capable of horrible, violent things

Chasing the fog somewhere in Switzerland by @90377

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Ioan Gruffudd as Henry Morgan