Darkness creeps along the ground, swallowing everything in its wake. Every shrub, every flower, every tree is taken into its midnight embrace.
Not every villain is a person, many are concepts, fears, circumstances, disagreements, the options are endless. Anything can be made the villain in the right conditions and not every villain is evil. But every one of them should hold some fear, some power, over the reader and the protagonist. How then do you instill that sense of foreboding doom into both targets?
Today we'll talk about three ways to instill fear and edge of the seat building panic in your reader.
The Unknown
Little is scarier than the unknown. How can you be afraid of the loud banging noises in the house when you know its just your cat upstairs knocking things around? Wait, you don't have a cat?
Even the most mundane of moments can be turned to the darker inclinations with a well placed sprinkle of uncertainty. Whatever your villain, think long and hard about what power they wield, physical, emotional, ethereal, or psychosomatic and what about that power would cause the most distress if you just simply didn't know something about it. The king is powerful and welled loved, but everyone who's gone against him just vanishes without a trace, and no one knows how. Their new employer pays well, and for very easy work, but there is just something about how we've never met them. In my book Hollows we know something is killing werewolves, but not what, or how; even though the thing we believe is responsible for it shows up within moments of finding this grizzly fact out. Take time and think about every aspect of your villain, consider what each fact is, and how the impact of it would change if your reader didn't know anything about it.
The Consequences
Not knowing is scary, but sometimes knowing is even worse. A reader can quickly become desensitized to the unknown, just as they can to constant exposure. It's important to introduce them to the consequences of the protagonist and the villains actions. Be careful not to spoil the fun in these moments, but a little peak into the unknown consequences can benefit the reader by setting stakes. The things bumping in the night are scary if you don't know what they are, but even more terrifying when you can see what they can do. This idea works even when your villain isn't a person or creature, offer up a small taste of the "what if". This often coincides with major events in the book, but does not always have to. If your villain is a concept show the reader that concept in glaring vivid detail. If it is a circumstance place them right at the edge of that very fear. A peak here and there into the darkness can quickly ramp up the stakes and have the reader on the edge of their seat.
Wording is Everything
No matter how you slice it, writing is a physical medium. Your word choices are to you what brushes are to an artist, and a well written sentence can stick with a reader far better than any plot twist. The above written piece sets a mood, a forest, a creeping darkness, a sense of foreboding. My villain is a feeling. I could have written that a black cloud descended over a forest, but that wouldn't have set that mood. Word choices such as "swallowing" and "embrace", help to tell the reader what sort of feeling these words should have behind them. While most important in the editing phase of your writing the words you choose still have the most prevalent impact on the reader. At each key moment look at what is being said and consider if a different word might hold a better result. Rather than "it hurt" perhaps, "it stung" or "it ached". Both are a decent way to describe and convey pain, however stung is more visceral, letting the reader feel the pain in the moment, it is at the forefront of our protagonists mind and something that may quickly fade. While ached draws more from a distance, a deepness, it displays a more complex sadder note to it and is altogether a slower loss than a sting. A thesaurus is personally one of my favorite tools, and there is no shame in pulling one out and familiarizing yourself with more vocabulary. How you choose to describe your villain in those moments they show a little of themselves on the pages can set the mood for how your reader sees them without fail.
In closing, there are many ways to paint a scary villain. If nothing above helps, there is more to find, continue your search. But the expansion of the tools in your belt will help somewhere, and every piece of advice has its place. Build a villain that would terrify you.
“A villain must be a thing of power, handled with delicacy and grace. He must be wicked enough to excite our aversion, strong enough to arouse our fear, human enough to awaken some transient gleam of sympathy. We must triumph in his downfall, yet not barbarously nor with contempt, and the close of his career must be in harmony with all its previous development.” ―Agnes Repplier, Goodreads
I hope you found some of this helpful, and look forward to the rest of this end of year with you. Spooky season is upon us, and thus, the dark, villainous, demonic, and spooky will continue to be on the menu!
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