Young Writers Society

What questions do you ask about your villains to make them truly evil?
I have a lot of questions to build mine already but I'm wondering what yours are?

Mine are usually along the lines of "what is his goal?" and "what morals does he not have?"

One of the most evil characters I've heard of had answers like this:

Goal: Make the idealistic main character kill another character from hate, renouncing his belief all people good
Morals he doesn't have: Morals? What morals? (He killed, impersonated several others, manipulated, seduced, and who knows what else to get his way)

That would the villain from the appropriately-titled Monster anime/manga. It's rumoured he's the antichrist.

I rarely advocate making characters "truly" evil, however. I'm more of the opinion all villains believe themselves to be in the right, and it's their methods or goal that makes them evil. Only a handful of characters, in my mind, can get away with being evil to the core. And they're usually so spellbindingly chilling you don't seem to care. They also have such a twisted sense of right and wrong that, after awhile, you start seeing what they believe to be a mercy, kindness, love, and nothing they ever do is really evil. To take the example above, he wanted to show a character there is sometimes evil in the world you need to remove. He simply used himself as the most evil person who could break the character.

Good goal but bad means tends to be into "anti-villain" territory, which are more sympathetic but still nasty. Bad goal, good means are just... rather chilling, come to think of it, and the bad goal, bad means are usually what make the "most evil" characters. But, making him Pure Evil without any rhyme, reason, goal, or ruthless methods tends to be a waste of time. Also, as I mentioned before, twist around their morals. A lot. Eventually, readers should start to see the villain's point. Question their own morality. Because while you know society condemns their actions, you start to see their point. And you see the high contrast between their idea of good and evil and yours. And it's chilling because it makes sense and you realize somebody actually thinks that their actions are perfectly justified, regardless of what society says.

I like to have my villains simply oppose the main character. If you write the main character well enough, people will automatically oppose any character that opposes him.