Having troble wiyh the bad guy.

[Lita]

Write the good guy is easy,but the bad guy I goy know ideas.Any tips?

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Brenda Diane Smith Filmmaker 35mm 0r bust nothing will stop me!!!!!

[Thousanth]

My films don't really have a "bad guy" but watching movies can really give you a feel for how people like their villan portrayed.
Most of the time he's either a genius or a idiot, the former is a helluva lot better choice.
Since I don't have a feel for what kind of movie you're making, I don't want to venture to far. Make him dark and mysterious, of course you have to have the obligatory "Acts of " so maybe have him knock a few peeps off...prefably kids.
Here's a thought: have him beat the hell out of the good guy


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Thousanth
THOUSANTH ENTERTAINMENT
AND PRODUCTIONS.
"A good director elevates his film above all limitations placed on it...above its genre, script, acting and production. A good director IS the film."

[spyboy]

Well, the bad guy is actually often easier to write than the good guy. Most people with their heroes do two things:
1. follow the "Hemmingway hero" paradigm, in which the hero is fatally flawed in some respect. Thus, as the hero tackles the various conflict points placed in front of her/him, he also has to deal with this flaw. Essentially the idea is the struggle for redemption.
2. construct the hero based on themselves. We all do it, whether consciously or not. Bad writers (and I'm guilty of this) end up basing all their characters, in some way, on themselves which often makes the characters indistinguishable. This way of writing the hero is fraught with danger because most people don't internalise enough - that is, they don't get down to the very basics of what makes this character so great/pitiful/loveable et al. One way of avoiding this is to break the character down into Maslow's pyramid of needs (the theory itself leaves a lot to desire in behavioural science, but this approach can provide a useful ... roadmap to the character's soul) - what motivates him, and at what level? Is it a primal instinct (eg. survival) or is it something more ethereal (eg. love, happiness, "self actualisation")?

Right about now you're thinking "wow, this guy is really off topic" and quite feasibly you're thinking I'm a nutter. Please be patient. What I was trying to highlight is the idea of a paradigm, what most cynics and critics call stereotypes. The bad guy should emerge from the paradigm established by the hero. In reality, the bad guy more often than not is not so much a person as a conflict point. The fact that she/he is embodied in some form (person, creature, spirit etc) in the script, merely makes them a MORE INTERESTING conflict point, something the hero can really get his teeth into (figuratively or otherwise).

The question then becomes not "how do I write the bad guy", but "what bad guy does my story, and my hero NEED?" Sometimes a sterotyped bad guy is what you need, and you'll be forgiven for it. If you want to find credibility in steering away from stereotypes, then try something else. The easy road is to make them pure evil in every way, as Thousanth was alluding to. That's sometimes fun to write, and the creativity comes from his actions not his character.

But what if the bad guy is as vulnerable or as noble as the good guy? (Robert Deniro in Heat)

What if there is no bad guy as such, just many faces of a greater evil that the hero is trying to escape? (Carlito's Way for instance but there are plenty of examples - and one could even say Sean Penn did a pretty good job of being a bad guy to Al Pacino)

What if the bad guy is just a sad old man who is actually a friend of the good guy? (Bill Murray in Rushmore)

What if the bad guy turns out to be just a nutter who was mistaken as a bad guy? (Brad Pitt in 12 Monkeys)

There are lots of options out there, and I would say the more complex you can make the character the better. Examine what makes him tick, throw in a couple of quirky trade marks, put him in tense situations, shake and serve. Starting to sound a lot like a hero really.

This is probably of no help to you, but if you've made it this far I appreciate it. I suppose the real answer is ... It Depends.

Let me know more about your good guy, and what you envisage for your bad guy, and I'll give some more incoherent advice.

[eddie]

make the villian stand between the good guy and his ambition.
So that the hero must confront the bad guy in order to achieve what he wants.
Thats all you need. Everything else is window dressing with which you can do what you want.
But it all depends on your story. Your post is about as vague as asking 'How do I end my story?'

[austintash]

Most bad guys don't think they're bad guys. I, for example, think that I'm a perfectly reasonable human being and that the fact that I'm a genuis with an IQ higher than that of Carol "I Can Do Sums" Vorderman allows me licence to behave in what some may percieve as an arrogant way. However, most normal plebs would think that I was a bad guy and an arsehole.

Sidney Cook probably didn't think he was a bad guy either, even though his main hobby consisted of kidnapping, bum-raping, and killing young children to bits. Each to his own.

Austin Tasseltine

[miker]

Indeed, most 'bad guys' are represented as such because there is a conflict of interests/motive between him and the 'good guy'.

I personally believe that only a miniscule amount of the population are truly evil.

But good/evil is a dualist Greek concept anyway, and we all know how flawed Greek thinking is/was.

I'm all for morphogenic resonances, good vibrations and collective unconscious ...

[Curtin-Parloe]

Rewrite your story from the opposite point of view.

For example,
Your Hero has to rescue the Love Interest from the Villain.
becomes
Your Hero has captured the evil Love Interest, whom the Villain is trying to rescue.

et voila! Villain!

cheers

Paul