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(excerpted from "The Sixth Stage," ALIAS ASSUMED, Ben bella Books, 2005.)
Stories that require villains, like (picking an example at random) fast-paced spy thrillers about pretty ladies who get sent on death-defying missions, only work to the extent that the villains make some kind of narrative sense. Few writers are talented enough to get away with villains who just skulk about, being evil and doing bad things, because they have some kind of deep, inborn personal love of sneering. Shakespeare did with Iago, whose malice toward Othello bears no explanation beyond, possibly, getting out of the wrong side of the bed every morning of his life, but come on, this was SHAKESPEARE, and his refusal to provide an explanation has provided generations of academics with a form of full-time employment that consists entirely of arguing with each other about the precise species of bug Iago stored six inches up his intestinal tract.
In practice, storytellers in need of villains need to pick theirs from a very short list of basic models, which we're about to rank in order of increasing complexity. Make no mistake: all can be done well. (Iago may belong to the least promising category, but he'll be remembered the longest.) But as types, some are more complicated than others, and the more complicated they are, the more potentially interesting they can be. Warning in advance that Arvin Sloane doesn't make his own appearance until the end of the list, the categories now appear in ascending order of storytelling potential:
STAGE ONE: VILLAINS WHO ARE BAD JUST BECAUSE THEY'RE BAD. The already-mentioned Iago fits into this simplest category, but so does the villain of so many James Bond movies, who is frequently something like an unspeakably wealthy industrialist who has nothing better to do with his money than set off World War Three so he can wipe out humanity and live in a palacial underground shelter with his mistress, private army, and a large collection of persian cats. Nobody ever asks such a fellow the obvious question, which is just what he believes he would get out of such a lifestyle change, or how he thinks he's ever going to justify such a plan to his Board of Directors. He just wants to do it, that's all: probably because he woke up on the same wrong side of the bed Iago did. He's bad because he's bad, and there's no reason to even try to understand him.
STAGE TWO: VILLAINS WHO ARE BAD BECAUSE THEY'RE CRAZY. This stage introduces an explanation, if only one that reduces the bad guy's mania to a mere syndrome. An argument can be made for placing the aforementioned James Bond villain here, but I don't think so: that guy is educated, cultured, civilized, and sufficiently in control of his own noodle to maintain a fake british accent and become a connosieur of fine wines. These guys, on the other hand, are just plain out of their minds, and operating from motives that would give the rest of us headaches to contemplate. Batman's perennial nemesis, The Joker, is one. So is the typical villain in a typical serial killer story, whether Jason, Freddie, or some other guy with a one-word frat boy name. So is the fellow who kidnaps a pretty kindergarten teacher because he's upset she didn't like the finger painting he did at age five, especially if he's actually older than her and she hadn't even been born at the time. Make no mistake. All of these guys are bad. All of them are threats. But because the only explanation for them is that they're nuts, there's no reason to even try to understand them. They're just forces of nature, wound up by wonky brain chemistry and pointed at anybody unlucky enough to stand in their way.
STAGE THREE: VILLAINS WHO ARE BAD BECAUSE THEY WANT SOMETHING. In this stage, we first encounter characters whose motivations make some kind of rational sense. The silent-movie cad who tries to burn down the orphanage because he's discovered oil on the land and doesn't want to share it with the kids, the old-west cattle baron who tries to burn out the peaceful homesteaders so his cows can graze without too much exposure to hymns and gingham, and the soap-opera hussy who tries to ruin her best friend Janet's wedding day so she can have the shirtless hunk Brad for herself. All of these people may be a tad greedy, not to mention woefully deficient in the morality department, but they also all operate with such understandable goals, which they all communicate in the clearest, most lucid terms, that they might all qualify for great careers in the U.S. Senate. They're bad, they're threats, they're not nice people, but by God it is possible to see where they're coming from. Not to mention where they're eventually going.
STAGE FOUR: VILLAINS WHO ARE BAD BECAUSE THEY'VE BEEN HURT. Now we add another element. These are people who might have been decent enough at one point in their lives, but who have been so grievously wronged, that they've since cast aside all precepts of good and bad in order to indulge themselves in a huge, world-threatening snit. A typical example would be the origin once posited for Superman's nemesis Lex Luthor: i.e. he was the future Man of Steel's best friend in high school, until he lost all his hair in a chemical fire and vowed to become the enemy of all Mankind. Aside from establishing that young Lex really needed to cut down on the caffeine, this model introduces tragedy into the mix, in that we're supposed to weep at the premise that Luthor would have been a noble benefactor of mankind had a minor loss experienced by millions of men every day not caused him to permanently (excuse me) wig out beyond all reason. In practice, a guy that tightly wound would have sooner or later thrown that kind of life-altering tizzy over something else, like a missed parking space, but that's just him; most of the representatives of this category aren't over-reacting on the same epic scale. Becoming the Phantom Of The Opera, for instance, would make anybody a little bit cranky. And it's not only possible to understand people of this ilk, it's also conceivable to feel sorry for them. Because while they may be bad, they do by God present their case.
STAGE FIVE: VILLAINS WHO DON'T THINK THEY'RE BAD. Stage Three introduced understandable motivation. Stage Four introduced tragic resonance. This stage introduces moral complexity. Iago aside, few people really get out of bed in the morning, look out the window, and decide that they're going to be the living embodiment of evil today. Most people do try to do the right thing, even if their version of the right thing is evil by our own standards. This stage would include the despot who wants to take over the world because he believes he can do a better job running it, the sniper in an enemy army who wants to put a bullet through your heart because you're threatening his homeland, and the social worker who wants to take the children from the sympathetic family of performers because she thinks that foster parents would provide a better home. A villain of this ilk can be just as hissable as the one who twirls his moustache while threatening little Nell; after all, he does just as much damage. Some of the worst monsters in the history of the world were folks who thought they were doing the right thing. But this kind of villain gives us an opportunity denied us the most of the others we've seen: the chance to not only understand, and pity, but also to sympathize.
Finally, there's STAGE SIX: VILLAINS WHO KNOW THEY'RE BAD AND DON'T LIKE IT. This is the deepest, most complicated, most self-contradictory kind of antagonist for any storyteller to pull off, which may be one reason why so few storytellers make the effort. To reach this stage, a villain of this sort needs to have not only understandable motivation, tragic resonance, and moral complexity, but the one last attribute, which makes all the difference: Self-Awareness. He is capable of committing acts of great evil, as he pursues his concrete goals; he is driven to those extremes by reasons that may include grievous wrongs committed against him in the past; he believes that the ends justify the loathesomeness of his means; he will not stop, ever; but unlike the villains of the first five stages he also sees the damage he does, the pain he inflicts, and the wreckage he leaves behind. He feels shame. Self-loathing, even. None of it stops him from continuing to commit the same sins all over again, whenever the situation warrants. None of it makes him any less dangerous or any of his crimes any more forgiveable. After all, he doesn't change. But there's a reason he possesses a tragic dimension even greater than those demonstrated by villains who have been grievously wronged. He's in hell, and he knows he's sentenced himself there
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