How to Create Your Own Hero & Villain

A hero is almost always the proverbial "knight in shining armor."

Every hero needs a villain, and, most typically, all heroes and villains are completely at opposite ends of an ideological spectrum. When designing a hero and villain, it is important to consider not only their image, but the contents of their respective characters, their surrounding environments, and the context in which they became what they are.

Instructions

1. Familiarize yourself with various heroes and villains in stories and movies. Marvel Comics and DC Comics comic books and movies from a similar strain have a history of creating superheroes that have clear villains that oppose them. In particular, the movie The Dark Knight has a great story for seeing how a hero and villain are designed. Batman and the Joker stand at opposite ends of the spectrum, with Batman promoting order and justice to the extreme and the Joker promoting anarchy and chaos to the extreme. One fantastic text for this worth reading is the American Film Institute's list of the greatest 100 Heroes and Villains.

2. Choose the principles your hero and villain will espouse. Obviously, you want your villain to be ideologically dissimilar from your hero. To accomplish this on paper, draw up a Venn Diagram (two overlapping circles). The left side of the Venn Diagram should consist of things you want exclusively for your hero and the right side should consist of things you want exclusively for your villain. The area in the center should be where the characters overlap, areas that will later either be points of conflict or minor agreement.

3. Design the background of your hero and villain based on the principles that they will later espouse. For example, the creator of Superman designed him so that he was brought up under the humble values of a farmer, a background that can make Clark Kent's status later as the beneficent Superman more believable. In contrast, Lex Luther is a wealthy playboy with little regard for anyone else--clearly, Luther's principles are a function of his background. It is important that your characters' principles make sense given their backgrounds.

4. Design a core point of conflict that will perpetuate their statuses as nemeses. Your hero and villain need a real conflict of interest that seems practically irreconcilable. For example, the Fantastic Four seek to save the world and allow people freedom while Dr. Doom seeks to destroy the world or at least demand that all people live under his rule. Because the Fantastic Four and Dr. Doom have interests that are completely at odds, their status as mutual enemies works well.

References

• "AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains"; American Film Institute