Villains Twiddling Thier Thumbs

The last thing I want is an inactive antagonist. What is his history? What is he doing when the book starts, and as it continues? I tend to write the protagonists in depth and really get into what’s happening to them. Meanwhile the antagonist is just going about his daily life in the background, and he only pops up when I need him to interact with my characters.

Sometimes that’s okay. Sometimes your villain’s only source of entertainment is antagonizing the good guy. Maybe the villain is just doing his job, or your story only needs him to show up once and a while when convenient.
But I need my villain to be so much more than an evil dude doing his job. Everybody has good times and stormy times, work gets more intense and difficult, or work lulls and relaxes. And, especially in literature, unexpected things happen and interrupt the mundane. The protagonist isn’t the only one who encounters setbacks and has struggles, internal and external. I need to focus on the different conflicts he goes through as he struggles physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

I’m so close, I can almost smell it.

. . .

That was a really weird way to end this blog post.