The Right To Write

Antagonists Motive: Part 1

Onto one of my favorite particles of writing. Villains. They're the main reason your plot is what it is.

Thanks to Nocturnal_Narrator for suggesting the second part of this!

Motive. They're cunning. They're dashing. They're intelligent. But they're villains. Why? They have to have a reason to be the way they are, just as you need to with your protagonist. They beed a backstory; something that propels them towards evil.

This differentiates from the motive of the protagonist, because, well, they have the opposite role. It needs to be something that turns their initial intentions. Without reasons to be evil, your antagonist is an unrealistic bag of cringe.

"Jerry, my evil minion, bring me the wand of evilness. We will destroy the world! Because we are evil! " Vargex The Obliterator let rolls of devilish chuckles fill the room with a dark evil aura.

Get my point? Being evil is not an excuse for being evil. Think, people. Find a logical explanation.

Backstory. Backstory ultimately spurs your villain's motive into action. Simple as that. One tip on this is to lower the drama, it may very well be the source of their weakness as well, but calm the emotion. A lot of cheesy stories have a villain crying and weakening over the very mention of his past. For goodness' sake, his past is the reason your villain is lacking emotion!

Backstory should be complete. It shouldn't fail to spark motivation. If his family was dysfunctional, then maybe, it's the cause of his destructive nature. It's a good set up, but it's incomplete. There's nothing in there that legitimately drives the character to the destruction of the entire human race. On the other hand, if he had a dysfunctional family as the backstory setup, then someone shoots his father. This would make his motive much more believable; he judges humans in general since his father was killed by one. On top of that, say his father's dying words were of how he wanted his son to carry on the dream, to make humans pay. And there you go, now Vargex has the right to kill all humans. 

Other than that, all I have to say is the motive level, like the protagonist, should pertain to its genre. Your villain can't have some irrelevant reason matching the goal such as "A bully popped my balloon in fourth grade, humankind shall pay for all their wrongs!" It's ridiculous.