Here’s a quick thought that came to mind as far as writing believable villains go.
I think everyone’s heard the idea that no one is a villain in their own story. However, how can you write a legitimately evil human being without making the person a caricature. I mean, the guy’s evil.
Two ways to deal with it. First, and probably a cop out, is just deny that there are evil characters and the guy is just misguided and/or misunderstood.
Second is to recognize that “evil” defines someone who is intentionally operating outside of some moral framework. This is why you can’t negotiate with evil, because anything defined evil is going to be operating on a different set of first principles. An Objectivist and a Marxist are never going to come to some sort of mutual accommodation unless either or both abandon their core principles.
You want to write evil? You need to define two things, first, what moral premise defines the character as evil? (This is probably the moral premise of the author or the protagonists, if not both.) Then you need to understand what the character is using in its place, and draw your villain consistently from there. Even an amoral sociopath has rules, self-serving rules, but rules nonetheless. In fact, if those self-serving rules drive the sociopath’s behavior in ways that are mostly congruent with a more mainstream moral POV, the guy can be the hero— and a critique of that mainstream moral POV.
To see how moral definitions can define a work, picture how Atlas Shrugged would be different if written by George Orwell, or 1984 written by Upton Sinclair.
