Villain Talk: Keep the Scary Thing Scary

**BEWARE SPOILERS:** Arcane, Firefly/Serenity, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Twilight: Breaking Dawn, and Star Wars (kinda)

In every story, there must be a Scary Thing. While usually a villain, it could also be a natural hazard or other danger. In a fantasy story, the Scary Thing may be a rampaging dragon. In science fiction, it may be an all-knowing surveillance state. Even if it’s a cozy romance where the worst thing that could happen is the leads don’t end up together, there is that Scary Thing. A story without fitting stakes–without danger–is a very boring story.

Even worse, though, is a story where the audience is told about a Scary Thing in the beginning, only for it to end up ineffective and easily overcome. Foreshadowing an impossible obstacle or terrifying villain is a promise that immerses the audience in the tension and emotions involved. If you don’t provide a suitably challenging conflict, your audience will be disappointed. It will sour their view of the whole story, regardless of how good it was.

So: Keep the Scary Thing Scary.

A Matter of Stakes

In a book, the stakes are the ‘or else’ of the story. You must beat the bad guy or he’ll take over the kingdom. You have to find a way to stop an asteroid or it will destroy the world. If you don’t have that, then the audience has nothing to be invested in. The question “Why does this matter?” should always be in your mind. This isn’t the exact same as having a conflict, though. A threat. That is the thing that will try to stop your protagonist from fulfilling their goal. The Scary Thing I’m talking about is the conflict, but to explain my point, I need to explain how it relates to stakes.

What if that bad guy trying to take over the city was, in fact, lacking the skills and resources to do so? Sure, it would be awful if he took over the city, but he probably wouldn’t be able to anyway. What if the Earth already had space stations with the capability of destroying asteroids before they hit? Sure, the asteroid would destroy Earth, but we already have the tools set up to stop it.

What if you promised an intelligent, cunning, four-steps-ahead mastermind and he actually made an obviously, fatally exploitable flaw in his plans?

Once the audience feels lied to about how hard it will be to fulfill the goal, they will no longer be gripped by the stakes. The consequences of failure will be really easy to avoid if there’s such a low chance of failing in the first place. The Scary Thing wasn’t scary. So you either have a story in which your protagonist breezes through every obstacle without a lick of tension, or you have a story in which your main cast is forced to simply make poor decisions in order to ramp up the likelihood that they do fail. Unless the main conflict in some way involves the character defeating themselves and having to learn not to, you’re in for some audience frustration with that one. 

The Scary Thing Done Well

The easiest way to learn is to see it done right. Here are some popular shows that do an excellent job with the promise and pay-off of the Scary Thing (villain). You fully believe that the protagonist is up against a real problem, with this one.

Arcane

There’s no threat in Arcane that isn’t well-established, but for our purposes, we’ll look at Silco. In the first few episodes, we’re told he’s scary, ruthless, intelligent…and he proves to be so. Repeatedly. He gets his hands on effective, upgraded henchmen, he captures Vander, and after the time skip he’s shown to have gained an iron grip on Zaun. Even if he would have lost without Powder’s intervention, he was effective. But the greatest example of all, in my opinion, is the scene in which he sits and plays with the Sheriff’s daughter to make a point. Chilling.

And because of these moments, we take him seriously despite any and every moment he makes choices that aren’t completely in line with what’s most wise. We understand he is perfectly competent at running a criminal empire, so these get the benefit of the doubt and greater meaning as characterization in turn.

Serenity

The nameless assassin in Serenity is another great example. Right off the bat, we’re given a succinct example of just how he is and what he does: he is a calm and remorseless killer, extremely efficient in what he does, and lacking in any sentimentality. We have been promised in the first five minutes that the crew of the Serenity is facing a highly trained man with extreme access to alliance resources and no compunctions about how he uses them.

So it’s a damn good moment later in the movie when it’s revealed that the assassin has destroyed every port of harbor that the Serenity has used over the course of the movie. It’s the perfect payoff to the promise of his danger, especially when he’s on a call with Mal. He can tell our hero, straight-faced, that this is his fault, and Mal almost believes it. Even better, this is the action that drives Mal to more extreme action that leads us to the final conflict of the movie. The villain corners him and it makes us believe in the danger all the more.

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Avatar has several antagonists, but I’m sure we all know which one I mean. Azula is a persistent and terrifying force that the Avatar squad faces continuously over seasons 2 and 3. The first time we see her is in season 1 in a flashback, where we get a hint both of her abilities and her temperament–she relishes the pain her brother goes through. So when we see at the end of season 1 that she’s being sent after the Avatar, we know we’re in for a sadist who toys with her prey.

She’s further developed as a skilled firebender and a cunning strategist. Even when her specific attempts to capture the avatar fail, she costs them something. Through season 2, her setbacks only prove that she can adapt and persist. She finds allies, she takes on new angles. She infiltrates the Earth Nation capital and maneuvers herself into full control of their secret police. At every turn, Azula maintains her sense of menace because she is so capable. The best the avatar squad can do is escape and avoid her, and that is a threat worthy of the viewer’s time. This gives the final showdown between Azula and Zuko so much weight.

The Scary Thing Done Badly

I’m not here for negativity, so no, I won’t start digging through our darlings and assassinating them. Instead, I have two fairly obvious (and humorous) examples that get the point across. 

Star Wars

I’m sure you know where I’m going with this. Near the start of A New Hope, Obi-Wan mentions to Luke that the Stormtroopers are all highly trained marksmen. Now, say it with me: Stormtroopers Always Miss. It’s a beloved meme, and Star Wars has enough other threats (cough Vader cough) to make up for it.

Still, we’re using this example for illustration’s sake. In the beginning, the mentor character tells the naive protagonist that a certain set of empire soldiers are explicitly dangerous. They are made out to be a real threat which the protagonist will contend with to reach his goal and avoid the Bad Thing. Aside from occasionally making the main characters run from one set to another, though, stormtroopers are never shown to be effective, even when firing from eight and a half feet away. They are not scary. We none of us feel the tension of the story because of the stormtroopers' existence. 

Twilight

Romance? Well, no. The Scary Thing I’m talking about here is the Volturi. While the movie does it a lot better than the books by showing us the vision of the final battle, the books do no such thing. After many hundreds of pages (and really, several books) of knowing the Volturi are ruthless killers of those who break the laws, we get…very little. The climax with Renesme is barely more than a conversation. When the Volutri see that what they’re looking at isn’t a vampire, they simply leave it and walk away.

They are defeated by the problem not being a problem in the first place—just a misunderstanding. The audience was promised many times the danger and inevitability of facing down these immortal, most powerful vampires. There was no fight, there were no losses, and there was no overcoming.

Jumpscares

Wait! Wait, no. Hold on. I promise I’m not saying all jumpscares are bad! Or that they kill stakes. Or that they always kill stakes. The issue is in how and when they are often used. When done right, jumpscares can accompany sufficient menace and threat that they are extremely effective and you’re still scared to death afterward. However, they have to be paired with a few things. The first is a threat that is taking real action and causing real problems. The second is…restraint.

There are many horror games and movies which rely on jumpscares as a crutch. Have you ever gotten to the point where they simply didn’t bother you anymore? Or where they were still very unpleasant, but you weren’t scared so much as…annoyed? This can happen when you have the horror too dependent on the sudden shock without fulfilling the promise of danger. A creepy thing is going boo, but the characters are fine.

Masters of tension can use the false alarm jumpscare to great effect. They can also defuse tension to put us at ease right before jump scaring with a sudden, unexpected death–real danger. But in many cases, the jumpscare is simply a loud noise and a creepy face, and we become desensitized too fast.

In The End…

The main point here is to encourage you to look at your own story and see if you’re taking it easy on your protagonists. I know, we love our creations, but the best stories have the highest stakes and the lowest lows. Our villains need to be what we promise them in the prose. If we mention that the enemy is going to be a cunning mastermind, they need to outwit the hero. If they’re indestructible, they need to stand firm while the hero tries to beat them. If they’re the type to ruthlessly punish others for missteps, then they need to follow through and ruin someone’s life. Nothing takes a reader or viewer out of the experience faster than showing them that they can’t trust the framework you set up for them.

Ultimately, we want to lead our readers into the concern that the Good Thing won’t happen before they reach that cathartic moment of triumph. The best way to do that is to keep the Scary Thing Scary.