Make your villain passionate about something other than a relationship or the potential for a new romance by creating storylines about family, friends, secrets, loss, etc. Love can be a factor without being the sole source that drives a woman mad. Layered characters will keep your readers on their toes.
Make sure she will remain in character, but present the possibility that she is not all bad. Create the kind of antagonist that works towards a goal out of conviction and a twisted interpretation of her core values, rather than working out of plain selfishness.
In the early days of cinema, female characters were often portrayed as weak, subservient, and in need of saving. However, as the industry evolved, women began to be given more prominent and complex roles, including some of the most iconic and terrifying villains in film history.
villainess. noun. vil·lain·ess ˈvil-ə-nəs. : a woman who is a villain.
In most movies, we don't see many female villains, and the ones we do see tend to turn good, or at least neutral, then the males. Women are the fairer sex, an idea that despite feminism, is still prevalent today. So villainous women in fiction are rare, especially the pure evil variety.
A villain is defined as an evil or wicked character that enacts evil action and/or harms others. A villain may have a justification for their actions that is in line with their own principles, but their actions inflict harm and create ruin in the process. This is not the same as an antagonist.
Villains are not born, they are made. A villain is someone's hero with a broken heart. There is ALWAYS a reason they behave this way. It's the same for people in real life.
1 Lady Death Is Above Everything Else
Often depicted as a skeleton or as a woman in a black robe, Death possesses infinite power and omniscience. She can control any dimension of reality, such as space and time, and her touch causes immediate death. Death rarely fights her own battles.
She is intelligent: Our villain is a master game player; she can twist opinions, play on the emotions of other characters and turn everyone against her enemy. She may be using her powers for evil, but you cannot deny the woman is a mastermind.
People hate it when they fear or can't understand someone. So if you want the readers to hate your antagonist, an easy way is to make them a serial killer who loves killing or thinks that he's killing with a purpose. Almost everyone hates people who think they have justification to kill people.
Your goal may be to illustrate the villain's dark side; however if you're not careful, the villain can read as disproportionately evil. Your villain should not be all bad all the time. In fact, he or she should have some good qualities. Perhaps he's funny, charming, and inspiring (to his minions).
Some findings suggest that the reasoning behind our attraction is it allows us to explore our personality's darker side without betraying our moral beliefs and convictions. Interestingly, the study showed that we favor characters whose traits are similar to ours.
One way to create a scary villain is to keep their motives mysterious. Don't give away what they're after right away or why they're doing it. Instead, let the reader slowly catch glimpses of the villain's true nature through their actions and the reactions of those around them.
In a universe with heroes like Wonder Woman, Superman, and the Flash, it's hard to take Captain Boomerang seriously, especially when he's running around trying to take out a goddess. By far the weakest villain, Captain Boomerang just can't accomplish much.
Villains that only appear briefly in their given works and/or aren't prominent characters throughout the story. Although some minor villains can have a lasting effect on the story they're in, or even be the one(s) responsible for starting it, they usually aren't primarily responsible for major plot points.
The evilest Disney supervillain of all time is Scar. His greed and jealousy turned him into a ruthless murderer. Scar even killed his own family just to have power and the throne. The part where he killed Mufasa, the Lion King, is one iconic scene [4].