Like Poe’s purloined letter, the best place to hide the villain in your mystery novel is in plain sight. In a post on Writer Unboxed, Sarah Penner offers tips for making it work.
“This individual is often a key player in the story, meaning we need to introduce the reader to our villain early,” Penner says. “Ultimately, this makes for a more satisfying ending: no one wants to learn that the villain is a minor side character who shows up in act III.” Your hidden villain should also appear regularly and interact with your protagonist. “When keeping our villain’s identity under wraps, we want the reader to not only understand this key character’s motives, but even root for them,” Penner writes. “And of course, we want the reader to trust the hidden villain.”
Penner offers her tips for pulling it off:
- Use first-person point of view. First-person POV pulls your reader into your villain’s mindset and helps create empathy.
- Provide a sympathetic background. Any well-rounded character – including your villain – needs both flaws and positive characteristics. “Once you’ve established the emotional or physical characteristics that will make your reader pity your hidden villain, let us into the villain’s thoughts about these characteristics,” Penner advises. “Show us his or her embarrassment, shame, or grief.”
- Establish motivations and goals. Every character also needs their own goal and motivations. Your reader should understand what your villain wants and perhaps root for them.
- Throw a wrench in your hidden villain’s plans. Once you’ve earned your reader’s empathy, let your villain suffer a setback. The reader will start rooting for them, setting them up for a big reversal later.
- Demonstrate virtue and show emotion. Let your villains demonstrate positive traits, both innate and feigned. “Even bad guys feel heartbreak, resignation, loneliness, and unease,” Penner writes. “You can weave these emotions into your narrative via backstory but better yet, incorporate active scenes in which we see these feelings displayed in real-time, in response to plot events.”
- Show positive interaction with other characters. You can build trust with your reader when your other characters trust and react positively to your villain.
- Watch voice and tone closely. Of course, you know this character is the villain. While you’re dropping clues to their true identity, try to avoid revealing their nature inadvertently. “This might be in tone, word choice, dialogue, etc.,” Penner explains. “As you make your revision passes, look closely for this and soften dialogue and narrative exposition where possible. If your villain seems particularly edgy or gruff or snarky, ask yourself, might this give away too much too soon?”
