Villain Worksheet

Paid sub post

As I talked about on Monday’s post, modern storytelling has insisted that villains must be understood before they can be feared. That every antagonist needs a tragic backstory, a sympathetic motive, or a moral argument strong enough to make us hesitate before calling them “bad.” But not every story benefits from that approach. Some villains are terrifying precisely because they don’t want our understanding—and some narratives lose their power when we try too hard to grant it.

In this piece, paid subscribers gain access to a 5-page worksheet with guided questions to help them carve out this kind of narrative force.