Your villain is a question; Your hero must be the answer.

A common sentiment among writers, from novelists to screenwriters, is that villains are more interesting to write than their heroic counterparts. But why is that, and how can we make heroes just as compelling? In this post, I'm using villain to loosely mean an antagonist who commits morally transgressive actions to achieve their goal. So while, yes, Thanos and the Joker fit that category, so do Nurse Ratched and Richard III. I think the key term that helps explain why it's so fun to write villains is morally transgressive. For a villain to be interesting, they must pose a challenge to our sense of morality. We might, for example, believe it is wrong to kill, but Thanos kills in pursuit of a utilitarian aim: saving humanity from overpopulation and eventual extinction. No matter your position on the execution of that idea within Infinity War and Endgame, viewers are challenged to figure out why Thanos is wrong to believe his ends justify his means. Because we live in a world held together by a shared sense of morality, it can be fun to explore the breaking of that social fabric to see what happens.

To use a more nuanced example: what is the question Nurse Ratched asks of the audience? What is so wrong about the head nurse at a mental institution usurping enough power to keep patients in line? There is a way to explain her actions and behaviour that makes her seem like a hero, and yet the story of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest paints her as a villain. Readers and viewers might be inclined to agree, but are forced to ask why they think her actions cross a moral boundary, or why they don't.

If villains are questions, then what does that make heroes, those we will define as the moral counterpart, either set on fixing or at least stopping the villain's plot? The answer. And this is where many writers fall short. They don't offer a complete answer to the villain, often relying on the better judgment of the audience. Why must Thanos be stopped? “Because he’s bad,” or “because Captain America and Iron Man are sad.” While your story can be entertaining without the hero being a good answer, it can never be truly great.

So what does this tell us about how we should write our stories? The villain and hero should be written to maximize their question-and-answer relationship. This is where I finally touch on my love for The Dark Knight Trilogy, and I beg your pardon if this is not of interest, but I think the first two movies illustrate my point beautifully. I’ll try my best to explain the plots and characters as much as necessary for this section, so if you're not familiar with the films, hopefully you’re not lost.

Batman Begins (2005) sees Bruce Wayne journey to the League of Shadows because he "seeks the means to fight injustice" and "to turn fear against those who prey on the fearful." In this, he and the League are aligned. However, the divergence that leads to his parting ways with them is their insistence that “doing what must be done” includes being willing to kill. In this film, the question posed by the villain is: Why should rot and decay be allowed to fester when they could be snuffed out? By this philosophy, Ra’s al Ghul justifies destroying Gotham, a city overrun with corruption and beyond saving.

The hero, Bruce, aka Batman, is placed in a position to answer that question. He is willing to do what is necessary, but will not kill because it is not necessary. He can beat and torment criminals through fear of the symbol he has created, keeping things under control without murder. At the end of the film, Ra's al Ghul and Batman are barreling down the tracks of a monorail toward its end, certain doom for either of them if still on board. In a struggle, Batman flips Ra’s onto his back and aims a blade at his neck. Ra’s remarks that Batman has “finally learned to do what is necessary,” to which Batman replies with the answer to the League's question: “I won’t kill you. But I don’t have to save you.” Batman escapes, and Ra’s dies. The message is clear: Batman’s responsibility isn’t to protect everyone, including terrorists, but to ensure his city is safe without resorting to murder. It’s a complicated answer to a complicated question, and it elevates the text.

Let’s look at one more example from the sequel that demonstrates this question/answer idea to great effect. In The Dark Knight (2008), the Joker, a new villain, is introduced: a clown who makes quips and laughs while wielding bazookas and blowing up hospitals, all while asking the question of the movie, “Why so serious?” He’s not just asking his victims, but metatextually, the audience: why bother following the philosophy of order and morality instead of submitting to chaos?

He repeatedly puts people in situations where they must break moral codes, trying to prove that everyone is capable of evil if they just let go of the social order. Blow up a boat full of criminals or be blown up by them. For every day Batman refuses to unmask himself, someone dies. As he puts it, "when the chips are down, civilized people will eat each other." How does one answer the Joker’s question?

The answer comes not only from Batman but from all the citizens of Gotham. The people on the boats refuse to kill each other. Not only does Bruce nearly reveal himself as Batman, but Harvey Dent, Gotham’s District Attorney, declares himself to be Batman and takes on that risk. Later, when the Joker changes his mind, he says people have an hour to kill the man who is threatening to spoil the Joker's fun by revealing Batman's identity, or a hospital will be blown up. Batman saves his life when a cop, desperate to have his wife, who's in the hospital, is about to shoot him. People are shown to be decent, even in the bleakest hour, with the most at stake.

So how can we put this question/answer structure into action in our own writing? Make sure your main protagonist answers the villain you spent so much time developing. If your antagonist's goal is to force conformity, the protagonist needs to defeat them with individuality, not just fists. If the villain's goal is to protect his crew by making sure they don’t form attachments to outsiders, the hero should defeat them by demonstrating the advantage of those outside connections.