Villains and More—with Barbara Nickless

Published November 19, 2024

An Interview by Deborah L. Brewer

Every story, if it is to be a compelling read, needs conflict and obstacles for its protagonists to overcome on their heroic journeys. Enter, the villain, to a chorus of boos and hisses. Villains are the characters readers love to fear and hate.

But not all villains are compelling foes. And for those that are, there is a risk that readers’ sympathy will tip away from the hero to the villain. How can we craft an antagonist that will make our hero shine?

Meet Barbara Nickless

Barbara Nickless is the award-winning Wall Street Journal and #1 Amazon Charts bestselling author of eight novels. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, the FBI Citizens Academy Alumni Association, the World Affairs Council, and the Association of Former Intelligence Officers. Her most recent travels—while conducting research for a novel—involved taking cover from rocket fire and being grilled at military checkpoints. Barbara lives in Colorado at the foot of the Rocky Mountains where she loves to hike, cave, snowshoe, and drink single malt Scotch. Find Barbara’s additional writing at Living Against the Dark and connect with her on her website, barbaranickless.com.

Q & A

Debby: Welcome, Barbara. Your volunteering, mentoring, and teaching with PPW, as well as serving on the board for four years are much appreciated. Thank you for sharing your insights with Writing from the Peak.

You have some formidable villains in your books. What are the essential attributes of a villain? 

Barbara: Thank you for inviting me! PPW is a fantastic organization, and I’m glad to have volunteered.

Villains. Nothing wrecks a good night’s sleep more than getting inside the mind of a killer. It’s rather like releasing the contents of Pandora’s jar for private consumption. You pop the lid and out fly vice, violence, greed, madness, and more. A writer can turn these evils and ills over in her mind until one or more of them begin to coalesce into a motive behind her killer’s deeds.

One critical factor: make your killer as smart as your hero. Hannibal Lecter destroyed everyone in his path. Everyone. Except Clarice. She holds her own against Lecter, and through smarts and persistence gets what she needs from him and finds the killer. At the end of the story, a freed Lecter promises not to hunt her down because, “the world is more interesting with you in it, Clarice.” 

Beware the villain taking over the story. Hannibal and Clarice are equally compelling, although it’s interesting that Harris’s sequel to The Silence of the Lambs wasn’t named after the hero of the first book but—instead—after the villain. While you want your villain formidable, make your hero even more interesting through his or her weakness and foibles as well as tenacity and grit. We root for the underdog.

Debby: How does a writer ensure they have the right villain to face their particular hero?

Barbara: In a tightly woven novel, the villain’s strengths are a dark mirror of the hero’s weaknesses. Sometimes it can be straightforward: Hannibal Lecter’s smooth sophistication against Clarice’s hillbilly roots. Or the physical prowess of the titular bone collector against Lincoln Rhyme’s quadriplegia in Jeffery Deaver’s novel. A more subtle battle plays out in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Man. Anton Chigurh is a sadistic killer whose odd moral code comes up against that of Sheriff Bell, who takes seriously his oath to protect his community. Chigurh’s peculiar philosophy on who deserves to die (sometimes determined by a coin toss) leads Bell into an existential battle of good versus evil, one which ultimately forces him to abandon his chosen profession and retreat from the war. The book is haunting.

Debby: At what point in a story should a villain be revealed? 

Barbara: Where in the book the villain is revealed depends on the genre. The Da Vinci Code is a thriller, and we get inside the mind of the killer quickly. Dean Koontz is another author who creates this inside view to wonderful—and wonderfully creepy—effect. In Martin Cruz Smith’s excellent Gorky Park, learning the identity of the killer halfway through the book pivots the novel from police procedural to thriller, creating new alliances and exposing traitors. With most traditional mysteries, the villain’s identity is revealed at the end in a manner that shows our detective is smarter than the bad guy.

If you disclose your killer’s identity early, take advantage of this to show his or her inner workings and ratchet up the tension as you switch POVs at critical moments. If we know what horrors await the hero, the suspense becomes unbearable. 

Debby: Are there different genre expectations? How can writers avoid a cliché?

Barbara: What would James Bond be without an over-the-top baddie? We expect that from Ian Fleming. These days, though, writers and readers tend to prefer more subtlety (although not always, as evinced by the success of the Marvel movies). In terms of a villain, cliches include everything from overused similes and metaphors (a shark’s grin) to worn-out backstories and tropes such as Norman Bates’s mommy issues (although that is such rich territory writers continue to mine gold there).

I’ve learned to throw away my first ideas around the killer—this low-hanging fruit comes from whatever I’ve been exposed to in film and books and can lead to caricatures and stereotypes. For a villain to stand out, the reader must find him or her frighteningly real. And—even—in some measure relatable. After all, the killer’s actions spring from normal human traits on steroids—a warning of what we regular Joes might be capable of when the superego can no longer constrain the id. 

Compare the 1960s Joker, played by Cesar Romero as a goofy prankster (a change made due to regulations from the Comics Code Authority) with the brilliantly tormented Joker created by director Christopher Nolan and brought to life by Heath Ledger in his Academy Award-winning performance. Which one would you be most afraid to meet in a dark alley, acid-spraying lapel pins notwithstanding? Interestingly, during filming, Ledger created a “Joker diary” with photos, notes, dialogue from the film, etc.—a great way to dig deep into your villain’s psyche!

Debby: You have a new book coming out. What can you tell us about it?

Barbara: The Drowning Game is a family drama/spy thriller. I’ve always wanted to write a spy novel! Espionage stories go behind the scenes. Spies tell us more about the world than any pundit’s speeches or newspaper headline. Human intelligence (HUMINT) is the man behind the curtain, pulling levers and changing lives without most of us being aware it’s happening. I love that! Digging into the truth, exposing intrigues. Before I switched to English Lit, I was a journalism major. I’ve never gotten over this desire to understand what’s really going on in closed chambers.

I’m also fascinated by people who can dig deep when the heat is on and find courage—the ones who commit espionage or fight against it. The people whose lives are drawn into events larger than themselves and who then prove their mettle.

The New Yorker ran an article by Evan Osnos called “The Haves and the Have Yachts.” It was an eye-opening view into a milieu I knew nothing about: the world of the Ultra-High-Net-Worth Individual (UHNWI)—a person with a net worth of at least $30 million. This led me into the lives (and egos) of people who either own these yachts or work in the industries that create them. Combined with all the headlines about the impounding of the yachts of Russian oligarchs, I had my setting and lots of potential intrigue. With China on the rise in global espionage, I pivoted to Asia.

Debby: Your crime series are both traditionally published. What encouragement or advice can you offer writers who seek the same?

Barbara: It’s been said a lot, but it bears repeating: Write the best book you can. Competition is fierce. Later, there will be time for PR and marketing. But first, you must make sure you have the best “product” possible (I hate calling a novel a product, but that’s today’s world). Develop and practice your pitch, then go to conferences like PPWC to meet with editors and agents face-to-face. That’s how you get off the slush pile.

Deborah L. Brewer joined Pikes Peak Writers a decade ago, seeking help with a cozy mystery. When the novel was completed, she stayed for the camaraderie. Now she’s writing short stories. An editor for the PPW 2022 anthology, Dream, Deborah contributes to Writing from the Peak to help fellow PPW members write better with more enjoyment, and ultimately, achieve their writing dreams.