Making a villain.

If you've ever thought that creating a villain is different from creating every other character in a universe, you'd be wrong. Or at least, you should be.  A character is a character, and if you're trying to create a fully 3D person on the page, it shouldn't matter if it's a protagonist of an antagonist.

In the case of my bad guys, I tend to have the history of not only the antagonist's parents, but the grandparents. They have hobbies and motivations and a history. They have back stories, and I could probably make books out of the bad guys I make.

However, there are schools of thought behind making villains.  One is that the villains really see themselves as the good guys; the heroes of their own stories.

My problem with that is that it presumes the villain cares about "right" and "wrong."  How many people honestly think Saddam Hussein believed that he was doing "the right thing"? Or maybe his ultra-violent, rapist torturing sons? The equally late and un-lamented Osama?

If you're thinking that "oh, all those people were sociopaths" -- who says?  There are plenty of amoral little bastards out there. They don't think over morals, ethics, Nietzsche, the will to power ... though you'd be surprised how many think they are beyond good and evil.
You don't need to be a sociopath to have a mindset geared towards "what I want," and "what's good for me?" If you have that, and add together a total disregard for the consequences, and for anyone who gets in your way, you have a good, solid villain.

Could they have a code of honor and be a villain? Sure, why not?  Honor is generally considered a system based solely on pride. And let's face it, when you amp "pride" up to eleven, you have the above parameters -- it's focused totally on the "me."

And, no, a villain doesn't have to be pure evil -- torturing, sadistic rapist qualities are not a prerequisite. For some, not everything is about sex. And, hell, I live in New York, bondage and S&M is considered a subculture.

Hey, just because the character slashes someone's throat and watches their lifeblood coming out of them in spurts, chuckling manically, doesn't necessarily make them a bad guy .... though it could make them a fairly good guy.

Did I mention that I specialize in fairly scary good guys?

And on the other end, there are people who try to tell me that MacBeth was a tragic hero ... Hint: he's not a hero, he's a Columbo murderer, where the murder mystery is told from the killer's point of view.  Here's a lesson to being a writer: if you're trying to make your hero tragic, don't give him a body count in the triple-digits that includes innocent women and children.

My point: you don't need a bad guy to be crazy for him to be evil. Nor do you need a sadist, a rapist, a pervert, sex-fiend, or Jack the Ripper.

The enemy in A Pius Man, for example, is none of these. Will he kill everyone in his way? Sure. Will he go out of his way to utterly and completely destroy thousands if he can? Absolutely. Will he rape, torture, and maim for fun and profit? No.

For an antagonist, you just need one person to have competing goals with your main character.

For a bad guy, you need someone who must be stopped.