[burningsoul]

I am struggling with this. There are two aspects to this. One is an outright villain who commits atrocities without any heed to the effect on others and another who knows that he is harming others and who still does it. But what if the latter thinks it is for the good of the other person? And the other one does not know, cannot know. I have been like that. My father has been like that. Ha! The shame! The shame! This is the character that I am trying to write. Yet it feels like the first one is more villainous because the second one can still be dealt with. But you cannot deal with the first kind. That kind has to be destroyed. But then sometimes the second one becomes so hard that he starts resembling the first kind. Yes, that is the kind of a cruel character that I am trying to write.

So, we start with this one being a nice person and then we see his villainy. The devil lies in the details. Anyone with any insights about writing evil characters? @Llyralen definitely expect something from you here. @PsychReviews ?

[PsychReviews]

Watch the documentary The Act of Killing. It's all in there, both the evil from a person of conscience and from the person without one.

[Jingle All The Gay]

What if you explore the Internet and make the character an amalgam of traits based on what you find...

[Adonnus]

Watch the documentary The Act of Killing. It's all in there, both the evil from a person of conscience and from the person without one.

Heard about this documentary but can't bring myself to watch it. It's just too disturbing knowing that out of all the crimes committed, they simply won and none of them were ever punished. The message is that you can do the worst things in history and you will just get away with it.

[NagatoUzumaki]

You should establish what drives character, view concerning life and said character collection of traits, is your character just an impulsive lunatic that commits atrocities in spur of the moment or does he subscribe to some philosophy like rational egoism taken to the extreme that make said atrocities just results of acting upon a logical conclusion of said philosophy? Once you've one of those three components you can start thinking of two another and try to make them fit into another components so they make consistent whole, for an example if greed and selfishness are key components of the character. then character unlikely will be driven to help local orphans (unless this is most beneficial course of action to them to take and will be rewarded) and adopt utilitarianism as a philosophy, as well-being of others won't be of concern to them and they will seek to maximize their own well-being even at cost of others. Then you move into a more difficult territory as you will have to answer why character is what they currently are, effectively backstory for a character what can be complex as you would in reality will be creating many different characters that will vary to some degree or another from each other as they will be influenced by their experiences upon which they will derive conclusions to form their world view and which they may to some extent act upon leading to other set of experiences that will lead to other experiences derived and so on, it gets even more complex as if you involve other characters into this you will have to do the same in order to create create consistent and well-written characters and story. Of course, you could skip backstory element and develop it later but you may trap yourself then into a plot hole or character inconsistency, as you will be a making character as you go without past in mind and then you may end with difficulty of writing past around what we know about your character and you may forgot some detail you wrote concerning them.Once you have all quirks, drives and philosophy (complex or not) and you can wonder how this character fits into the story (or how could character could fit into the story) and how such character would react in a consistent to character manner to situations they happen to be part of in the story.

That said unless you want to make audience hate character (what may be a good thing if done properly as audience may enjoy getting hated villains what's coming for them) or make character comedically entertaining you may want to give them some even if minor good qualities/traits so you won't them make boring.

If you want a villain that simply can't ultimately (or at all) be reasoned with then either you will have to make them unpredictably impulsive to the point coexistence or letting him exist would be unacceptable option to people that oppose him or person with ultimately incompatible goals or means required (or at least character thinks are required) to achieve that goals being unacceptable to those who oppose such characters. For an example misanthropic and nihilistic character is good type of character that you could pretty much pit easily against any other type of character with little to none chance of other characters avoiding coming to blows with them due to conflict of interests.

Unless, you're speaking about single character with a dual nature that commits self-serving atrocities and at the same time thinking their actions are for good of the others, happened in real world too. However, that's not the impression I got from what you wrote as what your wrote is quite imprecise and chaotically put together.

Heard about this documentary but can't bring myself to watch it. It's just too disturbing knowing that out of all the crimes committed, they simply won and none of them were ever punished. The message is that you can do the worst things in history and you will just get away with it.

Well, it's sort of true message because you can, provided you're lucky enough or create situation where others are unable or/and unwilling to punish you for what you did.

[burningsoul]

What if you explore the Internet and make the character an amalgam of traits based on what you find...

I tried that. I ended up rationalizing the negative character completely and lost sight of why I was writing in the first place.

[PsychReviews]

Heard about this documentary but can't bring myself to watch it. It's just too disturbing knowing that out of all the crimes committed, they simply won and none of them were ever punished. The message is that you can do the worst things in history and you will just get away with it.

Nope. That's not the message I got. There are two particular criminals that show their motivations. One with a conscience and one without. Now they did kill Communists, who also killed lots of people as well, so it's not black and white. It's probably the most grey situation when Fascists and Communists kill each other.

Despite that, there's a lot of unintended comedy, like one of them trying to be a politician and the Narcissist talking about these executions in the most bland way possible while shopping in a mall. It tells you that narcissists make excuses to feel better and people who kill with a conscience will have a bothered conscience afterwards. The guy with a conscience was dry-heaving while trying to describe choking several people with wire. His excuse was that it was the right thing to do to kill the communists, so having a conscience doesn't prevent killing, but it requires a purpose that seems heroic at the time. Abusers often feel they are protagonists. I got a lot out of that film...
...but it's not a date movie. :)

You can also see how even the narcissist is somewhat haunted by what happened even when he's shopping or golfing. There's a wish that the killings could have been avoided.

[Anunnaki Spirit]

Just take a few things from popular celebrities and politicians that mainstream society is so fond of then you will already have a large component of such a character where everyone has praise for like how Hitler was before the war. The other side just take a few notes from the Bible and you will have one nasty villain that is both praised but equally evil.

[DevilSlayerDante]

A couple of my favorite villains are Homelander from The Boys, and Sylar from Heroes; I especially believe Sylar was the best developed character on Heroes. Very 3 dimensional, I sympathize with them for the unfortunate circumstances that created them. If you're not familiar with either of those characters, get familiar with them. Best insight I got on this matter.

Good luck.

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[WhoPutsTheirFaceOnABus]

You wanna make a character really evil, make him appear really normal.