DEEP CUTS Episode 63: What Makes a Compelling Villain

Scott Sigler Slices

Empty Set Entertainment

Science Fiction, Arts, Fiction

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Every great hero needs a villain. Even more essential? For every protagonist to have a compelling antagonist. What does it take to have an antagonist that readers hate, but also hate to love? Scott & A talk compelling villains and why we love them. Deep Cuts is created by Scott Sigler and A B Kovacs Produced by Steve Riekeberg Production Assistance by Allie Press Copyright 2025 by Empty Set Entertainment All I wanna do is love to hate the bad guy, and if I want to blog about it all day I’d use GoDaddy Promo Code CJCFOSSIG, to save ninety-nine percent on a new dot-com registration. You should, too. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Luke and Barbie and Indy and Captain Marvel and Spidey.
0:04.3	They're all really good, right?
0:06.8	They are boring!
0:08.4	They are boring without a villain.
0:10.7	They're about as exciting as a half-chewed tab of peptobismo.
0:14.1	You've got to have the villain in order for the hero to be worth anything at all.
0:21.0	Tonight we'll get into what makes a compelling villain right after this quick break.
0:35.1	Welcome to Deep Cuts, the bonus episode of the Scott Sigler Slice's fiction podcast where a sci-fi author and an audiobook narrator discuss things and stuff in the world of fiction and pop culture.
0:45.5	I am Scott Sigler, sci-fi horror author, known affectionately far and wide as the future Dark Overlord.
0:52.3	And I am A.B. Sigler, audiobook narrator and publisher at M.T. Set Entertainment. And tonight, we're talking about what makes a compelling villain. A reminder, this is a bonus episode in the Scott Sigler's Slice his feed, not part of any particular story. You don't have to listen to this to know what's going on with the tale we're currently telling, but we think you like this peek behind the storyteller's curtain.
1:12.9	All right. You want to get into it? Yeah, let's get into it. Let's do it to it.
1:16.0	Okay. All right. So there are things that make a compelling villain, but I think most people
1:23.6	don't always identify with the villain at first.
1:28.0	So I wanted to talk about it because you write heroes and villains.
1:33.2	So let's start with why we need a compelling villain.
1:38.4	As I mentioned in the hyperbolic open, if you don't have a villain that challenges your, let's go to antagonists
1:49.1	and protagonist, even though the title of this is what makes it compelling villain, because I'm
1:53.5	sure we'll get to at some point, every villain is the hero of their own story.
1:57.6	That's an old trope that resonates and comes along. Everyone's a hero of their own story.
2:02.5	So we have an antagonist and a protagonist. The protagonist would be the Luke's and the Barbies and the Indies.
2:07.7	The antagonist would be the Vader's and I guess the Barbies, because everybody in the Barbie movies are Barbie.
2:14.1	So, and you go out from there, we only see the heroism if there's a challenge from the villain.
	...

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