The Villain's Journey: How to Create Villains Readers Love to Hate

by Debbie Burke

Overview

Do you want to write exciting stories that keep readers up late at night? The secret is inside the villain!
Follow the steps to the darkest depths of the human soul. Trace a character's descent into malice, mayhem, and murder.
In this book, you'll learn about:

The many flavors of villains, from funny to fearsome to fanatical.
How to drill inside the brain of a criminal.
What drives them? Is someone born bad or do they learn to be bad?
Reasons why an ordinary person changes from law-abiding to law breaking.
Tips for an antagonist who challenges, threatens, and terrifies your hero.
How compelling criminals transform a story from meh to memorable.
And more...
Build-a-Villain worksheets help you create unique, multi-dimensional villains for your own stories.

Even if you don't write crime fiction, this book shows techniques to bring antagonists to life in any genre.

Travel on The Villain's Journey...if you dare!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798988070573
Publisher:	Media Management LLC
Publication date:	07/20/2025
Pages:	244
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.51(d)

About the Author

Debbie Burke may look like a cookie-baking grandma but underneath her innocent appearance is a devious criminal mind. She writes the award-winning Tawny Lindholm Thriller series where villains always receive their just deserts. She's also an internationally published journalist, freelance editor, and long-time contributor to The Kill Zone, an educational blog for crime writers. Her popular writing classes and workshops feature tools and techniques described in The VIllain's Journey.

Editorial Reviews

In The Villain's Journey, author Debbie Burke leads us confidently through the twisted journeys of the wicked, deceitful, deadly villains we love to hate. Precise and thorough, she nails the inner workings of the many varieties of baddies, illustrating the psychology of their misdeeds with abundant examples from history, myth, literature, and modern life. You will certainly find insight and inspiration to make your villains leap off the page and haunt your readers' dreams.

Author of The Writer's Journey - Christopher Vogler

Debbie Burke has filled a critical gap in writing craft instruction. We needed a book of solid advice for creating compelling, three-dimensional villains. This is it. Writers of mysteries and thrillers will find these tips especially helpful, but authors of any genre will benefit by using this book to take a deeper dive into the antagonist of their story.— James Scott Bell, International Thriller Writers Award winner

Author, writing instructor - James Scott Bell