User blog comment:Creeper50/How to Make an Unlikable Character Worth Rooting For/@comment-26475800-20160804020659

I get what you're trying to convey here, but you are missing your mark. You are talking about an antihero. But what it is coming across as it that you want people to root for the villain. That's not really something that people should want in their stories. A villain should despised and feared. Not rooted for.

To make a good antihero, you have the basic outline, but it could use some refining. The suggestions you gave were very curt, not really giving much in the way to do this. Sure you added some examples, but they weren't strong, because they weren't explained enough before the example. Look at your Reasoning section.

Of the entire part of that section that gave any information that is useful is this:

"Whatever they do, be sure they have some motive behind any and all actions."

Which is great, that you were able to get the core of it into one sentence. But, say I got my Dunce Cap on and I don't really understand what you are saying. Give them a motivation? What do you mean?

You can go so much deeper into this than that one sentence and a weak example. You could have added something like this, again a rather weak example to give, but what the hell.

What makes the person want to kill? Did something happen in the past that made them snap and they are trying to get retribution? Those are questions that you should be asking yourself when writing a motivation.

See, not only does it expand on what you were saying, but it also gets the gears turning for anyone who is reading this.

But to make a really good villain, you should have a good motivation, a strong skill set (mostly at being bad in one way or another), a goal (which could also be the motivation), and a reason. The other parts just add something the all characters, it's not special to a villain. But, at the same time, neither is anything that I've just mentioned above.

To make a really good villain, you have to make them a strong adversary to your protagonist. What if you had two people who were equally matched in smarts but one was just slightly stronger? A show down between that would be epic, and the only reason that stronger would loss, assuming he is the antagonist, is because he fell into a fit of rage and couldn't think as clearly as the protagonist. Or, the protagonist could lose, because he doesn't have enough strength to power through the villain. Either way, it will lead to a great show down at the end and it's something that will lead people wanting to read more of what you write.