Killing your villain

These are my personal rules for dealing with the antagonist or villain.

There are only three things you can do to a villain at the end of a book or series.

1 – Death

2 – Redemption

3 – Jail-time/Exile

It's up to you to decide what is appropriate but here's my take.

1 – When the bad guy is killed either by the protagonist, some outside force or they are taken out by their own choices. This is the 'death' punishment something that happens to many villains even in children's movies. (e.g Kungfu Pana 1 and 2, Voldemort...)

Killing a bad guy is something that I do not hesitate to do. But the trick is deciding if it's the best move.

Here's what I think:

If your villain is heartless (Tai Lung from Kungfu Panda is a great example) You HAVE to kill him.

Tai Lung is a savage beast who was willing to kill the man that raised him so he could be the dragon warrior. So he could have power fame and glory. So he could have respect I guess. But Po wasn't having that and he sends him to the spirit realm.

If a villain does not have any respect for human life and is willing to take out a good father figure like Shi fu than the death punishment is a must to me.

If you paint a person as totally heartless like that than they should die at the end especially if many lives are at stake.

If the villain is not heartless than you CAN spare them.

You don't have to spare them but you can.

I would especially like it if that was the plan from the start. Maybe the goal of the story wasn't to kill the bad guy maybe it was just to permanently neutralise him. Either by taking his power (Aang's use of energy bending) weapons, or freedom. I can't think of an example of the other two but I'm sure you can.

2 – When the villain chooses to become a better person this is called redemption. It certainly doesn't count if they're forced to be good.

I like a good redemption story. I mean who doesn't love Zuko but you've got to do it right or else your audience will roll their eyes and be very upset.

These are the steps to a redemption arc.

Repentance AND Acceptance.

Step one is the villain realising that he fucked up and choosing to do the right thing. And step two is the other characters recognising the change.

You have to make the villain realise what he did was wrong and tell someone.

3 – This is pretty self-explanatory. Locking up your villain isn't as pleasing to the reader (or viewer but that doesn't mean it's not a good or logical move. Depending on the genre, you might have them behind bars or exiled.