Hello everyone!
I'm barely scratching the surface as far as the antagonist of my story goes. Here are some important things you need to know:
A) His motives are religious, first and foremost. He truly believes he's doing "God's work", acting for the greater good. You can almost see this as his "calling".
B) His truth is absolute, in his mind.
C) He hates what society has become. From his backstory, I can already tell you it started when he was in the Gulf War as a Marine. I can't quite make up the correlation yet, but it's there.
Now, Religion and Evil, when combined, can fall into cliché territory easily. Just look at the dozens of horror movies on the subject. How do I avoid the trap of having a stereotypical antagonist who only preaches the word of God? How do I give him depth and rationale?
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Do an empathy matrix (my favourite tool for character development), once you know them, then their actions fall into place.
I would also make sure they have a good immediate goal. It would be great if you can make us agree with the outcome, but perhaps not their method. For example, we are against child molesters, but may bump up against burning them alive for public sport.
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Yes, empathy for the villain. As the old adage goes, "sympathy for the devil". I'll consider that. Thanks, Craig.
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This is super interesting! I think rather than be worried about stereotyping and cliches, just focus on the character's wants and needs, like Craig D Griffiths says. If those two ring true to the larger themes you want to explore, then you'll be good. As far as depth goes, dimension = contradiction. If what your antagonist wants is opposing what they need, you'll get a nice threedimensionality to your character. Think about it as opposing their conscious object of desire and their unconscious object of desire. Hope this helps!