Villains and Heroes -- Viva La Difference!

As a writer, how do you approach your villains differently than when writing your heroes?

Honestly, I try not to write them differently at all. They both need to have drives and goals and hurdles to overcome to accomplish those goals.

The main difference is that I get to walk on the dark side when I write the villains, so their actions can be vile or sick or antisocial.

Perhaps one of my favorite villains that I've written is the husband of the heroine Ambient Sky (in the story "The Other, As Just As Fair" in Show Me a Hero). He isn't really evil, but his drive to protect his children becomes the very thing that puts them at risk (and ruins her life) when he outs his own wife as a superhero in order to win custody in their divorce settlement.

Feet of Clay

How important is it that your hero have "feet of clay"? 

For me it's not just important, it's crucial if I want my heroes to be believable. Some of the best advice I ever got about writing comes from Chuck Dixon, and it has served me well throughout my career: Give your villain a likeable trait, and give your hero a dislikeable trait. Those aren't his exact words, but that's the gist of it.

Give your hero feet of clay. Make them struggle with something, and for my money, why not a moral issue?

Case in point,  in my SHOW ME A HERO collection, the Grandstander is a flamboyant and arrogant jackass who's only super power is that he knows the exact moment of his death and has a sort of carte blanche with his actions until that day happens, and he abuses his "power" to impress people. But not without ultimately doing the right thing.

I prefer to write my characters along a continuum rather than a clear line in the sand. My bad guys can be a little good, and my good guys have to be a little bad, or they're just not that interesting to me as a reader or as a writer.