The villain prompt skill reset my whole plot outline

I spent two days mapping out a novel where the bad guy had a tragic backstory. Then I read a prompt on here about making the villain petty and small, like he ruins lives over a parking spot. That detail hit me because it felt real, way more than any grand motive. I rewrote the entire outline in one sitting, cutting the redemption arc completely. The twist now is he is still technically right about the hero, but no one likes him anyway. How do you all decide where a villain's logic stops being sympathetic and just becomes annoying?

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amy3021d ago

The line moves when the villain stops believing his own logic. Like, if he keeps bringing up the parking spot thing to justify everything, it fades from understandable to sad real quick. The trick is making him so locked into his own story that he cant see how dumb he looks to everyone else. That gap between his view and the reader's view is where the real tension lives. Once he starts trying to convince the hero he's right, thats when he becomes annoying instead of scary.