Why Villains Always Think They’re the Main Character
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A Project Heartless reflection from The Files Why Villains Always Think They’re the Main Character Every truly dangerous villain has one thing in common: they don’t think they’re the villain at all. They think they’re the protagonist. The world is wrong, the system is corrupt, everyone else is blind — and they are the one person finally willing to do what must be done . In psychological thrillers, this isn’t just flavour. It’s the engine. If your antagonist doesn’t have a story in which they are the hero, your reader will feel it. The character will flatten into a cliché: evil for the sake of evil, cruel for the sake of cool. Entertaining, maybe. But forgettable. 1. The story in their head is different from the story on the page Most people live inside a private narrative psychologists sometimes call a narrative identity . We take messy facts and rearrange them into a story where our actions make sense. Villains do the same thing — they just have sharper...