Motivation: It’s a key part of any story. Every protagonist needs a motivation to explain what drives them and why. Conversely, most of the time, antagonists also need motivations. All humans have some reason, good or bad, why they want what they want, and fleshing out that reason both keeps the story plausible and increases the tension by allowing the reader to anticipate what the villain might do next. Even a villain as simple as a rampaging monster has a motivation, such as finding food or trying to escape.
However, there are a few rare types of villain that have no motivation in the traditional sense. While they aren’t a good fit for every story, when used in the right context, they can provide an interesting and unique way to drive a story. They also work well as B or C villains operating in conjunction with a human main villain.
There are three basic types of villains without motivations: the natural world, the unthinking machine, and the eldritch horror.
Man Versus Nature
AKA the Jack London plot. This is the standard survival story, where the protagonist must struggle against the hostile elements as they attempt to reach their destination. Dangerous animals may play a role in the story, but the main dangers should be forces that aren’t alive–storms, cold, lack of water, and so on.
The lack of control is what gives man versus nature stories their power. The elements can’t be defeated; they can only be survived, and even then, they may strike again at any moment. Additionally, these stories tap into our primal fear of the power of nature and our knowledge that civilization isn’t really as secure as it seems.
The main problem with man versus nature stories is that it’s difficult to maintain enough peril to drive a full-length novel without giving the impression that nature actually is an intelligent force that’s deliberately trying to kill the protagonist. If they face a hurricane, then a wildfire, then an earthquake, for instance, the story strains credibility.
For this reason, man versus nature stories often work best as novellas and other short formats. And a man versus nature conflict, properly integrated into the plot, is a great way to spice up a story with a more traditional main villain.
Machines, Literal and Metaphorical
In 2003, Nick Bostrom introduced the concept of the paperclip optimizer in a paper about the risks of AI. A paperclip optimizer is a system that follows a set of programmed instructions to the letter, regardless of the outcome. We’re not talking about HAL or other sentient robots, who are functionally the same as people in story terms. Paperclip optimizers have no intelligence and no capacity to understand the harm they’re causing. They simply do what they were created to do.
Like a lot of AI theorists, Bostrom seems to not have realized that his thought experiment already exists. As various people have pointed out, corporations are essentially “slow AIs” designed to unthinkingly pursue the goal of profit, regardless of the consequences. In a fictional context, a machine villain can be either one–a literal mechanical machine or a human-operated system that functions like a machine.
Because of their lack of active malevolence, machine villains can sometimes be comical. In Homer Price, a donut-making machine malfunctions and begins churning out an endless number of donuts. These stories can have an “all’s well that ends well” attitude once the machine is stopped, since no harm was ever meant.
On the other hand, their unfeeling nature can make machines some of the most horrifying villains there are–especially social machines, where the parts are real human beings who carry out their appointed roles with no thought to the consequences. That’s why they show up in so many dystopias.
While a dystopian machine villain can function in conjunction with a human ruler, they’re really at their scariest when there’s no single leader and the system is entirely self-sustaining. How do you fight against a system with no leader? Is it even possible to overthrow such a system? Can it be separated from civilization itself?
Eldritch Horrors
Unlike the other two, this type of villain is a living, intelligent creature that may have its own thoughts and motivations. However, the creature is so completely alien that its motivations are functionally unknowable. The protagonists can never hope to understand it, communicate with it, or even predict its behavior.
The seeming randomness of an eldritch creature is what makes it so terrifying. It might kill everyone in a city but spare one person, apparently for no reason. The knowledge that its acts might somehow come together into a master plan–and that it’s a plan the protagonists can’t foresee or understand–only makes them more frightening.
Eldritch creatures can’t be sympathetic (if they are, you’ve edged into a different kind of alien), but since so little is known about them, there can be hints in that direction. For instance, it can be implied that they’re fleeing something even more horrifying.
But eldritch creatures should be used with moderation. The very traits that make them frightening can also make readers lose patience with the story if they can’t predict where it’s going and can’t judge whether the protagonist’s choices are good or bad. For this reason, it’s often best to not show the eldritch creature until the end and have the main villain be the human who’s trying to unleash it, as we see in many Lovecraft stories.
These three types of villains illustrate the range and potential of villains without motivation. There are major limitations as to what kinds of stories they work well in, but when used effectively, they can evoke a far greater level of fear than a standard human or monster villain. Let’s look forward to seeing more of these types of villains in the future.