Providing a strong, fully dimensional villain who can give your hero a real run for his money will make the hero's triumph all the more satisfying to readers.
Max Brand (pen name for the late Frederick Faust) nearly always created truly impressive villains for his western novels. In the series of Silvertip novels, the outlaw Barry Christian was equally as potent and powerful as Brand's hero, and in Brand's Montana Kid series, the Mexican bandit, Meteo Rubriz, was a full match for the quick-shooting protagonist. And when they meet in climactic battle, the reader witnesses a clash of titans.
The greater the villain, the greater the hero.
William E. Nolan, How to Write Horror Fiction, 1990
Max Brand (pen name for the late Frederick Faust) nearly always created truly impressive villains for his western novels. In the series of Silvertip novels, the outlaw Barry Christian was equally as potent and powerful as Brand's hero, and in Brand's Montana Kid series, the Mexican bandit, Meteo Rubriz, was a full match for the quick-shooting protagonist. And when they meet in climactic battle, the reader witnesses a clash of titans.
The greater the villain, the greater the hero.
William E. Nolan, How to Write Horror Fiction, 1990
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