Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

50%
+0 −0
Q&A How to prevent seeming like a Marty Stu-ish villain is cheating?

You can show more of this planning and anticipation in order to make it more plausible. Show your villain expending large resources and manpower in the pursuit of plans and alternatives. Take an i...

posted 6y ago by Amadeus‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-19T22:13:22Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/35106
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T08:32:24Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/35106
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T08:32:24Z (about 5 years ago)
You can **_show_** more of this planning and anticipation in order to make it more plausible. Show your villain expending large resources and manpower in the pursuit of plans and alternatives.

Take an intelligent (not superhumanly so) leader with an intelligence agency of thousands of specialists, with an army with generals that have trained for battle their entire adult lives. It should not be surprising to us that with such resources, they CAN put together the puzzle pieces, mount investigations for more information, and consider so many alternatives.

Your problem is making the villain a lone wolf that must do ALL of it alone, that becomes implausible by virtue of the effort. But a smart villain that can hire a thousand mercenary spies and investigators, we should not be surprised if his team collectively out-thinks and wins against a protagonist that does not have many resources.

In the end, he can still lose for dismissing a contingency he considered impossible (e.g. a suicide mission) or thought was already addressed (e.g. he believed Joe was killed falling off the cliff but Joe somehow survived the fall).

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2018-04-16T13:05:53Z (over 6 years ago)
Original score: 7