How to write a Complete Monster?
For those of you who are unfamiliar with TV Tropes lingo, a Complete Monster is the worst kind of villain imaginable: one that is evil to the core and has little to no redeeming traits whatsoever.
In order to qualify as a Complete Monster, a villain has to meet the following criteria:
They are the vilest character in their respective universe and must stand out from the crowd of other villains.
They are taken seriously, causing fear, revulsion, and hatred from other characters in the story.
They are never presented in a positive way.
They display no remorse towards those who they have hurt, nor do they express any empathy for others as well.
The atrocities that they commit are shown to the audience or implied and must not be told.
They must have performed an act that puts them beyond any chance of redemption.
I'm fully aware that it's quite easy for any writer to make a villain that is irredeemably terrible, bit it's hard to make such a villain come across as a believable character without making them into a one-dimensional caricature. One of the reasons I absolutely despise Sword Art Online is that every single Complete Monster in the series is a manic that is comically evil for the sake of being comically evil, who is either a megalomaniac, a rapist or an empty shell of a person with no motivation, except to kill. I've tried to avoid this problem by taking a page from Berserk and giving each Complete Monster in my series, The Ragnarǫk Cycle (which has no more than four CMs) their own distinct personalities and motives for villainy.
Would this be a good way to write a Complete Monster?
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Look at RL complete monsters. They exist. What makes them complete monsters? What makes them who they are?
Hitler wanted to see his country return to its glory days. That goal is not deviant in itself. His racism wasn't uncommon at the time either, or he wouldn't have had such a following. He crossed the line into "complete monster" when he went from not liking certain groups, to being willing to systematically massacre people. Cold-blooded, thought-through, a well-oiled murder machine. And even that wouldn't have caused fear, had he not had the means - leadership, charisma, whatever it was, to make others follow his mad vision.
Stalin was a completely different kind of monster. He was the man who led the USSR into an industrial revolution, changed it from a backward agrarian state with a large percent of the population illiterate, into a strong entity that, for a while, could compete scientifically and militarily with the USA. So he had skill, and his motives weren't as simple as "personal power". At the same time, he was absolutely ruthless: from giving the order to kill the Tzar and his family, to the Holodomor, to the Shtrafbat (penal battalions) and more, nothing was "too cruel" for him. The end always justified any means. At the same time he was paranoid, fearing anyone who might pose a danger to his position, and taking down any person or group that were starting to get any power (before WWII, he had disposed of many high-ranking capable officers, for instance). I guess what makes him a monster is the absolute ruthlessness. (And yes, I am aware that there's more to say about him. He's a complicated character. And a monster, like you want.)
And then there's the one who gives me the shivers. Dr. Josef Mengele. He was a doctor - the profession that's supposed to be most humane, most about helping others. Instead, he was performing the most cruel human experiments in Auschwitz. He didn't appear like the complete monster:
He was capable of being so kind to the children, to have them become fond of him, to bring them sugar, to think of small details in their daily lives, and to do things we would genuinely admire ... And then, next to that, ... the crematoria smoke, and these children, tomorrow or in a half-hour, he is going to send them there.
And the human experiments:
Witness Vera Alexander described how he sewed two Romani twins together back to back in an attempt to create conjoined twins. The children died of gangrene after several days of suffering.
To write someone like that, I guess you write the contradiction: how he's nice one moment, and killing children the next. It's this crazy contradiction that makes him frightening.
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their own distinct personalities and motives for villainy. Would this be a good way to write a Complete Monster?
It's a start. But there are only a few motives that really apply to a CM. Power, greed, pleasure in torture, killing and causing death. Perhaps misplaced vengeance.
To me, the way to make a plausible CM is to remove the insanity and build a simple genius psychopath, a person without a conscience or empathy and incapable of love that truly cares only for themselves, not even their own children or family, parents or spouses. To them everybody else is disposable worker ants to be used and discarded, including infants and children. Nobody else matters, except for their utility in accomplishing a goal.
To me, although "enjoying killing" is not a problem for the plausibility of a CM, irrational behavior ruins the plausibility. I don't think an irrational villain can rise to the level of being a worthy foe, irrationality makes them too easy to catch/stop and carries a high danger of resolving the plot by deus ex machina: "Oh, villain did something stupid." I find that to be disappointing even if the author telegraphs the ending by having the villain do the stupid irrational thing several times; if it is a habit it would have done him in long before the hero comes on the scene.
I would keep them rational and ruthless and quick to kill, and of course with a plan and goal to achieve it that must be stopped.
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