How much screentime for villain?

[Kessie]

I've been working through Jeff's wonderful writing tips for a story I'm working on. It actually made me chop my existing 8 chapters back to chapter 1 and start over.

One question I had that wasn't covered in the writing tips was this:

How much screentime should the villain have? When do you introduce him?

Going by various books I've read, the villain gets roughly 50% of the screentime. (Except Lord of the Rings, where you only ever hear about Sauron secondhand.)

But I'm trying to keep my villain in the background for now, only interacting with the heroes by leaving them notes. Eventually he'll be the Big Bad Boss Battle. So what's the rule of thumb for how much to show your villain?

[yoda47]

Ah, that's where the craft ends and the art begins! (In my opinion, anyway...)

I've read books where the bad guy gets gets about half the viewpoints, and I'm read books with only a few, or even none (it's not that rare, really..).

I have heard the prologue is a nice place to introduce him. In one of my stories, I introduced the villain as the story needed it, shortly before the characters ran into him, but around that same time line. (I ended a chapter, and started the new chapter with the bad guy's viewpoint, did a scene break, and got back to our heroes.) I think I only gave him two or three viewpoints, just enough so we knew what he was up to when our heroes weren't around, and to get the reader wondering how our heroes were going to find out what he's planning and how were they going to stop him.

In the book I'm writing now, I'm not sure if I'll give my bad guy any viewpoints, if I do, it'll probably be only one, possibly two.

So, there's lots of ways to do it. I'd say re-read some of your favorite books, and keep an eye out to see how the author does it, and use that for inspiration. Possibly read more books you haven't read in that genre, and look for the same thing. You might think, "Ooo! I love how she did that!" or, "Eww! I hate how he handled that!"

[Kessie]

Okay, you reassure me. Reading all these writing tips has made me doubt myself as a writer. Usually the villain's scenes arise organically as the story moves along, when he does something behind the scenes that pivots the plot.

Also, I don't like this villain very much. Some of my villains, I've loved more than I loved my heroes, and I couldn't wait to get back to them. This guy? Eh. He's slime and I don't want to spend time with him. He's like the fake Mad-Eye Moody in the fourth Harry Potter--you think he's your friend and BAM, knife in your back.