The worse the villain, the better the story. Is this evaluation usually true for novels?

No. There are no bad guys in some novels. There is absolutely no rule that a good story must have a villain. I think real realistic novels exclude the whole concept of villains, because in real life, people are often not villains.

I'm not saying that people don't do bad things in real life: of course they do. But they don't usually act like villains: they take pleasure in malice.

People usually want to feel good about themselves, so they will make detailed strategies to defend what they want to do. The people we meet who have done the most evil things are often unimaginative, mediocre and sympathetic. They found themselves in a position where they were able to do bad things, so they came up with a reason to do bad things, which made them look good.

In each case, the perpetrators shift the responsibility to a more powerful force: commander, training, etiquette, sacred authority, moral disgust, and inner impulse that cannot be ignored. You will find that even people who do the worst things will always sadly declare that their actions have higher reasons, not just what I want to do, and no one will stop me. Joe Arpaio defended his abuse of people in prison in the name of upholding the law; He never explained how law enforcement agencies get services by ignoring sexual crimes. The most honest guards in the SS concentration camp admitted that they thought what they had done was right because they really believed in the cause.

What a typical villain! The wicked at least have the courage to admit their evil deeds. That's why they are interesting: because they are not like us. They are festivals away from responsibility and morality. They let us hate them freely without feeling the slightest guilt. If they are funny villains, they are not too evil, and we can even find their sympathy.

The reason why villains are so popular is that villains can really inject vitality into the story. This helps a good story to have a strong opponent, rather than a sour, angry, vengeful and boring empty shell man who doesn't even know his own behavior. The story doesn't have to be true on the surface: just because the author faithfully ensures that the story is set in our world, the moderate realistic literary novel is not automatically "superior" to fantasy novel.

I think the real role of villains in good stories is not to reflect people in real life, but to reflect that we don't always want to do the right thing ourselves. In The Lord of the Rings, you must have someone who only wants unlimited power, otherwise the story will be too gloomy: this person must be Soren. In cormac mccarthy's novels, the villains in his novels, such as the judge in Bloody Meridian, all represent a kind of malice, which McCarthy thinks is human nature or American culture, or an inseparable part of both. Voldemort appears in the story of Harry Potter, because wizards will become like this if they don't restrain themselves.

Having said that, I will make a slight revision now: in my opinion, the most unconvincing kind of villain is the kind who does evil for his own benefit. To some extent, all of us can sympathize and want more power, or want to exercise your magical power without restraint, because anything that makes you feel stronger will make you feel more energetic. But most of us don't want to be unreasonable and cruel, and we have never seen such cruelty. That's weird. I think the best and most satisfying villains are often those who pursue what we think is worth pursuing and we dare not do it. This doesn't mean tying a firecracker to the cat's tail.