"You must make your villains credible, logical, believable and understandable, but not likable. You want your villains to be real, three-dimensional people. You want the reader to understand what they're doing, why they're doing it, why they believe their actions are just and rational but you don't want the reader to become so empathetic with the villain that he/she loses empathy with the hero/heroine and starts cheering for the villain. [...] Make him good. Make him darn good. Because that makes the heroine and hero better and permits you to make the story stronger."

Vicki Hinze