However, this doesn’t mean you can only write a thriller to successfully employ the theme of revenge. There doesn’t necessarily have to be a horrible crime taking place to incite vengeance. And there doesn’t always have to be a long and bloodied road leading towards a big bad villain.
Netflix’s dark comedy film, Do Revenge, is a biting social satire.
In Scream, Billy Loomis’s motive stems from him wanting revenge.
Notice how revenge is used differently in the films.
So if you have a general idea sketched out but you’re not entirely sure where you want it to go, or what genre you should place it in, this is the perfect opportunity to get creative.
You could, for instance, try writing a brief breakdown of your plot in the style of different genres. Explore your story’s potential by experimenting with the ideas that genre-bending can squeeze out.
Probably the most commonly recognized tale of revenge is Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Revenge stories almost always begin with a disruption to the natural balance – a shocking, tragic crime or injustice that throws the protagonist’s life into disarray. The fallout of the crime is a place you can start in revenge writing.
Let’s look at a popular revenge film example and its plot.
Tarantino is renowned for his non-linear narratives. But the opening sequence of Kill Bill: Vol 1 follows the classic establishing of a revenge plot. It’s barely three minutes long but it immediately aligns the audience with The Bride and sets up the plot of the film.
Witnessing the crime, and how it impacts the main protagonist, will certainly make it easier for the audience to understand the revenge motive. It’s important to get them to feel something, make them as outraged as the hero, and connect them emotionally wherever you can.
The protagonists in revenge stories help drive the narrative. But when you’re writing a character hell-bent on seeking revenge, it can’t be their only storyline. Don’t fall into the trap of making them completely one-dimensional in this respect.
Your main character doesn’t have to be a perfect hero. In revenge stories, they’re going to get their hands dirty. So explore the varying degrees of morality within this.
Your characters should and will have flaws. They’ll make choices that aren’t necessarily good and honourable; ones which might force them to operate in a morally grey area.
Anti-heroes are particularly interesting characters. What’s so charming about Villanelle in Killing Eve and Thomas Shelby in Peaky Blinders that makes audiences flock toward them?
Certainly lean into the darker aspects of your characters. But still demonstrate their human side and seek to flesh out their world, what drives them and what circumstances influence them. As long as people can understand your character’s choices or at least where they might be coming from, they will continue rooting for them.
Ideally, the revenge should be multi-faceted and complex, rather than just a straight-up tit-for-tat exchange. Explore your protagonist‘s deepest motivations, backstory and nuance and you will find a revenge story that feels altogether more original and interesting.
The victims in revenge stories typically elicit sympathy from the audience.
In John Wick, for example, it’s the murder of his puppy Daisy that sparks his revenge journey.
Audiences want to feel that the victim was badly wronged and deserves to be avenged. This usually means the victim is a largely innocent person. Perhaps it’s even a misunderstanding, or an accident – a wrong place, wrong time scenario – that has led them to need vengeance.
Taken is a well-known example of this. In the first film, the motivation for the arc of Liam Neeson’s character, Bryan, rests on the abduction of his daughter Kim.
Not to mention, we get that epic line.
“I will hunt you, I will find you, and I will kill you.”
It’s also worth noting that your victim doesn’t always have to be completely clean. Don’t be afraid to add complexity and nuance into the mix. This will typically lead to more interesting and original characters after all.
It’s important to keep challenging how we automatically label and determine people’s worth based on stereotypes. Your victim can be authentically human and still be undeserving of whatever horrible fate is handed to them.
Injustice is the inciting incident in revenge stories. It sets off the chain of events.
Since revenge tends to go outside the limits of the law, if your character resorts to vigilante status, show they have tried at least to go through traditional means, but are left with no choice but to go elsewhere.
Injustice is a powerful motivator for any audience to understand. However, the more you’ve justified your protagonist‘s desire and means for revenge as the only solution to their problem, the more the audience will be on board and the more likely they’ll be to enjoy the journey.
Motive is one of the most important ingredients in writing revenge stories. The reason for revenge must be well thought out.
Your audience needs a motive to know that the protagonist‘s quest for revenge is justified. It perhaps isn’t quite as important if you have a morally bad character. However, we still need to recognize why they feel a certain way towards something – even if we don’t agree with the actions being taken.
Contrastingly, if you’re writing the hero archetype, their vengeance shouldn’t go overboard. If their behaviour and punishment make them worse than the antagonist, you might start to lose audience support. By all means, that scenario could potentially work with an anti-hero, or perhaps if the intended journey is the hero losing themselves and becoming like the villain.
Furthermore, the quest for revenge typically needs to be about more than just the action at hand. If revenge is the tip of the iceberg, what lies beneath?
Motive allows Carrie White to remain the victim in Carrie, despite her murder spree.
If you’re going for a more unsettling approach and purposely want to remain vague, you could omit motive to heighten suspense. Keep the audience partially in the dark for a while and have them guess the reasons for revenge and why it has impacted the protagonist so much. Do be wary though that it can be much harder to connect with these characters. And often vagueness can act as a mask for a weak motivation.
An interesting and arguably successful example of this technique in a revenge and redemption film is Bullet Train.
In this instance, withholding motives to develop the bigger picture works and benefits the story. This is partly because the multitude of different arcs makes the motive of revenge bigger than the sum of its parts.
A fundamental rule of any dramatic writing is having conflict. Your protagonist will need an opposition to assign blame on and want to punish. When writing revenge stories, the antagonist is usually the person who orchestrated or committed the original act.
So, who are they and what’s their motive?
Antagonists don’t have to be the villain of the story by default – the same way protagonists aren’t always the automatic hero. The initial desire for revenge might be easily justified, only for the plot to reveal more complexity as it goes on.
As a whole, the antagonist‘s credibility is key in making the revenge feel engaging in the first place. If they seem two-dimensional then it’s likely the revenge itself will seem two-dimensional. In this way, the antagonist‘s depth is just as important as the protagonist‘s. What are the stakes for the revenge and what is the motivation? The strength of the antagonist‘s characterisation will provide convincing answers to these questions.
Revenge is not an easy task to achieve. Therefore, there must be a persuasive level of obstacles and conflict for the protagonist to achieve their revenge:
Moreover, think of other ways you can add conflict to the story outside the protagonist and antagonist.
Keep delaying the gratification of the protagonist achieving their goal and build the tension for its payoff. That way, when the resolution finally comes, it will be far more satisfying. But more importantly, it will make the journey of revenge all the more believable.
Nothing worthwhile is ever easy and so the revenge should prove illusive, difficult and multi-faceted. Don’t think of the journey as a straight line but a twisting graph, forever riding peaks and troughs until the eventual pay-off, which, in and of itself, might not be as straightforward as initially believed.
This is the moment everyone is waiting for. The part where the confrontation happens and when the hero and villain go head to head.
Crucially, the climax of revenge stories will deal with the two possible outcomes; the protagonist‘s moment of triumph, where they complete their goal and get justice, or their failure. This will resolve the main conflict of the story. What was the quest for revenge really about? How did it serve as a Trojan horse for the true desire.
In The Revenant, for example, the main character Hugh Glass succeeds in his quest to avenge his son’s death. But despite the long and unrelenting journey, he does not deliver the final blow himself. The last line antagonist Fitzgerald delivers is harrowing and encapsulates the whole feel of the film.
“Well, you enjoy it Glass because there ain’t anything that’ll bring your boy back.”
Revenge stories don’t always have to tie up neatly. This could mean the protagonist not succeeding, or simply demonstrating that revenge has a harsh price – whether that’s in death or showing that the events will torment your character for the rest of their life.
If the protagonist doesn’t succeed, it could be because they decided not to go through with the act. This comes with a message about revenge not always being the best way forwards. Be careful with this. It can be frustrating to follow a character through such an intense journey only for them to have a sudden change of heart. So this change of heart, in fact, can’t be sudden – it has to be seeded throughout the plot.
If the protagonist fails, this tends to culminate in their defeat; usually, the villain escapes or the protagonist dies. Equally, this can be frustrating. But sometimes stories aren’t meant to have a happy ending.
Crucially, this still fulfils an important purpose for a screenplay – for the protagonist to learn a lesson. Revenge may be a cipher, a way of the protagonist searching for something that revenge seems like the answer for but isn’t. This demonstrates how revenge can be a fantastic motivator for a plot in the context of a thriller. It allows for a relatively simple arc, jam-packed with exciting action and a clear end goal.
But true satisfaction from a revenge story lies in what the protagonist gains from the revenge other than the completion of the act itself. What have they learnt and what has the story truly been about? This is a vital way to give your revenge story a distinct meaning and purpose, helping it stand out from the crowd.
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This article was written by Molly Hutchings and edited by IS Staff.
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"Count of Monte Cristo". In his quest for revenge, all his plotting was unimpeded, everything all fell into place without glitch in Edmond's hands. How would you make this better if you were Alexander Dumas.