First, let’s start at the beginning: most villains aren’t master minds. Most are not fiendishly clever heads of organizations.
Most villains — most criminals — take it from someone who grew up around law enforcement, listened to village gossip, reads a ton of true crime when she’s depressed, and has read about things like Victorian (and Tudor) criminals: most criminals are dumber than you can imagine. Think of the dumbest person you know. Now halve their intelligence and you have your average criminal.
But Sarah, then how come there are still unresolved murders? And how come–
Well, first of all because it’s MUCH easier to create a mystery than to resolve it, and in fact most of the “fiendishly difficult” mysteries got that way more or less by accident. Like body taken to another jurisdiction and criminal got lucky on the dump site. Or just at that time no one happened to see the kidnapper. Couple that with overworked departments, and you have a mystery for the ages.
There’s also, occasionally though not often, a mass murderer of average or above average intelligence. Those are tough, because by definition mass murderers either work alone or it’s follie a deux. Anyway, it’s not a sprawling organization, okay? Those we call dictators, or … well, mass murderers with organizations are people like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and a whole other ball of wax.
But most criminals are creatures of impulse and almost unbelievably low intelligence. They keep criming (totally a word) because that’s what they default to in a world they don’t understand.
Most villains, too — i.e. people who live to do something bad either to someone or in general — tend to be on the left side of the bell curve. Because people on the right side (no it’s NOT politics. VISUALIZE THE BELL curve.) have far more interesting things to do with their time than destroy stuff.
But master criminals with a huge organization are well documented and traditional in fiction, both in spy flicks and all early science fiction. (Same for master villains who aren’t precisely criminals.)
Now writing geniuses is always hard. Most people who try manage “extreme autist” which is covalent with genius like 50% of the time, but it doesn’t MEAN genius.
Most of the women I’ve met who were smarter than I — this is relevant because yes I test above the genius mark and have the (expired, because I don’t need the social organization) Mensa card to prove it. I don’t normally say this, but last time I mentioned something like this, someone demanded I prove it. Also I don’t think IQ is relevant for much ultimately, not in real life, but it is for this — were perfectly socially adept and often amazing at it. The kind of woman everyone would walk through fire for. So not autist at all. (Okay, in one case where I knew her well enough, she WAS an autist, but brilliant at back-engineering normalcy, so you’d never know.)
Men tend to fall more on the “visible autist” spectrum, even when they AREN’T because they tend to be more mission oriented. So say, out of nothing, of course (coff) you life with a mathematical genius.
He’s not an autist, and is perfectly able to understand social mechanics. He just doesn’t give a hang, unless he likes the person for whatever reason, because people are generally not made of mathematical problems and therefore they’re intrinsically not interesting. And he doesn’t see why he should care. BUT he can, if he wants to.
Most male geniuses are like that, hence our “absent minded professor” stereotype.
Anyway, moving right along, (on rails) what drives me nuts is criminal master minds who then do things that would destroy their organization.
Yesterday Dan was watching some eye-wateringly bad spy thing, and the mastermind villain was just randomly killing his men.
No, seriously.
It was like “Deliver this message for me, and then I kill you.” Down to the level of “You keep my files. I kill you.”
Look, having the evil guy ruthlessly kill his own assets is a sign of how evil and uncaring he is, yes.
BUT if he killed his own people like that, left and right, he wouldn’t last ten minutes.
Don’t make your mastermind a moron.
Yes, he’s evil and probably mean, but if he’s running a huge organization, he still needs to be a good manager.
Sure, commie (and Nazi) dictators ate their own, but that was usually when the up and coming henchman was (explicitly or implicitly) viewed as a competitor for the top.
Most of the people who join Evil Inc aren’t randomly murdered. They’re brought in and given benefits and dental on the side, and probably d*mn good renumeration in one way or another too. That’s why they join. They’re not all cold blooded psychopaths. Convincing yourself that killing 50% of the human race is much better if you are given walking around money. And you’re not killed, of course. Because killing your henchmen is like cutting off your own hands.
For the love of BOB read a decent management book. Your mastermind villain HAS. And has a lot of instinctive knowledge of it too.
Implausibility is the number one sin of the fiction writer.
Now go forth and sin no more. If you must do evil, do it plausibly!
Mad Genius Club 
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