Writing How to write an explanation for a villain's technique without the mc figuring it out and without the villain telling it?

[ForestDweller]

I don't feel good just describing it with the narrator voice. Showing, not telling and all that. And making the villain tell it to the mc just reeks of bad shonen writing. And having the villain think to themselves about their power just feels forced. It's like using "as you know" before an exposition.

 

[NotaNuffian]

... in this case, you want the reader surrogate known as the MC to not know what's hitting him?

Make another surrogate then, by having a group of people as audience like those commonly seen in xianxia, featuring a moron asking people about what the villain is doing and a wiseass answering. The moron will serve as the new surrogate (cuz the reader is just as blank) and the wiseass being the merciful author.

If you want it to feel real, make the wiseass guess halfly or at least 70%, like he is able to see the effect and tries to deduce the cause to his fellow peanut crowd.

 

[SailusGebel]

The villain can explain his powers to his sidekick, hired thugs and so on to boast.

 

[ForestDweller]

Doesn't work on the fight I'm writing unfortunately since it's a 1v1 fight.

 

[Agentt]

You can have MC guess what the ability is. That's what most horror movies do to figure out weakness of ghosts, guess stuff and it turns out to be correct.

 

[NotaNuffian]

You can have MC guess what the ability is. That's what most horror movies do to figure out weakness of ghosts, guess stuff and it turns out to be correct.

There are caveats:
1. The villain's power must be obscure or overly complex in order to keep the suspense. If it is easily guessed and resolved then there is no point.
2. Both their power levels are equal or similar until neither one of them can overcome another through lengthy crap.

For example, when All Might is fisting the nomu, he thought that it had nullification and we were treated to a good nail biting moment.

Then it had to fuck it up by having a hard limit and All Might ora ora ora it to the moon.

 

[ArcadiaBlade]

Step 1: Write a suspicious friend character for the MC.

Step 2: Make multiple scenes while at the same time point every accusations towards the friend char while letting the MC suspicious of him.

Step 3: Crystalize every actions and make the MC point every events towards the friend character.

Step 4: kill off the friend's important person while at the same time reveal the actual villian being the heroine, giving the reveal that she was testing out the MC's potential.

Congratulations, you make a villian character who is actually a genius and compassionate person, turned cold by making the MC a dumbass and now you can create a 5 Arc story of how the friend character that wants to totally humiliate, destroy and ruin the MC's life, just because da boi is so horny to suspect a girl than his own best friend.

 

[Zakuro]

Carefully.