{"id":1829,"date":"2004-02-29T09:47:58","date_gmt":"2004-02-29T17:47:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2004\/02\/29\/1829.html"},"modified":"2004-02-29T09:47:58","modified_gmt":"2004-02-29T17:47:58","slug":"loathesome-protagonists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2004\/02\/29\/loathesome-protagonists\/","title":{"rendered":"Loathesome protagonists"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Here's a story outline we've been seeing a lot lately (so don't worry, I'm not talking about any one story):<\/p>\n

Protagonist is a truly horrible person. We see a whole bunch of examples of how horrible they are, over and over. In the end, a transformative experience makes them see the error of their ways and they become a good person.<\/p>\n

There's certainly nothing wrong with the basic idea of a redemption plot. But the more time you spend in the first three-quarters of your story showing me how awful your protagonist is, the less interest I'll have in seeing the character redeemed. I don't want to read 4000 words about someone who's the embodiment of pure evil (or even pure obnoxiousness) just to get to the 1000-word ending in which they reform. Also, the more over-the-top dreadful a character is, the more likely I am to think \"I bet the author is just setting up this awful character to be reformed in the end.\" (Note: this doesn't mean it's a good idea to set up the awfulness and then not<\/em> have the protagonist reform in the end.)<\/p>\n

One technique is to give the reader some reason to like or be interested in the protagonist despite their being a bad person. Make us want<\/em> to see the character redeemed.<\/p>\n

Another technique is to make the transformation gradual. Epiphany is all well and good, but few people undergo radical personality changes overnight. In A Christmas Carol<\/a>,<\/cite> we see a sympathetic side of Scrooge even during the first spirit sequence. (Though I haven't actually read the whole book, so I'm not certain that's a good example.)<\/p>\n

Another is to put more in the story than just a sequence of demonstrations of how awful the character is. Give us other characters to be interested in (but don't make them two-dimensional either). Make the plot about more than just redeeming the protagonist. Make the prose something we'll want to keep reading regardless of anything else.<\/p>\n

Another thing to do is just reduce the number and degree of the examples of awfulness. After a protagonist has kicked a kitten, we really don't need to see much more to convince us this is a Bad Person.<\/p>\n

(Of course, in a humorous story things are different; if you're aiming for comic effect, then over-the-top Badness can be good, as long as it's clear that it's meant to be funny. But I'm not really talking about humor here. And as a matter of personal taste, I don't usually find it funny when people are nasty to each other; I know plenty of people do find it funny, but it doesn't often fit my sense of humor.)<\/p>\n

I think the main thing to keep in mind is that if you make your protagonist too unrelentingly annoying for too long, the reader probably won't think \"What a great portrayal of an annoying character!\" but rather \"This story is annoying!\"<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s a story outline we’ve been seeing a lot lately (so don’t worry, I’m not talking about any one story):…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1829\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}