good characters are not good people
i love hot people covered in blood as much as the next but calling every character you like a bossbabe girlboss lil meow meow malewife has really negatively affected people’s abilities to view them objectively.
a good character has a proper motivation, want, & need ;
this should be the case for almost all of your characters. however, i do understand that there are exceptions, such as stagnant characters.
a good character is understandable & interesting ;
your characters do not have to be likable. liking them as a character also does not mean that you like them as a person. good characters do not have to be good people, they don’t even have to be decent. the roles of protagonist and antagonist in themselves are passive and do not equate to good vs evil.
i feel like so many people are afraid of having an unlikable protagonist for fear of being seen as a bad person or justifying their actions. it’s not. writing about knights doesn’t mean you want to joust someone to the death, writing about dystopian governments doesn’t mean you condone them.
trust your audience ;
this post is really only meant for a small portion of people who consume media in a way where characters become caricatures. if your character is an assassin, have them assassinate people. don’t try to shoehorn in ill-fitting traits and arcs in an attempt to “negate” their darker traits.
and if your narrator is unreliable, trust your readers to figure that out. unless you legitimately don’t see why people hate holden caulfield ig.
at the end of the day, your characters need to fit their descriptions, and the narrative should support that. don’t accidentally weaken your enemies to lovers romance fam. love you and good luck.
people who “just want to write about taboo subjects” do not interact with this post.