Pitfalls of morally grey protagonists?
We're all familiar with stories about good and evil, where characters are unambiguous. The benefit of this sort of a story is that we can enjoy the conclusion of the good struggle, without being taxed morally or intellectually. Many of the most popular stories take this form, from the New Testament, to the Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter, even the Second World War is usually framed in the context of the Axis powers being uncomplicated in their evil.
Other stories present morally grey characters who are ambiguous; they have good and bad traits, and judging their motivations is difficult. I've noticed that often stories which on first glance appear to be about moral ambiguity usually unfold into more simplistic moral metaphors, either by slowly revealing the good and bad characters, or by simply transitioning characters from one to another.
What I'd like to know, is if there are problems associated specifically with writing morally grey characters, and how to avoid these issues. What issues can occur if a writer attempts to create an ethically complicated story?
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In my opinion, when we read --or watch--, we are looking to learn something of value to our lives. We don't want a didactic lesson, but a visceral one, an emotional one. So we need a character and/or a situation we can identify with, that character needs to make choices, and those choices, for us, need to be either aspirational, the kinds of choices we can aspire to, or cautionary, the kinds of choices we should avoid.
The advantage to morally unambiguous characters is that they spell out for us which lesson we are learning. But the advantage to morally ambiguous characters is (when done well) that they are more relatable, because we all know ourselves to be not wholly good or evil, but a mixture of both. But we still want to learn something. For example, consider Woody Allen's Match Point, which features an sociopathic antihero, whose remorseless actions appear to be rewarded rather than punished. The deeper lesson, however, is that he's destroyed everything truly real and good in his life, in pursuit of rewards that are ultimately empty and meaningless. It's a fine line to walk, you can easily confuse the audience, and turn them away, especially if your work feels too nihilistic or absurdist at its roots.
It's also a question of audience. Something like Match Point isn't to everyone's tastes, it requires a certain amount of sophistication and discernment to appreciate. But on the other hand, people tend to get tired of big cartoonish morality tales --witness how even super-hero movies, the ultimate in brightly colored fables --have trended towards shades of grey.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/31278. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Some very good information already in the existing answers so I'll try and avoid repeating it but here are some thoughts on how to position a morally grey character..
The Ends Justify the Means
If the aim is to write a morally grey protagonist that the reader still "roots for" a good way to achieve this is to differentiate between the "ends" and the "means". If their overall goal is something that the reader can get behind you can have the protagonist carry out some morally questionable actions in support of that goal. This can add a layer of depth and interest to the character and lead the reader to wonder if they themselves would do the same in the circumstances. Obviously this is a TV character but think about someone like 24's Jack Bauer, he kills and tortures his way through his days in service of the "greater good", which is an interesting ethical question for the viewer to ponder over and additionally in later seasons it's interesting to watch the effects this has on his psyche.
Good by Comparison
It's tricky to pitch correctly but if the morally grey protagonist is a saint relative to the antagonist or to their "victims" then the reader can root for them because the antagonist is so much worse, especially if the only people who suffer at the hands of their actions aren't characters the reader would identify with or see as morally good people. Take the titular character from Dexter, it's not morally right that he should go around killing people, and furthermore it's made plain that he's not doing so for any moral reasons (it's purely to satisfy his own needs to kill). The nature of the killers he murders is made out to be so much worse that the viewer can let themselves off the hook for rooting for him to succeed.
You can also combine this with the Affably Evil or Magnificent Bastard tropes - take the example of Locke Lamora and co. from Scott Lynch's Gentlemen Bastard Sequence books. The main characters are un-apologetically thieves and con-artists but the primary antagonists are usually much worse (mass murderers, tyrants etc) and the main characters' antics are written with style and humor so it's easy to want to root for them.
Even Evil has Standards
As 99.999999999999% of all humans ever to have lived are themselves morally grey establishing that a morally questionable character has limits to how far they will go is a good way to make them into someone the reader can relate to.
Oh that's why!
Characters on the darker end of the grey scale are more interesting when you can follow how they got there - even if the choices they made in response to things happening to them aren't the same ones the reader would have made as long as they are reasonable the reader should be able to identify with them.
This is also a great way to keep the reader interested in a character. Sometimes you want to introduce someone in a classically "Evil" archetype because the story needs someone to fulfill that role, but maintaining that over a longer arc is difficult without them becoming a bit one dimensional and cartoon-like. Exploring the reason's why they acted the way they did when introduced gives them more depth and allows the reader to see them as a properly fleshed out character rather than just a plot device.
It also leads to opportunities for..
Growth is good
Real people are almost constantly evolving in response to the people and events they encounter, to a greater or lesser extent obviously but there's always some change - and characters of any morality position should show the same behavior. 180 degree morality turns on a dime are unrealistic and often boring, as are "I used to be evil but I know better now" speeches. Nuanced changes over a proper arc are interesting however and can be highlighted by throwing up similar situations to those encountered early on and showing how their responses/choice differ.
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The reader must want to read
As far as I'm concerned, this is the basis for nearly everything you put into a novel. If the reader doesn't want to read your book, he will usually stop. Everything, therefore, must focus first on making sure the reader wants to read your book.
The same logic applies to characters. The reader must want to read about the characters you create. This makes sense. The story is about someone, after all; it makes sense that the reader should want to follow that person's story. Following this logic, a very simple truth emerges:
Your reader must like your character
While plenty of authors would like to explore the dark side of people, the truth is that we - no matter what we think - do not want to read about evil people or characters. We do not sympathize with them or their motives. There's no connection. We want to read about people we understand, people we can look up to, people we like. Therefore, it makes sense that the reader should like your main character. And that gets difficult if they are evil (don't worry; I'm getting to gray characters).
That being said, there are plenty of novels which succeeded, which feature evil, depressing, or downright mean protagonists. How can these possibly work? This leads us to another simple truth:
The reader must see the light at the end of the tunnel
No matter how bad your protagonist is, as long as there is hope, some flicker of something better, the reader has something to hang onto. If you write about, say, a brutal murderer, but every time he kills he feels a shred - if only for a moment - of remorse, you still have a story. Granted, you have a job ahead of you, but there is a glimmer of hope. There is something to work with.
That is how you write evil characters, otherwise known as Dark Protagonists. So how do you write a gray protagonist?
If you think about it, the answer should be obvious: You know the reader must want to read about the character. You know for this to happen, the reader must care about the character. It's reasonable to assume that a morally gray character will do some good things, and some bad things. The reader will support the good things, but the truth is that any amount of bad always outweighs the good when evaluating someone in fiction.
So that leaves us dealing with the bad side of the character. However, we already know how to deal with bad or evil characters: give the reader something to hope for. In this case, a morally gray character will already have some good things pulling for him; simply make those things the light at the end of the tunnel. Give the reader hope that those parts of the character can win out over the bad. Give the character a struggle between the bad and the good within himself.
That's how you write a gray character: the same way you would write a dark character. Give the reader something to hope for, and play that up as much as you can.
If you have a gray or dark character who is not conflicted about his actions, or is actively trying to stomp out his good side with no second-thoughts, then you have a problem. You might think people want to read about such a person. Other readers might think so too. But I can guarantee, that when they actually start seeing the person how he really is, they will change their mind very, very quickly.
I hope this helps you. Best of luck in your endeavors!
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