Promoting controversial opinions in a work of fiction
I'm writing a first person novel and main character has highly controversial views, many of which the majority of people would probably consider immoral. Would a character with controversial attitudes be a no-no for a reader? Or maybe a publisher?
Of course, it maybe possible that his attitudes instead will be received with interest or maybe even awe, but I'm not sure on this. In either way, I still think such a novel deserves a shot.
In summary, I'm afraid of a bad reception. I don't want to change the character much, he is like Zarathustra was for Nietzsche: A mouthpiece for my own beliefs and attitudes. What techniques could improve the likely reception, to make the novel and the main character more attractive? How can I prevent confirmation bias and other biases in the readers in such cases? What kind of structure should a writer use for this purpose?
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There´s a few tropes to do this. Read the works of notorious nazi Joseph Goebels to learn more (seriously). My personal favorite is the Ralph Kane aproach: a secondary character that had the same principles as the main, but takes those as a zealot up to 11, making the main look nice and sound by comparsion.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/39008. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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In some sense you are talking about an anti-hero; a hero that has qualities or attitudes the audience may think are bad, but put up with because the guy is intent on accomplishing something else that is an obvious good.
This is the key to making your MC acceptable instead of alienating: Despite their weird belief system, their mission in this story is to do something unambiguously good, either for humanity in general or one person in particular.
That is pretty much the whole trick. In the 1994 movie "The Professional", a brutal hitman kills all kinds of gangsters and (corrupt) cops, but we like him anyway, because he chooses to save and protect a 12 year old girl.
It is possible to have some attitudes and actions that are in fact IMO irredeemable; in particular torture, rape, and murder of innocents for the fun of it.
But I will grant the imagination of others may exceed mine, if it can be done, the negatives of the MC must be outweighed by some positive thing they are doing in this story, something nearly all readers will agree redeems them.
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Are you familiar with G.R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire? It used to have some characters whose moral compass was strict and noble. They had a tendency to die, and leave a huge mess around them - mess that cost more lives. On the other hand, more Machiavellian figures created order - killing a few now, so a lot more would get to live later. The whole series seems to argue that idealism is harmful, while morally grey actions are often the best thing for everyone involved, and for innocent bystanders.
Song of Ice and Fire is extremely popular, in part because of the controversial stance it takes. So you needn't be afraid that controversial ideas would turn readers or publishers away.
How do you write controversial ideas well? You write them with integrity, you present their internal logic, you show how and why they might be considered valid. You challenge the accepted order of things, the way Socrates did. You show where the standard order of things fails. You do not present either side as an exaggerated caricature of itself, a "straw-man". You show the pros and cons of each side of the argument, the consequences each worldview leads to. Using all those tools, you make the reader think. Readers (at least some readers) like being made to think.
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