Where is the line between a tough love character and a pure asshole?
So, I have a character who was going to just be an unlikable character at the start of the novel, but now I want to make her more caring towards certain people, like the innocent character. Thing is, I also don't want to go overboard all over again. I want to balance her character between tough love, and being a complete ass. she needs to be disliked, still, but you can also see that she's redeemable with character development. But how do I do that?
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2 answers
Look at her motives.
"Tough love" is someone making hard calls or asking difficult things for the right reasons. A parent making you get up at 6:00 a.m. to go to school no matter how tired you are, or insisting that you do all your chores before going out, because it teaches you responsibility. A drill instructor who goads trainees to finish a grueling obstacle course because it teaches endurance, perserverance, and a belief in yourself.
"Being an asshole" is someone being mean to you for the wrong reason, or no reason, or because the person enjoys being cruel. Making you get up at 6:00 a.m. on a weekend just so the person can berate you for not having a job, or making you scrub the toilet with a toothbrush. A drill instructor who makes you do pushups in the rain for hours because your bed wasn't made to the nth degree of precision. Bullying someone for being fat.
Particularly with someone like a drill instructor, there can be a fine line between tough love and bullying, so your reader should see that your character means well but may be overdoing it and not realizing it. So you show that your character can be nice to someone who doesn't require instruction (doesn't have to be "someone who's innocent"), and that can open the door to character development and growth.
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Tough Love requires Love. Bullying requires a disregard of the feelings or dignity of the victim; or even getting satisfaction out of causing pain, humiliation and distress.
However, I'm gathering you want her to be disliked but also redeemable: That is possible without resorting to "tough love."
First, she can be disliked without being hated, and without being a physical bully. She can be intentionally mean, disdainful or insulting, for example. I don't know your setting, but an example is somebody informing the group of winning an award, and she responds "Congratulations, you made a hundred people unhappy doing it", or insults them or claims she thinks they are lying about it or cheated to get it.
Her flaw is that she is unhappy with her life in general, and other people's happiness feels unfair to her, they don't deserve happiness if she doesn't get any. She feels like they are cheating somehow, taking more than their share, making others unhappy so they can feel happy, and her insults (subconsciously to her) are a way of punishing them for taking something she doesn't know how to get.
But notice that flaw doesn't really apply to somebody else that isn't getting any happiness. If she thinks the innocent person is unfairly denied happiness like SHE is, then the innocent isn't guilty of "being happy." And in that case, your disliked character may have sympathy for somebody in the same boat as she is in, and she can do something about it: she can be kind and sympathetic, and because she knows she is voluntarily providing any happiness that creates, she doesn't feel like the innocent stole happiness or took it at someone else's expense, she knows it was given freely because she gave it.
If you want, that can become a mutual ongoing exchange; the innocent can return the favor, and your disliked character could decide after some time to voluntarily extend a kindness to somebody else. she could doubt her assessment of them as "bad because they are happy", because she has learned that isn't always true, and sometimes giving away a kindness is how you make a friend, and friends can make you happy.
There is a character arc there, by the end of the story she might even apologize to somebody she insulted early on just because an apology is a kindness. She doesn't have to become a saint; but it would become clear she is on her way to stop being an ass.
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