What sort of character do your characters display? Do you insist on well-meaning heroes who model the best of people, or are you eager to explore the full range of Grimdark to Noblebright?
I have no doubt that there is artistic professional merit in learning how to portray any sort of character at all. No question: sharp, practiced tools are useful. How else can we learn how to represent non-human characters, or the various forms of humans that we may not commonly encounter?
The link above explores the character types and their stories in detail, but what I wanted to talk a little about was the whole anti-hero part of this, and what I actually use in my toolkit for my own series.
See, the thing is, I make innate choices about the characters I want to present. They may be human, all too human (regardless of actual species), but my heroes are genuinely trying to be moral, whether or not they’re any good at it. I can’t focus on anti-heroes, especially as primary characters. I’m willing to grant the existence of moral flaws and outright villainy, but I don’t want to live with those people in my head long enough to do them justice in their own point of view. That means that, since I don’t do the proper work professionally I referred to above, to make them complete and well-rounded POV players — they don’t become focal points in my stories.
And that’s OK with me. I can’t master every skill, and I’d rather tell the stories I want to tell, with the players I want to use, than to represent Everyman with a glossy set of tools, when I find some of those characters repugnant. Don’t get me wrong — my stories have villains and obstructions of all sorts, but the difference is I don’t grant a lot of sympathy to the villains (to know all is to forgive all — but not in my sub-creations). My sympathies are with the more traditional tales, which have an unabashed moral point of view they want to present. (In my opinion, the “purpose” of traditional tales is to demonstrate the proper ways to behave.)
What about you? Do you glory in variety, cultivating your authorial versatility regardless of morality, reveling in the exercise of your artistic tools? Or do you hew more closely to a subclass of archetypical characters that you prefer? How do you indulge in sub-creation?
Mad Genius Club 
3 responses to “The character of your characters”
I definitely prefer to narrow my scope to heroes, even if they have their flaws. I don’t care for grimdark and I have never liked anti-heroes, nor do I like this modern trend that all villains must have a sob story background to excuse why they are doing what they are doing. I want my heroes to be people to which I can look up to, people who achieve the goals of character that I strive to achieve. Sure, I don’t want them all to be Duddly Dorights or perfect little angels all the time – having them act human with all our flaws and brokenness makes them more real, but I want to see them grow into that role of hero, not just wallow in their shortcomings.
Mine vary from “hanging on by their fingernails” to “playing on God-mode”. Some, literally.
We have Alice Haddison, the marginally functional combat vet, Jimmy Carlson, hopeless nerd, all the way up to George McIntyre, running alien nanotech and able to do literally anything he can think of.
The one thing they all have in common is the unbending will to do the right thing, even if it kills them. This is because A) I find books with “feet of clay” protagonists to be dreary and B) because they laugh at me if I try anything else.
The nerd, cheating on his robot girlfriend because he got a better offer? Not happening. Robot girlfriend, giving in to jealously because New Girl winked at the nerd? Bwaha, as if! Not happening, writer boi. Sharpen up that keyboard and fix it, old man.
They do get upset about immortality though. The thought of losing their Human to old age or accident seriously pisses them off. That’s a good source of uproar and strife with these characters.
Bad guys are harder, really. It’s tough to come up with a believable motivation for Supervillain-style bad behavior. Lust, hate, greed and fear are the four big ones. Fear being the really insidious motivation. Over the years of thinking about it as I write these things, it seems to me that the fearful ones can justify -anything.- No treachery too vile, no lie too heinous.
I note the article says that “we” don’t want to identify with immoral protagonists. At which point I remember Aristotle’s observation that we like characters who are as good as we are, or a little better, even though his “good” encompassed more than the moral. “We” like different things for that very reason.