Wrote another 300 measly words yesterday, not even on the thing I was supposed to be working on. I had a dream yesterday morning involving a very anti-heroic protagonist, and wrote a bit about her, and spent much of the day considering what’s necessary to make an anti-hero a likeable, sympathetic, or otherwise compelling enough character to keep the reader involved with her.
Riddick is an excellent example of an anti-hero that people like. Peter David’s SIR APROPOS OF NOTHING character is, OTOH, so utterly vile that I stopped reading the book and will never read anything of his again that isn’t a Trek tie-in. Mel Gibson’s character in Payback is clearly a bad guy, but his journey is sufficiently entertaining to keep the viewer with him. Thomas Covenant is a hideous character, but people keep going back for more of him (I don’t understand why. I read four and a half Covenant books before it occured to me that I didn’t *have* to read the whole series just because I’d started it. I was about twelve, I think. I was very very glad to put the fifth book down and never pick it up again.).
So what makes an anti-hero work? One thing appears to be that an anti-hero says what he’s going to do, and then by God does it. The character earns your respect, if not your fondness, and his motives have to be crystal clear. Mel Gibson’s character wants his $75K back; Riddick wants the one or two things he cares about to be safe–not because it’s good, but because it contributes to his own happiness. It’s a completely selfish motivation, but it’s completely consistent.
This character, this woman, is a stone cold killer. I get the impression the world she lives in is pretty dog-eat-dog (I’m sure some of this dream stems from reading too much about what’s going on in New Orleans), and she’d as soon shoot you as walk around you. I don’t get the idea she necessarily enjoys or likes killing, but she’s apparently very good at it, and it doesn’t *bother* her in the least. She’s been in prison for years, and they’re paroling her because there’s something worse out there they think she can catch. Or kill, more accurately. As far as I can tell, she must be in prison for having killed somebody important, because nobody gives much of a shit about murder in general in this world.
There are two things she’ll break her own survival rules for, or go back for, a la Riddick: she has a daughter with whom she’s had, I think, no contact since she went to prison fourteen years ago, and she has a … lover, for lack of a better word, a man who’s on the “right” side of the law, which I think means he only kills people who are doing actively bad things. Those are her weaknesses; her humanizing factors, which discussion at the household thinks might be vital to making an anti-hero a good protagonist.
Beyond that, can a stone cold killer be a sympathetic protagonist? I’m going to write this book eventually and find out. I think it’s probably mostly in the presentation, but it’ll be interesting to try.
In other news, finished painting the bedroom yesterday, and did the hall and part of Shaun’s bathroom. My hands hurt. They hurt from holding the paintbrush and they hurt from washing paint out of brushes. This is not any fun. I’ll be glad when it’s done, if for no other reason than I’ll stop bitching about it. :P
My shoulder is not taking to me writing on my laptop, so I’m turning off all Internet applications now and doing my writing on the desktop. Bah.
miles to Mount Doom: 116
ytd wordcount: 161,300
Glen Cook’s Black Company is a motley assortment of anti-heros that makes for interesting reading (although it’s not the most compelling in the world). Also, as y’all recommended to me, CS Friedman’s trilogy and Elric of Melnibone…Another couple of powerful anti-heros…I think in all these cases, and with Riddick, is that they do have a code of sorts, and they rigorously adhere to it. It’s not one that puts a premium on anything other than their self-interest, but you can count on them to act consistently within that framework, as the MLS household suggests. The other common factor is that there is a Big Bad that is even worse than they are. And it has to be a very compelling and intense Big Bad. Elric has the most diffuse Big Bad, but it’s still there.
I actually did make it through the Thomas Covenant books but don’t actually remember all that much about them anymore. You know, I’m pretty sure I read all of them…
I do really like Donaldson’s Gap series. I’ve reread it a couple of times now.
I don’t know if you’re read it and dismissed it already but since you didn’t mention it, I thought I would. :)
Want to see nasty killers presented as heroes? Read Romances. LOL! Not kidding. Laura Kinsale’s RITA Award winning *Shadow Heart* has a hero who’s a professional assassin (and he’s a repeat character from *For My Lady’s Heart*) and doesn’t give up his profession. One of the hottest heroes I’ve ever read. Assassin heroes aren’t uncommon, yet they’re always heroes. Just a different perspective on your problem.
FWIW, also, in the BN Book, Maass also talks about making anti-heroes work you might want to check out.
Anti-heroes are HARD, since it’s so easy to alienate readers (like our experience with Covenant), but when you can nail them, they’re amazining.
Good luck with the idea.
I think that it’s the humanizing factors that make all the difference. Mel Gibson’s character in Payback has glimmers of humanity all over the movie, even in the midst of a rather single-minded and guilt-free rampage through organized crime. His feelings for the whore, for example.
I also have always felt that the Thieves’ World anthologies are full of anti-heroes. People who are not good or nice, and yet you still actually give a crap if they live or die. They’re not a strictly cut anti-heroes as some others, however. In all cases, it’s the humanity factors. If they don’t have believable humanity factors, factors for which they will actually risk all of their goals if necessary, then there’s no reason for the reader to want to stick with them through a whole book.
The character in Payback is not a likable sort. But it’s that faint glimmer that there might, possibly, be something worth saving. Something that makes him a tiny, infantismal bit better than the people he’s going after. That’s what kept me watching and had me rooting for him. Even knowing that he was not ever, at any point, going to be redeemed.
Your idea sounds terrific, though, Catie. It will be interesting to see if you can make it work. :)
Interesting point about Thieve’s World above.
I think one of the things about the TW series is that you see many of the characters from a wide range of perspectives. For example, in the stories starring Tempus – he’s a very tough and pragmatic sort of man but with a strict sense of honor. His code isn’t everyone’s but he tries to do right, by the code of his particular god and tries to curb the excesses of that god. In other stories, he’s just one nasty vicious piece of work with no redeeming values. And I think that holds true for most of the characters, from Prince KittyKat to the fish-eyed matriarch to the sorceresses to the Hell Hounds.
I agree completely, maw. :) That’s one of the reasons that I enjoyed the anthologies so much. I enjoyed many of the full length novels as well, but only ones about specific favorite characters. I couldn’t do them all.
In other news, they’ve revived Thieves’ World a tiny bit and have a couple of new books out. All new characters. The full length novel is pretty good. The anthology taught me that I have, somewhere along the road of reading multi-thousand page trilogies and series that are all the rage now, lost the trick of making it through an anthology.
There are a lot of successful anti-heroes, but they’re all male. People seem less tolerant of bad women than bad men, which is a whole other discussion altogether. If you can pull this off, I’d be first in line to buy it!
Wow, this sounds so awesome. I love anti-hero stories. I always found Lex Luthor about a billion times more interesting than Superman, although he’s an actual villain…The characters in the Discworld tend to be out for their own sakes, their only redeeming qualities being that they don’t really want bad things to happen to other people and may, given exact circumstances, do the right thing. To me, that is very relatable.
As for what makes a good anti-hero, that’s a good question. For me, it’s the acknowledgement and destruction of what maw referred to as the “Big Bad”. I have a couple of anti-hero stories that I’m working on and that’s what their motivation is. One of the characters is misled by generalizations, trying to pack up humanity in a big ugly box with a big ugly bow so that she doesn’t have to see anybody idividually. The other is pissed off and wants to kill bad people. The fact that although they are committed, almost to the point of insanity (if not past it); what they are fighting against is relatable, which brings out the hero aspect. People are attracted to extremes as well, which makes reading about a character like that, compelling.
As for Covenant, I never finished the first one. I bought the first two thinking they sounded good. But as soon as he raped that girl, that was too anti for me. There’s no point in watching a villain fight another villain. Who’s there to root for?
I’m very excited that there’s a new story that you’re working on. It aready sounds fascinating. :D
Another antihero is Tom Ripley, written by Patricia Highsmith (so for what it’s worth, women can *write* antiheros, whether or not they can *be* antiheros). La Femme Nikita (movie rather than TV show) might qualify, and I swear I just read about a new book with a similar character and can’t for the life of me remember the title, author, or where I saw it. Grr. I’ll post if I come up with it. I’d also nominate Duchess Diane Tremontaine (who manipulates as automatically as she breathes) from Ellen Kushner’s “Swordspoint”, possibly my favorite book ever.
I’ll read an antihero who has a purpose and is competant in pursuing it. I stop reading when I stop believing the plot will go somewhere (read the first Thomas Covenant book and quit). I don’t require a moral code – amorality is fine, as long as the character has goals and is making progress towards them. My least favorite thing is when it looks like there’ll be an overarching plot and then it dissolves into incoherence (see “The X-Files”, “Roswell” TV series, recent Anita Blake books, etc.) Get your character moving with someplace to go and I’ll tag along for the ride.