Xlibris Publishing offers tips for understanding and Writing the Antihero.
For better or worse, modern media has become fascinated with the figure of the antihero, the ‘bad boy.’ Thus the antihero has appeared in various forms, and in various mediums, over the centuries. While the tradition of the flawed protagonist has persisted throughout human literary history, the closer we get to the current day, the more frequent and varied we see depictions of a character that is technically the hero, the protagonist whose story we follow, yet displays a range of traits and qualities that are distinctly and recognizably ‘unheroic.’ This is the antihero.
Reduced to its most basic, the antihero is a main character or protagonist who has either unheroic motives, uses questionable if not unheroic methods, or displays decidedly unheroic characteristics, all by contextually current understandings of heroic qualities.
Motivation
Why characters do something heroic, even if the results are exactly the same, can distinguish which is a hero and which is the antihero. Take these two depictions of Robin Hood: The Heroic Robin Hood is driven by altruism, to help his fellow Englishman and to stand up against Prince John’s tyranny; thus he steals from the rich and gives to the poor. The Antihero Robin Hood may be driven by a vendetta against Prince John, and so to garner a good public image and help rouse his fellow Englishman in rebellion against Prince John, he steals from the rich and gives to the poor.
An antihero could be driven solely by survival and self-interest, concerned only with staying alive and getting paid. An antihero could also be motivated by revenge, a mixture of pain and rage readers can empathize and understand, even if they do not condone the ensuing actions and decisions. Though whether the revenge is petty or caked in real loss is up to the writer.
Nor should motivation be the sole defining characteristic of the antihero. A smuggler could be driven by self-interest and the payday, but still keep to their promises and contracts… it would be bad for business to be known as a contract-breaker and incapable of carrying out jobs. An antihero could also care very little about happens to other people, perhaps even about what happens to themselves, but still care deeply about specific friends and loved ones and thus will do anything to help, protect, or avenge them.
Xlibris will return with Writing the Antihero in Part 2.
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By Ian Smith