Starting to tire of the status quo? The villain gets engines of destruction and malefic technologies at his fingertips; the hero gets a sidekick who can do magic tricks and a white horse with bells on it. It’s time to level the playing field. It’s time to talk about antiheroes.

What is an antihero?

An antihero is any protagonist with prominent negative aspects to its character. Examples include Douglas Adams’s Arthur Dent and Terry Pratchett’s Rincewind the Wizard (cowardly, impotent protagonists who get swept along by plot elements beyond their control), the character in Kill Bill (an ex-assassin on a sadistic vengeance mission), Wario from Nintendo’s Mario games (an avaricious and filthy character, and let’s face it, he’s much cooler than Mario), Dick Dastardly from Wacky Races and Tom from Tom & Jerry, and Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean films (a conniving, honourless scoundrel).

There’s no clear-cut line that divides a hero from an antihero, but generally speaking, protagonists towards the hero end of the continuum tend to be deliberately virtuous and altruistic, whereas those closer to the antihero side tend to be more malicious and hedonistic. Occupying the middle ground are dark heroes with hidden pasts and slightly warped ideas about honour. Perhaps these in-between heroes get a foul-mouthed wizard and a black horse without bells on it…

When to make an antihero

Antiheroes come into their element in humorous settings. They are also strong in dystopias, where their faults are less obvious upheld against the society they inhabit and may even be seen as virtuous by comparison, and in utopias, where their natures provide a refreshing contrast to a rather dull, perfect background. Where they don’t do so well is in reasonably sane, stable environments where they don’t have anything to fight or rebel against.

How to make an antihero

Putting an antihero in your fiction shouldn’t be approached as simply writing a story from the PoV of a villain. A villain (or an antivillain) is an antagonist, not a protagonist. Antagonists usually start out with the situation in their favour in order to allow the protagonist to be challenged as he overcomes obstacles. At the end, the villain is often defeated or killed. An antihero needs to be challenged by the plot just as a hero does, and she also needs a satisfying ending, although if she’s been orchestrating nefarious deeds, it may be something of a compromise and not quite the one she was hoping for.

The biggest thing people seem to worry about is how to make a character with a lot of negative characteristics likeable. If a good hero has flaws, a good antihero has virtues. The virtues need to work with the flaws to make the character appeal to the readers. If the character has no virtues, or the virtues are inappropriate, it’s likely readers will find the flaws make the character unlikeable.

For example, a belligerent, hot-tempered, competitive character needs virtues that will make his argumentative side understandable to the reader. Qualities such as charisma, intelligence, wit, and adventurousness will complement this character’s spontaneous and sometimes aggressive behaviour. A character who is devious, scheming, cunning, and takes great pleasure in getting vengeance on those who have wronged her is made more honourable by being loyal (to those she deems deserve loyalty) and by being shown to be faithful to her word. Making the second character witty would probably make her seem callous and sarcastic, whereas making the first character loyal would possibly make him come across as inconsistent with his spontaneous mercenary side.

Plot considerations

Antiheroes offer a good degree of freedom when it comes to plots and conflicts. In addition to the standard protagonist-against-the-environment, protagonist-against-its-own-fears-or-weaknesses, and protagonist-against-an-antagonist plots, antiheroes can do protagonist-against-a-self-created-crisis, in which they struggle to put right a botched scheme that’s resulted from their unique character flaws.

When writing plots for antihero stories, often it does not make a satisfying ending for the protagonist to succeed in its endeavours, especially if the plot involved an attempt at something morally incorrect such as world domination or flattening an underdog. In these cases, you’ll ideally want an ending where your antihero doesn’t finish up failing utterly either. Some degree of failure and humiliation can be satisfying, depending on the persona of your protagonist, with readers enjoying seeing proud characters taken down a peg, and characters with way too much confidence have some of it knocked out of them.

I find it’s best to aim for a compromise ending that will allow the reader to feel a bit sorry for the protagonist, from the liking they developed for it, and perhaps with something unexpected (but not implausible) happening as a result of the failure that turns out to be to the antihero’s benefit, in order to provide a satisfying counterpoint. Alternatively, your antihero could change its ways to become more heroic and develop more positive traits over the course of the plot.

Ideally what you want to avoid doing is plotting out something and starting writing it, only to discover your antagonist is far more interesting than your protagonist, and end up with the antagonist becoming an antihero and stealing the show. Unfortunately, that’s where my first antihero came from.

Manda Benson has published short fiction and articles in magazines and anthologies, and has a science-fiction-romance novel, Dark Tempest, now available from Lyrical Press, and a humorous serial, HyperGolf, free to read on her website.

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